Long trip to Poland, part II!

As previously promised, here's part 2 of our Poland trip... if you missed the first post, here's a link to the first post, so you can catch up! 

Next up was the city of Wrocław. Before we get any further, we need to talk for a moment about the Polish language. 

Let's look at the name of this city. Looks fairly straightforward right? "Roe-claw," right? Nope. To start out with, the Polish language is evidently related to German, because the Ws are pronounced V.

Also, that funny looking L (look - it's wearing a belt or something!) isn't pronounced as an L, but I'm honestly not sure how it's really pronounced.

Circling back to the city name (Wrocław), I'll try to spell it out, quasi-phonetically: Vro-suav. For what it's worth, the city name in German is Breslau.

Probably easiest to just pronounce it Roe-claw in your head - I won't tell anyone... but does this mean that we've all been butchering the pronunciation of "Warsaw" though? Is it supposed to be pronounced "vor-sahv?" I simply refuse to call it that.

We took a tram from the train station to (close to) the hotel, and walked the remaining couple of blocks. This was going to be a quick stop, but this felt like a pretty cool city. The city is filled with gnomes. Yeah, you read that right. To give you more information, I really need to step back a few decades...

Back in the old days, Poland was a communist country. Us old farts remember Lech Wałęsa, from the Solidarity movement and the fall of communism, right? Well, at about the same time, there was an underground revolutionary "group" (started in Wrocław) called the Orange Alternative. They specifically offered a way for people to oppose the authoritarian regime, using absurdity and nonsensical actions. The thought was to do things that the authorities wouldn't arrest them for, as arresting members of the opposition for silly demonstrations would open the police up to ridicule.

Other groups would paint anti-government slogans, and the regime would cover the slogans with splotches of paint... at which point, the Orange Alternative would go out and paint playful pictures of gnomes on the paint splotches.

This movement grew and grew, becoming one of the most important parts of the Solidarity movement. To blatantly copy a short part of Wikipedia:

The culmination point in the movement's history was the action organized on 1 June 1988, known as the "Revolution of Dwarves", during which more than 10 thousand people marched through the center of Wrocław wearing orange dwarf hats. The happenings usually terminated with the arrest of hundreds of participants, who did not manage to escape in time from the hands of the militia. At one point, the participants were even able to provoke the Communist militia to arrest 77 Santa Clauses or, on another occasion, anyone wearing anything orange.

Where I was going with this story though... to honor Wrocław's place in the fall of the communist regime, there are over 800 bronze gnomes scattered around the city, in various poses, and with various accoutrements. There's a gnome at an ATM, a gnome drinking a cup of coffee, there are a couple of them trying to push a granite ball that's about a foot taller than they are, right next to a chimney cake store there's a gnome eating a chimney cake... just whimsical statues doing normal, everyday things. The family photographer took a few pictures of those.

Whimsical gnome

Whimsical gnome(s) #s 2 and 3 -
unless you're counting the picture as the number of gnomes

The Chimney Cake Bakery... honestly, "Chimney Cakery" was RIGHT there!
You can see the gnome on the right hand side of the picture.

Said Chimney Cake Gnome

Whimsical gnome #3 or #4
(depending on how you're counting... you know what?
You just go ahead and count them however you want. I won't tell.)

Yet another whimsical gnome

Look - more whimsy!

We were pretty happy with the Christmas Markets in Wrocław... one thing that we noticed was that the markets in the last three cities we visited (Gdansk, Wrocław, & Krakow) were all run by the same company, Jarmark Božonarodzeniowy. All of the huts were the same styles, and all of the mugs have the name and logo of that company on them... Warsaw, though. Nope. Jarmark Božonarodzeniowy evidently hasn't made it into Warsaw yet.

As an aside, I've wondered for a while how the financial side of the Christmas Market industry works. I know that the huts can sometimes be used for other markets (Easter Markets, etc.), but when you see the size of some of the decorations that they set up specifically for Christmas Markets, there simply has to be a huge industry around just storing all of these decorations and huts for 11 (or so) months out of the year. Are there just warehouses across Europe that store all of this stuff outside of market season? Are the huts all broken down and flat packed, or are they stored in a huge warehouse like a sad little abandoned village? How do they move these things around? I've never (knowingly) seen a caravan of trucks carrying Christmas Market huts on the Autobahn. Welcome to my head. Exhausting, huh?!?

We were pretty impressed with the markets in Wrocław as well, and had fun wandering around. There were a few different market areas in the main portion of town - the wife had some Authentic Polish Kielbasa(TM), and I ended up with a new glühwein mug. We stopped at a little grocery store on the way back to the hotel, and I went upstairs. The family lush stopped in the bar for a couple of drinks (she got some sort of bonus for her Marriott Bonvoy level). 

