Krakow May 18-22

By Eric

We had heard many many great things about Krakow. Polish folks were always telling us, "You must go to Krakow. Don't bother with Warsaw. But Krakow! You Must Go!" Even the Lonely Planet guidebook which rarely gives a strong opinion one way or another said, "If you see only one city in Poland, make it Krakow." So our expectations were as high as our expectations for the new Star Wars movie.

Krakow was supposed to be only 27 km from our campground in Dobczyce. We managed to stretch that 27 to 46 or so by getting entangled in a mess of narrow, winding, hilly and especially confusing back roads.

At least they were pretty. As soon as the first ugly concrete high rise apartments appeared on the horizon, we were in another nasty impenetrable urban ring. We asked directions to the center ("centrum") and a thickly bearded young man who reminded me of a character in Crime and Punishment (I was in the middle of reading it) scratched his head. That seemed a bad sign. He pointed first one way then another. He talked a lot in Polish and of course we understood nothing. We went off in the direction he last pointed with no confidence at all.

We went up a long hill on a wide four lane road with lots of buses no doubt moving around the people living in the surrounding ugly concrete high rise apartments. A cop pointed a radar gun at us, startling me for a second, then he waved over a car that was coming up behind us. We had probably blocked the driver's view of the policeman.

Eventually we entered the city on a very stressful freeway, approaching from the east rather than from the south where we had started. We stopped just outside the city center to get our bearings. A gaggle of elementary school kids passed us on the sidewalk. Gaggles of school children wander around Krakow all the time it seems.

We reckoned our position slightly incorrectly and ended up near a train station in a rather ugly part of town. We were hungry, thirsty, stressed and a little lost so we stopped for a beer.

This tactic worked. Soon afterwards we found the spectacular town square. The square was about the size of four city blocks. In the middle of the square was the "cloth market," a long baroque (I'm quoting the guidebook) building that used to be the main market for the city and had become the main market for souvenir hunting tourists. Inside you could buy wooden chess sets, earrings, leather vests, wooden toys, etc.

Around the market was nothing but lots and lots of cobblestones and a large amount of empty space. By mid-afternoon everyday the empty space was filled with tourists, street musicians, pigeons, nuns, and gaggles of school children. Btw, there were more nuns in Krakow than you could shake a New Testament at.

Quaint looking building facades in a variety of colors, three or four stories high, surrounded the square completing a rather pleasant picture.

The nearest camping was five km out of town. We decided to stick with the strategy we had used for the whole trip. If we visit a city, we try to stay right in the middle, even if it costs a lot more.

Hotels in Krakow were expensive so we decided to try another "private room." This had worked wonderfully in Zakopane, though we had avoided it before because it's possible to end up in a lousy place way out of town if you aren't careful.

We went to a special tourist office in Krakow that handles private rooms. I went inside and told them we wanted something close to the center that would take our bikes. Meanwhile Joan waited outside and an older woman approached her trying to get us to stay at her home. It was far cheaper than the official private rooms but the woman didn't have a map so she couldn't show Joan where it was.

We came back two hours later to pay for the room the tourist office had found and the older woman was still there, and this time she had a map! Joan felt very bad for the woman. We might have taken her room except it was rather far from the center.

Our room was in the apartment of an interior designer and his wife and three kids. When we arrived, the man was wearing rollerblades. He wore them most of the time. The apartment was spacious enough. He didn't speak English so we spoke in German except that I didn't really speak German. I did understand when he said three days was not enough to see Krakow, three months would be better.

We had a nice bedroom. But both of us had the feeling the whole time that we were sort of intruding in a family's life.

With all the build up for Krakow, we felt a lot of pressure to see things. We had to see the castles, the cathedrals, the museums, even the salt mine.

Well we discovered once and for all that we really were completely fed up with almost all those things. If I just read the word, "museum" or "baroque" I would get sleepy. We tried a bit in Krakow, but we were just going through the motions of tourism.

So it seemed quite appropriate that one morning we got up and literally went to the salt mines -- not to work, but to tour. We fell for the Wieliczka Salt Mine tour because it is sounded so strange. Museums, castles and cathedrals are more common in Europe than McDonald's. But we've never visited a salt mine before -- especially an 800 year old salt mine. We were almost turned off when we read that there was actually a cathedral inside the mine! For a thousand years no one in Europe built much of anything except cathedrals, even inside mines.

The salt mine are located about 15 km from the center of Krakow. It is possible to but a package tour of the mines at tourist offices in Krakow that includes the bus ride to and from the minds, but they are very expensive. So we decided to attempt public transport. We walked to the bus station and wandered around asking people how to get to the salt mines for about 10 minutes. We were completely confused when a nice new mini bus rolled up with the words, in English, "Salt Mine" on the side. We got in and paid 50 cents each. An English speaking passenger told us which stop to get out.

The tour was guided in Polish so we didn't understand anything but just before the tour, we had bought a pretty good pamphlet in English that explained things. There were a lot of different chambers in the mine and several of them had new and old salt sculptures done by the miners themselves. The salt was not white like I expected but translucent black. Several of the sculptures came from the communist days, the sculpting miners being a perfect proletariat symbol.

The best part of the mine, I must say, was the cathedral. It was a giant chamber with chandeliers made of salt crystals, amazing relief sculptures and even an interesting floor. That room made it worth the trip.

We had a lot of trouble dealing with American Express the day we left Krakow. It's a long story and, for once, I won't tell it here. Suffice it to say that Joan fought and defeated the rudest, nastiest Amex teller in the world, though it took two hours. Many times in those two hours we both considered just riding to the airport and going home. It wasn't just Amex, but our whole exhaustion with tourism that made us feel that way.

The only reason we didn't just go home is that we knew from experience that once we got on the bikes again, traveling through small towns and camping, we would be having a great time again.

It got so late after the fight with Amex, we ended up camping just five km west of Krakow at a very pleasant campground.

The next morning we both felt wonderful. No cathedrals we must visit, no World Heritage Sites that we must not miss, no European City of Culture to explore, nothing to do. Not having the burden of tourism hanging over us, we decided to just stay and rest. We spent all day reading and writing and it was probably the most enjoyable day we spent in Krakow.

Next: Poland Chapter 3 - Auschwitz-Birkenau

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