Right now we’re sitting on a bench in the park, enjoying the sun and warmth after returning from our Poland adventure, ready to let let you know all about it. The country had never been on our list of places to travel to, as it had never come to mind as an exotic or romantic place to visit. But, we have to say, for those of you who haven’t been there, it is a must-see. We chose Poland because of our small summer travel budget and had heard that eastern Europe was the place to travel on the cheap, and boy was it cheap. A lunch for two, consisting of two meals at Burger King, came to a grand total of about 7 Euros. Our romantic dinner restaurant at a place called Mama Mia was even better. The dinner, where we had a pizza, two beers, a cola, and a tip, rang up at 13 Euros. Nice, huh?
Upon arriving in Krakow, we were just overwhelmed at the beauty of the
old town. It was full of big churches and cobblestone streets. Supposedly the city has the biggest market square in all of Europe.
Amy posing for a picture in the Old Town of Krakow.
Castle in Krakow
We stayed in a hostel, which was a first for Amy. Despite her worries, she survived and actually enjoyed the community feel of the place. While in Krakow, we took two tours. The first was of the old Jewish quarter and Jewish Ghetto. It was a sobering experience. Before World War 2, at least 68,000 Jewish people lived in Krakow.
Now there’s 150.
The walls around the Jewish Ghetto are in the shape of tombstones.
We were told that these chairs were set up as
a memorial. When the Jews were forced to live here there were so many of them and not enough places for their furniture, so they were forced to leave their furniture on the street. All of the chairs face a certain way to represent the walk the Jews had to take to the concentration camp.
We also got to see Schindler’s factory, where we learned that Oskar Schindler saved at least 1,000 Jews from the concentration camps. However, we also found out that his wife isn’t too happy with how glorified his character was in the movie. Apparently, he was quite the ladies man.
Schindler's Factory
During this first tour, our guide, who was a psychology major, introduced us to the King of the old Jewish Quarter. Turns out, after the war ended and there were no more people living there, the government moved all the poor people in. Thus, crime ran rampant. And, of course, someone has to come out as some sort of leader, and this man was apparently it. This (homeless) man gave up some of his precious time for a brief interview with us. During this interview, our guide had to translate and we’re pretty certain the guide did not translate everything because we heard the word “American” thrown in by the king, but this particular sentence was not relayed to us.
In much more colorful language than we’re comfortable typing here, he told us how attractive all of the girls were in our group. He also told us how disappointed he is with today’s generation of ‘hoodlums’. Apparently, they have no honor. In the old days, just two people fought. Nowadays, he said, it might be five or so against one. By the way, he spent 15 years in jail. Amy and Craig decided during the interview that if they were to see this man outside of the tour, they would quickly walk the other way.
Our tour guide with "The King."
The second tour we took was 135 meters beneath the earth into a salt mine. The salt mine outside of Krakow is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Amy was pretty nervous about this adventure because of her fear of tight spaces. However, once underground she was amazed at how open everything was.
The mine has 300 kilometres of tunnels, many chapels, a few lakes, and a room that is currently being used for Sunday worship and weddings. Yes, that’s correct, every Sunday people travel underground to attend worship service in the subterranean cathedral.
We learned that everything there was made out of salt, including the chandeliers. There were places where instead of salt there was wood. This was to keep the mine from collapsing. We also learned that they kept the horses underground for their entire lives. The reason for this is that some of the horses would have heart attacks and die when being transported down into the mine. As it turns out, the horses generally lived longer inside the mine than outside the mine. This may be due to the clean air.
Speaking of clean air, at 125 metres underground there is a center where people will go to spend 7 weeks for 8 hours a day. Apparently, this alleviates the symptoms of allergies and asthma. We saw lots of people with young children attending this center.
The church located in the salt mine. They hold weekly services here and weddings.
So Craig, are those walls really made of salt?
Next stop: Warsaw. We were a bit apprehensive about Warsaw due to what we had heard while in Krakow. However, as it turns out, we had no need to fear because Warsaw is a wonderful place. The buildings are much newer than in Krakow because 80% of Warsaw was flattened by the Nazi’s during WWII.
These buildings look old, but they are actually pretty new.
One of the few remaining buildings from WWII. This was a bank. You can see the holes in it from where it was hit during the war.
While in Warsaw, we had the opportunity to visit a museum that highlighted the struggle of the Polish citizens fighting against the Nazis who had taken over. It was very sad to see what the people of Poland have endured over the past 60 years.
We learned that not only was the Polish army fighting, but the President of Poland called upon the citizens of Poland to fight against the Nazis. Imagine that if our President got on the radio and tv and asked you to fight against some invading army, wouldn’t that be crazy?
Their houses were destroyed, so they had to retreat to tunnels underground. Many of them fought with homemade weapons.
Recently the Polish suffered another blow when their President, and much of their government, died in a plane crash.
Despite of, or because of all these hardships, we found the Polish to be very friendly and willing to chat with the person next to them (whether you understood them or not).
All in all we enjoyed our Poland trip and would recommend it to anyone who is thinking about going.
Learn to speak Polish -- just add the long e to the end of English words :).
Actually, Polish is an extremely hard language and we weren't able to pick up any of it.
If you would like to see all of our pictures from Poland, please check out our site on shutterfly:
