June 21^st, 2012

Day 33: Krakow, Poland

So, the overnight train is something I did not enjoy. Not one bit. It was hot, loud and uncomfortable. Saying all of that, at least I didn’t have to pay another night for a hostel or waste half a day on a train! I arrived with a few hours of interrupted sleep under my belt at around 7:30a.

One of the kids that I met on the train hadn’t booked a hostel yet so we walked together to find the one that I was staying at. I checked in an relaxed for a little while, helping myself to the free breakfast that the hostel laid out for everyone. I was planning to wait until I could officially check in and then take a quick nap so I could be ready to go for the day!

At 11am, a group of us went to the center of Old Town to join one of the free walking tours around the city. The tour guide was great and the sights were fantastic as well, all focusing around the royal family and royal Krakow through its history. We started in the main square, as mentioned, and then went through a park area to where some original structures from the city walls are still standing today. There was actually a movement to destroy the gate (that historically, every newly corinaed King paraded through) and the Barbakan that marked the corner of the walls, but a prominent citizen of the time convinced the government not to. How? He told them 1) knocking down these two structures would create more wind in the city which would lead to more sickness and 2) creating more wind would blow up the skirts of the women on their way to church. Interestingly enough, it was the second bit of reasoning that really convinced them to leave the historical monuments standing where they are today.

We then went back to the main square in Old Town where there was a statue of a famous Polish poet. He is situated in the middle of 4 statues that symbolize bravery, science, poetry and homeland. Bravery is the only one that has no correlation with the poet’s works and is said to just be a big joke that the artist of the statue was playing on the city. From the side view, he correlates the “bravery” statue with a very masculine way to describe “bravery” if you catch my drift…check on the statue on the left hand side in the bottom photo.. he's actually just holding a sword.

After this we headed up towards Wawel Castle, the royal palace. Our tour guide went over the history of the castle in terms of rules, occupations, disasters that have destroyed parts of the original castle and religious significance. There is one chapel on the grounds that has several different styles of architecture because every king throughout history wanted their own chapel in their own design.

Finally, we ended at the famous “dragon” statue. There is a myth about a dragon existing beneath the castle for many years that ruined the towns and ate virgins. One of the kings hosted a contest for someone to come in from the town to defeat the dragon and the legend goes that an older man laid out ‘breakfast’ for the dragon laden with poison that would activated by water. The dragon ate the breakfast and because it was spicy, wanted a drink, so rushed to the river to drink some water to soothe his throat. As the dragon continued to drink, the poison activated and he eventually exploded. An interesting legend, with a moral that is apparently: don’t drink too much.

After the tour, I went back to the hostel to check in and have a nap to recover from my lack of sleep the night before. The nap was nice (though hot), and I woke up to go grab some dinner at the restaurant downstairs with a kid from New Zealand that I met that morning. Dinner was good- grilled chicken with potatoes and salad. We ended up hanging out with a group of students who were just on Erasmus in Denmark for the rest of the night, going for a few drinks and watching the soccer match. I came back to the hostel at a decent time to get some rest and try to kick this cold!

Favorite part of the day: Spending some time in Old Town learning the history (the tumultuous history) of Krakow. It was nice to hear it from a different perspective (rather than just what American schools teach us).