Back from a week’s holiday in Poland, specifically a week in Kraków, apart from an initial couple of days in the mountain town of Zakopane (also in the Małopolska region, but down near the Slovakian border). A whole new country for us, but I kind of suspected I’d love the place, especially Kraków.
I may have mentioned on here before that I have a soft spot for those grand central European cities that flourished around the early 19th century… y’know, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and so on. Kraków fits that particular bill perfectly; it’s a really fantastic place. Beautifully preserved old town, loads of cool cultural stuff, plenty of feeding and boozing options, friendly people, good public transport for easy day trips out of town. And still relatively cheap for us Brits.
We only did two trips out of town, but they were no-brainers from the start. Auschwitz is just totally chilling, but hugely interesting as a historical site. The salt mine at Wieliczka is perfectly nice, but disappointingly sanitised… lots of spectacular salt sculptures, but so little about the actual *mining* that went on for over 600 years. As for Zakopane, the hearty highland tourist theme (it’s Poland’s premier skiiing resort in the winter) is a tad overdone, making the town quite narrowly monocultural, but it’s a great base for exploring the well-marked hiking trails in the Tatra mountains.
So yeah, I’ve got the bug! I want to learn some more Polish (how can you not be charmed by a language that lumps so many consonants together?) and explore more of the country as soon as possible.
I did visit all those places you were now (Auschwitz,Kraków,Tatra mountains,Wieliczka and much more!!)…eastern europe is amazing..Prague unforgetable..I lived during 4 months in Czech Republic, and I realy miss it! Great place to be..
So did you have a sausage while you were in Krakau?
I’ve just been to Dresden for three days.
I don’t recall any sausages, but lots of pork steaks and fried potatoes. “Hearty” seems to be the best description of Polish cuisine :)