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel, then headed back over to the main part of downtown to explore. On the way back to the hotel, the wife stopped at The City Museum of Wrocław. I'm guessing it showed her something about the history of Wrocław - you'll have to ask her about it.

A picture of the museum she stopped at, at different points in history 

We took the tram back over to the train station and I managed to avoid getting a ticket at this station.

The family travel agent booked us in a First Class compartment - a little separated section with 6 seats (there are whole train carriages full of these compartments). She'd reserved the two seats against the window, facing each other. This time though, we had to share the compartment with some other travelers. For the first part of the journey, the two guys in our compartment left and went to the dining car, coming back after a while. The guy on my side "fell asleep" when they returned to the compartment.

A few stops into our journey, two more people joined us, filling our compartment. It was a little challenging getting our luggage out of the compartment with 6 passengers in there, and one of those passengers still "asleep," not moving out of the way to make it easier for us. After we'd gotten into the little hallway, we could see that he had an empty fifth of vodka tucked down next to his leg, explaining why he didn't move when we and our luggage "accidentally" bumped into him a couple of times as we tried to exit the compartment.

Next up, beautiful Krakow. At this point in the post, go ahead and pronounce those w's however you'd like to. We took a taxi from the train station to the Grand Sheraton hotel. Now that I think of it, the family travel agent booked us into a bit nicer hotels this trip than usual. 

We walked over to the Old Town section, and explored the main Christmas Market, another Jarmark Božonarodzeniowy market. We wandered for a little while, then headed over toward another (smaller) craft-focused market a couple of blocks away. As we passed the center of the square (around the Krakow Cloth Hall, more about that later), the family travel agent encountered some sort of Flash Mob, or maybe it was just a DJ set up on the backside of the town square - not sure which. She went in that direction, and I headed on toward the craft fair, meeting up with her a few minutes later.

After exploring for a while, we wanted to get a little bite to eat, so.... get this, y'all... we stopped in a Bavarian Beer Hall.

Wife had a beer, I saw an intriguing "whiskey sour" on the menu. Only issue was that the menu said it was made with Scotch Whiskey, and I'm not a big fan of Scotch. I saw that they had some bourbons on the menu as well, so (it took me a few minutes) but I was able to get our waitress to put in an order for a whiskey sour made with bourbon... and lemme tell ya, it was one of the top 3 or 4 whiskey sours that I've had... in a Bavarian themed Beer Hall in Krakow, Poland, made with an American bourbon. Uneventful walk back to the hotel that night.

Next day... well, let's talk about szopki krakowskie for a moment, shall we? Evidently, this is a folk tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. They do these... they insist on calling them "nativity scenes," but I encountered a better description while researching this competition: "Something of a strange cross between a nativity scene, a gingerbread house, and a dollhouse, these unique handmade structures more resemble colourful, foil-covered castles or cathedrals than cribs"

A random example of a szopki krakowskie

Another random example

Turns out, Krakow is known for this particular display/competition; the first Thursday in December, townspeople carry their... szopki... through the town and they all meet up at the town square, where the DJ was set up the night before. 

The boss got a bit perturbed at me when I expressed a bit of disbelief that they call these things "nativity scenes," but take a look at that picture for yourselves, and tell me if you'd call this thing a "nativity scene." Or, go ahead and agree with her, and make me the bad guy - I just know what I saw, and I wouldn't call them "nativity scenes."

After the competition, the family cathedral junkie took a walk through St. Mary's Basilica, on the main square. There's evidently an altarpiece that's pretty famous in there.... it's called Altarpiece by Veit Stoss, and he carved it between 1477 and 1489. It's considered a national treasure of Poland, and in 1941, it was dismantled and looted by the Nazis. It was recovered in 1946, hidden in the basement of Nuremburg Castle. It was heavily restored back in Poland, and was put back into St. Mary's Basilica in 1956. The boss saw a nun opening the altarpiece while she was in there. 

Another interesting thing about St. Mary's. Every hour of every day, a trumpeter plays a "five note bugle call" from the windows atop St. Mary's, in the four cardinal directions. I put the part about five notes in quotes, because I heard it (a few times), and I distinctly heard more than five notes. That's their story though - who am I to cast doubt?!? Anyway... legend says that during the Mongol Invasion of Poland in 1241, a trumpeter was sounding the alarm about the incoming attackers, to tell the soldiers at the gates that the gates needed to be closed. The gates were closed in time, but unfortunately, the bugler took an arrow to the throat and died before he finished the full "close the gates" bugle call - and that's why the bugle call is cut off before the end.

The earliest written account of this story dates to a children's book from 1928. To be clear, the bugle call has been going on for hundreds of years, but the whole "Mongol story" part very well might be an embellishment. 

