Krakow, Auschwitz

As Eric drove away leaving behind a cloud of choking grey exhaust fumes we found ourselves at the Grunwald monument, which is a statue to commemorate a famous Polish victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410. It was erected five hundred years later in 1910 but predictably destroyed in 1939 by the Nazi’s who wanted to stamp out Polish nationalism and went about doing so through acts of mindless vandalism such as this. Thankfully Krakow didn’t hang around quite so long to rebuild it, they didn’t leave it another five hundred years but promptly put it back in place in 1975.

We now had some time to spare before the others returned from their visit to Auschwitz so we walked into the market square which was now bathed in gentle central European mid March sunshine and found a café with pavement tables and a good vantage point to be able to see what was going on. As the horse drawn carriages jangled by and the place filled up with tourists I wondered how they were getting on at the concentration camp tour and I began to recollect our own visit there in 2006.

I hadn’t been quite sure what to expect at Auschwitz and I confess to having been a little apprehensive at the beginning of the tour especially when a cold wind seemed to blow across our faces at the very moment we passed through the infamous gates of the camp.




At this place and near-by Birkenau, one million, six hundred thousand people were killed as part of the Nazi’s ‘final solution’ including one million Jews, seventy-five thousand Poles and twenty-five thousand gypsies. When the camp was at its most ruthlessly efficient they slaughtered four hundred and fifty-eight thousand Hungarian Jews in just three months. That is slightly over five thousand people a day and for any sane person totally impossible to imagine.

Amongst the exhibits were whole rooms of empty Zyclon B canisters, seven tonnes of human hair from an estimated one hundred and fifty thousand people and part of a grim recycling operation to process it into army uniforms. In others there were spectacles, pots and pans, prosthetic limbs, suitcases with return addresses optimistically scrawled on them for identification purposes and most moving of all a display of children’s clothes and possessions.

We saw the death wall where an unknown number of people were murdered and the prison cells that were positively medieval in their cruelty; the starvation cell, the suffocation cell and the standing in a very confined space with others cell; and there was a display of photographs of the prisoners which in each case showed the dates of admission and then of death, on average only three short months.

Finally we passed through the first gas chamber and crematorium where seven hundred people at a time were gassed to death and this was a horrible place, grey, grim and cold. For me the shocking fact was that all of this took place less than ten years before I was born and although there is still unpleasantness around the World my thoughts at that time were how lucky we have been to live a happy life. I was bought up on tales of the war told to me by my dad, but these were always gallant tales about impossibly brave paratroopers and square jawed commandos, about fearless desert rats and valiant fighter pilots, about courageous heroes and stiff upper lips, about medals and honours; I am certain that he never really understood what the war was like in the east; brutal and nasty, hateful and with indescribable suffering.

I had thought it important to visit the place and I was glad that I did and I hoped that the others would agree with me when they returned.

After our break we walked again through the market place and down some previously unexplored streets, stopped for a Pizza and looked around an impressive church, the Basilica of the Holy Trinity Dominican Order. Then back to Kazimierz and the Hotel Ester where Kim had a sleep and I sat in the sunshine and waited for Micky to call to tell me they were back. As it turned out they were already in the Crocodile but just about to leave in search of a pizza for themselves. This took some doing and we trawled around the streets examining menus without the Italian favourite and only unacceptable alternatives, so without success we just kept walking until finally in Kazimierz Square we found a pizza parlour and the day was saved!

Later we reassembled at the Crocodile for pre-dinner drinks and assessed our options. We certainly weren’t going back to the Casablanca next door but Kim had spotted a likely place close by so we agreed with her suggestion and walked the short distance to the Honey Pub just off the square. Inside we were allocated a table in a down stairs cellar and we had a very enjoyable evening with plenty of wine, excellent food and prompt service.

Krakow, The Old Town and Castle

After lunch and with the sunshine getting the upper hand over the clouds we walked around the square and past the grand St Mary’s Church which has a tower where on the hour a bugle call sounds out. We weren’t sure if there was a real bugler at the top providing the music or whether it was just a recording but there is a legend connected with this tune, which ends unexpectedly in the middle. The story says that it was played by a guard during the Tatars’ invasion in the thirteenth century, who used it to warn citizens of an attack. He was shot in mid tune and since that day the melody breaks off just at the moment he died and then starts again a few seconds later when someone else picked up his bugle and carried on in his place.

Suffering invasion hasn’t been unusual for Poland, which has had an unlucky history of entertaining uninvited guests. This is especially true of the last two hundred years because it has had the misfortune to sit between the two super powers of Germany in the west and Russia in the east, both bursting with testosterone and taking it in turns to beat the crap out of their unfortunate neighbour and the legacy of all of this aggression is quite plain to see.

