Krakow

Krakow Glowny - central train station

Moving on from Western Europe, I've always wanted to venture Eastern Europe. Krakow jumped out as the most attractive of all shortlisted candidates like Prague, Budapest and Vilnius because top of my list of things to do before the end of 2009 was to visit Auschwitz - where the Nazi Germans slaughtered 1.5million Jews. Poland thus appeared to be the best destination for the bank holiday.

Before I came to the UK, Poland to me was where Pope John Paul II was from. That was all I knew about the country. But Poland to the UK, is what Indonesia is to Malaysians - a vital source of cheap but skilled construction workers.

Drivers in Poland are required by law to switch on their lights when driving

My understanding of Krakow fell much shorter than that until I was there. The city was much better than I expected. For a city half the size of Singapore, it has four UNESCO-listed sites three of which we went to- Old Town, Auschwitz's mass extermination camp and Wieliczka's Salt Mine.

Wavel Castle

Bernardine Church

Krakow Cathedral

Old Town

Galleria Krakowska


Salt mine in Wieliczka. All of these were made from salt

Descend to salt mine

Krakow to me, still shows it was once a communist country. The ageing infrastructures and transportation system that now provide the impetus to development are the only scars that left behind to what was once a stranglehold of communism. There are as many old and dilapidated buildings on the streets as there are friendly people everywhere we went to.

One of the train stations en route to Auschwitz

No one will believe me more than I believe myself when I say Polish people are the most forgiving people in the world, next to Christ. After all that the Germans have done to the Polish during WW2, they are still allowed to roam in and out of the country freely without being stoned to death on the streets. Yes, and it's easy to recognise a German if you ask a Polish.

Podgorze

In fact, we've ended up traveling with a group of Germans who've stepped foot into Auschwitz to find out what their country has done in the past. I don't know if it was meant to vindicate themselves from being stoned to death but they did proclaim from the very beginning that they were members of an anti-fascist movement - Nazi fighters they call themselves. Okay, to be fair, they were a nice and fun group of lads who helped us locate a brilliant place to eat before they left.

Walking tour with German friends

I determine if a country is developed or developing by using the McDonald's as a yardstick. Adapting from the Big Mac index, I have created my own indicator. If McDonald's is a luxury in a country, it has to be a developing country. McD's is a luxury in Krakow, so Krakow is a developing country and rightly so. McD's are not as cheap as the milk bars.

Krakow Cathedral

Milk bars are not places where you buy milk and get drunk. I never thought you could anyway. It's just figurative. Milk bars are where the poor, homeless and students go to have their free/cheap meals. Tourists like us are also allowed to go to the milk bars and we are charged the same as the students. In fact, these were the recommended places for tourists who want to try Polish food in a typical Polish environment. You could for example, have a hearty meal with dessert for only £1.50(RM8)! Of course, do not expect high standards - think canteen food.

Pierogi and pork cutlet from the milk bar

When it comes to food, Poland becomes Porkland. There are plenty of opportunities to eat pork which means it would be difficult for Muslims to come here. However, there are always halal kebab stalls around. So it is not a problem afterall. For pork lovers, you must come to Krakow as pork is served in all shapes, form or style - cutlet, in soup, dumpling filling, roasted, stewed, sausages, bacon, etc. By the end of our trip, I felt so pork-ey I had to abstain from meat for a week!

Porkland

But despite it serving the best meat in the world after fish, Krakow is rubbish with coffee. As a coffee addict, I was absolutely disappointed with the artificial stuff from the instant mix that I was served with. The taste was next to drinking a cup of diluted watercolour - only that this was hotter. Coffee must have been banned in Poland during the communist days as it was a foreign commodity I supposed, or I was at all the wrong places at the wrong time? I suspect the latter. Oh well, since I was only paying 1/5 of the price I pay in London, I should not complain.

Krakow's public transportation

Two years ago, I boasted that if I can travel in Japan without knowing how to read the kanjis, I can travel anywhere in Europe easily because I could make up the words in their respective languages. Not so for Poland. When we had our first Polish meal, we realised we were handicapped by the language. None of us had an idea what was in the menu and Polish couldn't understand English either. To make matters worse, Polish words are not pronounced as they are the English way. To avoid embarrassment and to survive, we ended up pointing a series of names with prices that are not too cheap (because we don't want to end up eating paper towels, toothpicks or plastic fork and spoons since we didn't know if those were charged too) and prices that are not too expensive as we may be ordering the entire roasted hog! So somewhere in between was the best solution.

We were quite good or you may consider it as lucky. We ended up randomly pointing to two main meals and a dessert! We remembered what we ate and made up those words in the menu. For once, there's taste to language! Our understanding of those words later helped in how we ordered our meals for the rest of the trip.

Food was an antidote to depression after Auschwitz. Our German friends were familiar with Krakow and so we tagged along to see new places and tried new food. So we also tried food introduced to us by people who were familiar with Poland.

Anti-fascist Germans introduced us to the Zapiekanki, like pizza served on baguette

On the itinerary was a trip to the former Jewish ghetto in Podgorze (pod-gor-jay). The ghetto was created for Jewish people to resettle into during WW2. It was horrible. The ghetto was demarcated clearly by a boundary wall and residents were made to wear the Jewish star everywhere they went to even within the walls of the ghetto. They have no business out of those walls. They were like housed in a borstal and treated like animals if you ask me! It was a crime if a Jew did not identify him/herself as a Jew to a non-Jew during meetups. For example, if they were walking into a job interview, they must first say along these lines: "Sir, I am legally obliged to tell you that I am a Jew", before they can proceed. This was absolutely derogatory. Things went from bad to worse day by day. In the end they were rounded up from the ghetto and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau to be exterminated. In the heyday before the war, there were more than 60,000 Jews. Today I was told there are only 200 of them. Most of them were murdered by the Nazi Germans.

Remains of the Jewish Ghetto wall in Podgorze

Kazimierz on the other hand is a Jewish district where Jews built their lives around. This the place where Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and restaurants are located. It's like a Chinatown of the Jewish community - Jewishtown? It was my first time having a Jewish meal too - the cholent. It was also the first time we were sure we wouldn't be served pork since stepping into Poland.

Synagogue

Fiona's perspective of this trip can be found here.