We wandered around the main square, walking through the Cloth Hall. During the 15th Century, Krakow was the capital of Poland, and was a center of international trade. Merchants would meet in the hall to trade their wares, and you'd frequently find a variety of exotic imports from the east – spices, silk, leather and wax – while Kraków itself exported textiles, lead, and salt from the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Now, it's a big hall filled with tourist shops. We didn't see anything that we couldn't live without.

The Cloth Hall

We walked over toward the train station, and stopped at a "famous" theater for coffee and some sort of cake. Evidently, this is the oldest "art cafe" in Krakow, and at some point in the past used to be a puppet theater. It was established in 1895, and the cake was pretty good, as I remember. The family travel agent had seen some video on YouTube with this place in it, so when we walked by while were looking for a place to have a snack, we simply HAD to stop.

The reason we were on our way to the train station is that we'd decided to check out a nearby town (again, the family Social Media Monster saw something online... ergo, we simply HAD to go!). We had purchased tickets to Katowice for that afternoon, but were a bit early for our train, so we figured out how to change the tickets for an earlier departure. We didn't have tickets to come back, simply because we didn't know how long we wanted to spend there. I made the argument that I didn't want to get stuck in this little city waiting all night for a return train to Krakow. According to the family travel agent, this wouldn't be an issue, as there were fairly regular trains all evening long. If you pay REALLY close attention later in the post, you'll get to circle back with us when we revisit this topic.

This was a monument outside the train station

Intriguing story about that monument, but I've gotta share some backstory first (Don't I always? The things I do for you folks!)

Ryszard Kukliński's father was a member of the Polish Resistance during WWII. he was captured by the Gestapo and died in a concentration camp. Kukliński joined the Polish People's Army, and eventually (in 1964) he started working in the espionage and counterintelligence operations section. Bear in mind, this was during the Cold War, and Poland was a member of the Warsaw Pact, a group of nations "aligned" with the USSR. 

In 1968, he started working on plans for the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was so disturbed by the invasion and the brutality of the Polish Government against demonstrators (in Poland) that he sent a letter to the US Embassy to Germany (in Bonn, West Germany) in which he explained that he was an army officer in a communist country and asked for a meeting.

He was concerned about the purely offensive nature of the invasion, as the numerical superiority of the Warsaw Pact would force NATO (and the United States) to resort to nuclear weapons to protect Czechoslovakia. He didn't want to see Poland turned into a nuclear wasteland.

For 9 years, he passed documents related to the USSR to the CIA. At the end, he, his wife, and their two sons were spirited out of the country right before martial law was declared, and they defected to the United States.

United States National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński described him as "the first Polish officer in NATO."

In the eyes of some Poles, he's a hero, aligned with the United States and NATO. To other Poles, he's a traitor who sold out his country. Regardless, they unveiled this monument in 2006. It's been vandalized several times since then.

Now that I've (looked up and) told you this story... while we were next to the monument, a middle aged gentleman passed us while the boss was getting ready to take the picture, and a random commuter (I'm guessing) walked past the monument on his way to the train station. As he passed, he said something under his breath and spat on the monument's placard. 

Honestly, we don't have as many pictures to attach to this entry and this was one of them, so I figured I'd share.

Katowice Christmas Market was run by Jarmark Božonarodzeniowy (like all proper Polish Christmas Markets), and was pretty well done. One thing that this market really leaned into was these dioramas with animatronic Christmas figures in them. There were probably 20 of these plexiglas cases scattered around the market, with parents dragging their kids up to them to make them listen to the little Christmas songs.

Throughout the Christmas Markets in Poland, we'd been seeing this cheese for sale, and we finally got a chance to try it. It's called Oscypek, and it's a smoked cheese, made with salted sheep's milk. Vaguely similar flavor to pecorino, quite tasty. We got some served in the traditional way, one with cranberries, and one with bacon. Don't tell anyone, but we dipped the bacon covered one in the cranberries as well. Quite tasty. I'm adding it to the langos list of things I've encountered at Christmas Markets that I'll be keeping an eye out for.

Yes, we all know they kinda do look like pierogis. Nope, just smoked cheese.

One thing about the glühwein mugs in Germany versus Poland (at the markets that actually have them - looking at YOU, Warsaw!): in Germany, you get your glühwein in mugs and pay a deposit ("pfand" in German) that you get back when/if you return the mugs. In Poland, the mugs are a separate purchase. I just found that interesting, the different mindset between the two countries.

One of the things that the boss wanted to purchase while we were in Poland was some authentic Polish pottery. She'd popped into a few pottery stores, but those felt too "touristy" for her, so she found one in Katowice that wasn't touristy at all. 

I have no idea how much she spent there, but she bought enough pottery that she didn't want to hassle with trying to get it home on the plane, and had them ship it for her. Yay, more pottery.

As we walked back to the station, she started looking for the next train back to Kraków on her Polish Train App.