Before this, the sixteenth century was Krakow’s golden age when it became established as a European centre of science, culture and the arts. This didn’t last long however and in the seventeenth century there was a return to troubled times and after being invaded in turn by Russia, Prussia, Austria, Transylvania, Sweden, and France, it went through a phase of various forms of political control. These included being part of the Duchy of Warsaw, established by Napoleon, and becoming an ‘independent city’. However, for most of this time it fell under the sphere of influence of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, in the province of Galicia.

During the First World War, Józef Pilsudski set out to liberate Poland and the Treaty of Versailles established an independent sovereign Polish state for the first time in more than a hundred years. This only lasted until the Second World War, when Germany and the USSR partitioned the country, with German forces entering Krakow in September 1939. This was catastrophic for the city and during this time many academics were imprisoned and killed and historic relics and monuments were destroyed or looted although fortunately, because the Germans found it rather to their liking, the city itself escaped total destruction.



Krakow is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of course and we walked around the square and then through the University gardens towards the Royal Castle at Wawel Hill and then climbed the steep path to the main gate and went inside. We didn’t visit the state rooms or the museum on this occasion but we enjoyed the magnificent external views from within the courtyard and from outside the main castle walls and after that we walked around the outside of the Cathedral next door which is an interesting structure with a potpourri of architectural styles all belonging to different periods as towers, domes and statues as well as building extensions had been added randomly over the years.

From the top of the walls of the castle we could see the River Vistula looping its way around the city and providing a sort of protective cradle around the west and south. This is the longest and one of the most important rivers in Poland at a little over a thousand kilometres in length, the eleventh longest in Europe, it has it’s source in the Carpathian Mountains and then continues to flow over the vast Polish plains passing through several large cities along its way before finally draining into the Baltic Sea in the north.

From the castle we walked back to the busy intersection where more trams were clattering past and then we followed the road out of the city centre back to Kazimierz through pot holed streets and abandoned buildings all screaming out for renovation and repair. This place felt poor, the shops looked grateful for customers and the whole area had an authentic eastern 1960s European feel about it. I am not sure why that should be because Poland receives millions of Euros in European Union subsidy so I couldn’t help but wonder what they must spend it all on.

In the EU budget for 2007-11 it turns out that Poland receives a net benefit of sixty-five billion euros and that is the largest subsidy of all. To put that into some sort of perspective Greece is the second largest beneficiary at what seems in comparison a modest twenty-five billion. Poland it seems is doing rather nicely out of European Union membership and judging by the pace of improvement I for one am dubious that it is being spent all that wisely. For the record, eighteen out of twenty-seven member countries make a profit out of membership and the United Kingdom of course isn’t one of them because after Germany at eighty-six billion euros the UK makes a whopping contribution of fifty-seven billion. The others that make a loss on membership are France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Finland and, this is a surprise (well, it was to me), Cyprus.

After a drink at a pavement café where the girls wrapped themselves in blankets as the sun slipped away for the day we made our way back to the Crocodile, had a final drink of the afternoon and agreed that we should return to the Casablanca later so that Sue could have the salmon that she had missed last night. After a quick shower and a change we were (surprise, surprise) back in the Crocodile for pre dinner drinks although I noticed that on this occasion Sue, not wanting to end up in the same state as the previous evening, stuck sensibly to soft drinks.

If last night had been a success (except for Sue getting drunk that is) tonight was a dreadful disappointment. The food was fine, it’s just that an hour and a half is an awful long time to wait to be served. The owner explained that he had kitchen staffing problems but a free shot of a local cocktail and a 10% discount offer for tomorrow night didn’t really compensate, by the time it arrived Sue was too tired to eat the salmon and the rest of us ate our meals and left without leaving a tip. If you are going to eat at the Casablanca I suggest you take a chess set or a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with you to while away the time waiting for the food to be served.

Krakow, Wieliczka Salt Mine

It wasn’t all that long ago that people were sent to carry out hard labour in salt mines as a punishment. They probably still are. The Soviets especially liked compelling people to go deep underground (usually in Siberia) to mine the precious commodity but today things have changed and we were actually paying for the privilege.

The hotel clerk tried to persuade me to book a personal taxi tour but at forty zlotys more each (£10) this seemed an unnecessary expense so I booked the regular tour instead. This meant that to begin with there was a couple of shuttle bus journeys to reach the final rendezvous point across the river Vistula on the western side of the town where we separated into two groups, one for the Nazi concentration camp tour to Auschwitz and the other to the salt mines just a fifteen minute ride away on the outskirts of the city.

It was still a bit overcast as we drove the short distance but it was much warmer today and the sun was beginning to compete with the milky clouds by the time that we arrived at the Wieliczka Salt Mine where we left the bus and walked to the entrance to meet our guide for the tour.