There's a very fine line between predicting the future and visualizing something into existence. We had to wait for over an hour for the next train. I'll let you decide for yourself whether I was able to predict the future, or whether I actually visualized the delay into existence. I'm guessing that you can figure out for yourself which viewpoint each of us hold.

Eventually, we had an uneventful train ride back to Kraków and took an Uber to the hotel.

We had signed up for a guided tour of Wawel Castle - and I have no idea how I'm supposed to pronounce that one.

The inner courtyard of the castle, with netting to keep the ubiquitous pigeons out

Evidently (according to the Wiki machine), the castle (and Wawel Hill, upon which it sits) is "the most historically and culturally significant site in Poland." The castle dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries, but some of the stone buildings on the site can be traced back to around the year 970. The Historic Center of Krakow (including Wawel Castle) was among the first selected sites upon the creation of the UNESCO World Heritage Site list; on the inaugural list, 12 sites were selected for inclusion. The only other one from that initial list that you might have read about on this particular blog is Aachen Cathedral. There's one other site on the list that we might make it to while we live over here, but I'll wait to tell you about that one if it happens.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this tour was that it was called a "hidden treasures" tour, or something along those lines. It was a guided tour, and the guide skipped over lots of the normal stuff that you'd see, to focus on the more significant items in the collection, including Szczerbiec, the ceremonial sword that was used in the coronation of most of the Polish monarchs from 1320 to 1764. Other individuals and groups were touring the castle at the same time, and we'd completely ignore rooms that other tourists would stop in to jump to the more important artifacts. More focused tour than we normally take, and quite enjoyable.

There are some... concerns about the veracity of some of the claims about the origin of the sword. I think the most appropriate reaction to some of the stories I could come up with was actually spoken by Michael Palin: "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government... You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!"

Then again, I'm not Polish, so what do I know? 

The ceiling in this room had these faces inlaid in it.
Originally, there were 194 heads, but now there are only 30.
Some of the heads are of famous people (royalty, etc.), some are of unidentified people.

The castle was right around the corner from the hotel, so we came back to the room afterwards to relax for a little bit before our next tour, then took an Uber to our next location, Kazimierz, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Kazimierz is named after King Casimir III, the last king of the Piast Dynasty. He was very protective of Krakow's Jewish neighbors, and their town was renamed after him in 1335. Kazimierz was absorbed as a district within Kraków in 1795. 

On our walking tour, we visited the sites of "the" seven synagogues of Kazimierz. There were evidently quite a few other synagogues throughout the city, but but these were the seven most well known ones, and the ones that the tour guide specifically pointed out to us.

The last portion of the tour took us across the river to the Jewish Ghetto, where Jewish people were forced to live by the Nazis. Before the war, there were around 68,000 Jews living in Kraków. The Nazis forced the Kraków Jews to relocate into one small neighborhood, and classified them into two different categories: employable, and not employable. They were moved into different sections of the ghetto, depending on their usefulness to the regime. Jews were repeatedly reclassified, with those judged as being not as useful to the regime being shipped off to the (either work or death) camps.

By the end of the war, there were about 4,000 Jews remaining in Kraków.

There are currently more Jewish people in Panama than there are in Poland.

Now that we've broached the subject of Concentration Camps, I have to address this really briefly: We decided when we moved over here (this time) that we'd do one Concentration Camp, as we've heard the emotional toll can be quite high. We decided to do Auschwitz. Unfortunately, tours of Auschwitz were all booked during our visit, so we were unable to go... this trip. We've already decided that we'll be taking a long weekend and making a special trip back to Kraków.

The final stop on our tour was the Empty Chair Memorial at Zgody Square. Zgody Square was one of Kraków's main market squares before the war, and during the war, it marked the entrance to the Jewish Ghetto. That particular square is one of the locations where Jewish people were judged as to whether they were useful or not, and they frequently never went home after being lined up in that square. The square also turned into one of the dumping grounds for the personal effects and furniture cleared out of the (now abandoned) apartments of those shipped off to the camps.

Today, 70 empty chairs in the square face in the direction that the Jews walked to board the trains to Concentration Camps.

After the tour, we walked around the neighborhood looking for a place to eat. We first tried to get into a local Polish place, but didn't have reservations, so we had to move on. We ended up in an Italian place that was full of locals, and had a dinner that was quite good. They had a deal running where you could buy one drink (pretty much any kind), and get a second drink for 1 Zloty (about 27 cents)... so of course, the boss took advantage of that - hell, she was thinking of getting a second glass of my wine for an additional 27 cents (but she didn't).

After dinner, we took a tram back over to the main Christmas Market so I could get a Kraków mug. Next day, we took an Uber to the airport and flew back home - I talked the boss into taking an Uber from the airport, rather than dragging our luggage home on the metro.

We've got visitors in town for the next couple of weeks, so expect a couple more entries in the weeks coming up!