The mine is in the suburb town of Wieliczka that is now part of the greater Krakow metropolitan area and since the thirteenth century has continuously produced table salt. It has been one of the world’s oldest operating mines producing salt for seven hundred years until commercial mining was discontinued in 1996 due to low salt prices and flooding problems followed by formal closure in 2007. It now produces just sixty tonnes of salt a day but this is only a by-product of routine maintenance operations.

Today the mine is a tourist attraction and about one million, two hundred thousand people visit every year. This might seem like a strange sort of place to visit but the attraction is a collection of statues and an entire cathedral that have been carved out of the rock salt by the miners over the years presumably during their tea breaks. So impressive are the sculptures that in 1978 the Wieliczka salt mine was placed on the original UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

After we were assigned an English speaking tour guide with a charming lilting voice the visit began with a long descent down a vertical shaft which meant negotiating over three hundred steps that zigzagged past fifty-four platforms down to the first level. From here we were about to enter a labyrinth of tunnels and interconnecting chambers that are over three hundred kilometers long and probably puzzling enough to confuse even the Minotaur of Greek legend.

We walked through disused and exhausted chambers, passing by whole forests of timber props and retaining walls and through heavy wooden doors to reach the first of the sights, the Copernicus Chamber, where for those of us who were expecting statues similar to white marble we were disappointed by the rather lack luster grey of the rock salt figure and the guide explained that this was due to clay impurities and other contamination in the rock.

Down in the mine we walked for three and a half kilometres through a succession of chambers, carved chapels and exhibits that explained the history and the operation. The route took us to a depth of three hundred and twenty-seven metres and down a precise total of eight hundred steps. Almost at the bottom was the star of the show where an entire cathedral complete with a statue of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, had been craved into one of the largest caverns where there was a light show accompanied by a rendition of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, which to all of us seemed to be a rather strange choice of music. After that there were a few remaining tunnels and chambers and the inevitable gift shops and then thankfully a lift to take us back to the surface, which was preferable to having to climb back up the eight hundred steps.

The sky was clearing nicely now and blue patches were rapidly replacing the unwelcome clouds and by the time the coach dropped us off on the edge of the old city centre the sun was shining and the temperature was rising. In the square we selected a restaurant for lunch based on the contents of the menu board outside but then managed to find ourselves in the wrong place. We really wanted the Krakow specialty of soup in a hollowed out bread bun so we had to do the embarrassing thing and leave as soon as we had realised the error and relocate ourselves in the correct place next door where we were served our preferred lunch where it was fun trying to anticipate how long it would be before the hot liquid would leak through the crust and end up spilling spectacularly into our laps. We wondered if we could attempt this at home but I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying it with a loaf of thin crust Mother’s Pride.

Krakow, The Crocodile Bar

It was nice inside and I for one could have stayed longer but we didn’t want the girls getting drunk so after a second beer we left and walked out into the street where it was cold but not unpleasant. The area around the hotel was quite run down and the buildings looked tired with peeling facades revealing crumbling brickwork and rotting timbers beneath. After the war, under the Polish Communist regime, Kazimierz deteriorated into a seedy and disagreeable area and it is only since the mid 1990s that the district has begun to rediscover its Jewish heritage and undergo reconstruction and regeneration to become one of the main tourist centres in Krakow.

We walked the short distance to the edge of the old city, the district of Wawel and the Royal Castle, where a busy intersection of main roads teemed with end of day activity as people were leaving work and taking the journey home. Overhead an intricate spider’s web of electric cables was providing power to the blue and cream trams that regularly rattled past on the steel tracks in the roads. Some of these were modern Bombardier flexi-trams that hummed rather than clanked but my favourites were certain future museum pieces from the 1950s and 60s that conjured up images of the old days of the Soviet Empire. I noticed that as passengers got on board they immediately began to look grey and tired and seemed to become a feature of the tram as though locked permanently into a 1960s Krakow time warp. The trams whirred and screeched and sounded bells to warn of their approach as they drew up and pulled off, setting down and picking up and clattering away again between the rows of neglected buildings and out towards the proletarian flats of the city suburbs.

We continued our walk into the historic centre of Krakov and circumnavigated the famous cloth hall, which was disappointingly undergoing major restoration and only partly open; then through temporary external market stalls selling souvenirs and genuine traditional Polish handicrafts and around the shops and restaurants that line one of Europe’s largest central market squares.

It was starting to get dark and by now it wasn’t very warm at all. The cold was draining the life out of my fingers and toes and I was beginning to regret the decision not to bring the gloves that were still in my unpacked bag in the hotel room. I was delighted therefore when the group decision was that we should return to Kazimierz and the Crocodile stopping on the way at a mini-market for alcohol for later. There weren’t many screw cap bottles of wine in the little shops so the choice was severely limited until Micky came up with the brilliant and practical suggestion to purchase a corkscrew, which significantly opened up our opportunities for selection.

The Crocodile was warm and cozy and busy too when we returned and settled down for a final drink before returning to the hotel to unpack and change ready for evening meal. This didn’t take long and within half an hour we were back in the seductive Crocodile bar for an aperitif before an evening meal in our chosen restaurant, the Casablanca next door. We only had one drink this time because we really didn’t want the girls getting drunk and soon we were at our table in a subterranean dining room and making choices between traditional Polish and contemporary Moroccan cuisine off of a very reasonably priced menu.

We made our selections and ordered some wine and then Sue suddenly went pale and lost her legs as the effect of the alcohol kicked in. I couldn’t understand this because although we hadn’t eaten since breakfast she had only had four pints of strong Polish Żywiec lager and that didn’t seem a lot and then I was reminded about the generous tot of complimentary Jameson Whiskey she had knocked back earlier at the airport in celebration of St Patrick’s day.

The remaining members of the tour party were thankfully unaffected and we drank some more and ate our meals, sharing Sue’s fish out between us so that it didn’t go to waste and then after an excellent first day in Krakow agreed on an early night ahead of a second busy day of sightseeing.

Krakow, Kazimierz

Located in the south of Poland Krakow is historically and culturally one of the most important cities in central Europe and although we had visited before in 2006 it seemed appropriate to go again and see what we might have missed the first time. Cheap £40 return Ryanair flights made the decision an easier one and in March 2010 we left Stansted airport for the two hour flight to Poland’s second city.

Krakow can suffer very severe winters and 2009/10 had been especially harsh with January night time temperatures regularly plummeting to as low as minus twenty-five degrees centigrade and in the days before our visit there seemed to be no let up in the grip of winter with snow falls a daily occurrence so we prepared ourselves for grey skies, short days and cold nights and packed appropriately. Our plans were disrupted however when the weather unexpectedly improved and the forecast promised sunshine and blue skies which meant a last minute reassessment of the contents of our suitcases.

For most of the flight we flew above the clouds of course but then as the pilot began the descent we could see the High Tatra mountains blanketed in snow, forests still trapped in the grip of a rigor mortis of frost and frozen lakes and rivers and we worried that we might have been a bit hasty when we abandoned the Winter thermals for short sleeved linen shirts.

It was overcast when the Boeing 737-800 landed at the John Paul II international airport at Balice and as it taxied to the terminal building Krakow didn’t look especially inviting as the bleak grey weather matched perfectly the austere infrastructure of the ex-military airport. An unnecessary shuttle bus transported us about one hundred metres to the arrivals hall, which was too small and overcrowded, dealing with more people than it was ever designed to and with an unhelpful lay out which meant a lot of pushing and shoving while waiting to be processed by the border police. This was an authentic Eastern European welcome with humourless officials carefully scrutinising the passports in an authoritarian way that seemed to take longer than was really necessary. My favourite border controls are in Greece where the police are generally completely disinterested and allow people through after an apathetic glimpse at the passport but the best place of all is Alicante in Spain where on both of my arrivals there, there was no one on duty at all.

Once outside we found a taxi and then took the fifteen kilometre ride into the city and to our hotel. It was an unattractive journey along roads ripped open into cavernous potholes by the savage winter frosts and which required huge amounts of concentration by the driver to negotiate around them. There was no sign of life in the fields, the grass was dull and lifeless after three months without sunshine and the stately beech trees at the sides of the road stood tall, black and motionless with no signs yet of any Spring activity.

After twenty minutes we reached the city and were dropped off at the Hotel Ester in the Jewish district of Kazimierz and after ten minutes to book in, find our rooms and leave our bags we were back on Ulica Szeroka where the only remains of three months of snow were stubborn piles of compacted ice in occasional dirty piles on the shady side of the dry street, which confirmed that the weather had changed and improved dramatically. It was still cold though so we did the most sensible thing and found a bar.

It was the Crocodile bar opposite the hotel and across the way from the house where Helena Rubinstein was born in 1870, which had a dark and utilitarian but welcoming interior with wooden tables and chairs and an ad-hoc assortment of decoration and the smell of lingering cigarette smoke. The Crocodile is inspired by, and named after a short story by Bruno Schulz who was a Polish writer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest Polish language prose stylists of the twentieth century. He was born to assimilated Jewish parents and spent his entire life in the city of Drohobycz in the province of Galicia. ‘The Street of Crocodiles’ was originally a short novel written by Schulz revealing his childhood memoirs and the bar had tried to capture the mood of the story with its dark corners and random ornamentation. Sadly he was murderered by a Nazi officer in 1942.