Kraków

June 12-14

After our brief visit to Slovakia and another few hours on the bus, we arrived in Krakow, Poland. There are some cities that when we visit, within just a few minutes of being there, we know we’re going to like it. That’s what happened when we arrived in Krakow. The walk to our hotel was through a tunnel that could have been shady, but it chose not to be. Then once we got out of the tunnel, we happened upon a food truck park. Perfect! So we got checked in, dropped off our bags and hurried back to the food trucks. It was already 9pm and we didn’t want to miss it.

We got there with just an hour left on the night and it was awesome. We had Georgian street food for dinner. This was the place… just envision it being open and that’s what it looked like.

We asked the guys at the truck if they were from Georgia (country not state). Nope. I don’t know why we assumed those guys were from Georgia but assumed the people at the Cuban place were not from Cuba (or Miami). Similarly, the West Palm Beach food truck people (I think burgers or something) were definitely not from California.

We also grabbed a few beers from the beer truck…

…and then relaxed in some beach chairs for a bit. This is what Georgian street food looks like. It was delicious.

The next morning we wandered around Old Town. We saw some more of the same that we’ve been seeing the past couple of weeks in European cities: government buildings, Churches, museums.

But the thing that is really neat about Kraków is that there a park that runs around the Old Town – just a small strip of park all the way around it in a circle.

That night, we had dinner at Pod Aniolami which translates to Under the Angels. The restaurant is cool because it sits on Gothic cellars.

This is also where we got our first pierogi from Poland. They were significantly better than the ones we ate at the pierogi festival in Chicago. Just found out that pierogi is the plural form. Singular is pieróg. The more you know.

Mmmmmm meat on fire…

After dinner we hurried over to a bar called Cocktails and Songs. I had read online that they were doing trivia. When we got there, we were assigned to a team with a guy from Northern Ireland and a guy from some other country. Now normally I would say that if I don’t remember where they are from. But I’m not sure that he knows where he is from. One of the first trivia questions was about New Zealand and he said “I’m from there”. But then he said he was Croatian. Then later in the evening, it was Australia. I guess it’s complicated?

What I do know is that we killed it. It was truly a joint effort but our team creamed the competition. This is the first time I’ve ever been on a winning trivia team in my life. Plus, it was mostly locals in the room who play every week. Even our two teammates were locals, kinda. Again, it’s complicated.

After trivia, the bar did karaoke. Who am I to complain? I had been wanting to go to karaoke for a few weeks now.

Michael and I sang The Beatles, “We Can Work it Out” and then I sang Todo, “Africa”, and Janis Joplin, “Mercedes Benz”. To be fair, Michael did join me for just a second on Todo. Also, apparently people love Janis because it was a hit.

These are our two teammates doing karaoke.

Here is the girl who liked us because we have straight teeth.

We had a lot of fun.

It did, however, make runs the next morning really, really, really hard. But with an overnight bus ahead of us, it was necessary to get moving!

For our last day in Kraków, we headed a bit out of town to see Schindler’s factory. Most of you should know Oskar Schindler from the Spielberg movie, Schindler’s List. Well, we got to see his factory. They have turned it into a museum that shows what Kraków was like under Nazi occupation from 1939-1945.

After having seen a lot about Nazi occupations and concentration camps lately, we were both hoping it would talk more about Schindler, himself. But you take what you can get.

I haven’t seen the movie in years, so we needed a bit of a refresher on the specifics of Oskar Schindler. He was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party who is credited with saving the lives of 1200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamel factory. They made pots and then covered them in enamel.

Also, they expanded to make ammunitions during the war. Originally, Schindler was a war opportunist, but when he saw the atrocities occurring he began to bribe German officers to keep his employees from being sent to concentration camps. In 1942 the Kraków Ghetto was emptied. All Jews were sent to a nearby concentration camp. One such Jew, Mietek Pemper, worked in the office of the head of that concentration camp. He reached out to Schindler with information regarding the fact that the Germans were going to close down his factory. Pemper knew this because he had access to all German communications that came through his boss’s office. This closure meant that Schindler’s workers would be sent to Auschwitz. So Schindler changed from making enamelware to anti-tank grenades.

Pemper helped develop the famous “Schindler’s List” to save as many Jewish workers as possible. He compiled and typed the list of over 1,000 Jewish inmates deemed “decisive for the Nazi war effort”. Those on the list, including Pemper himself, were transferred to Schindler’s new grenade factory located in Czechoslovakia in October 1944 and were ultimately saved from Auschwitz.

After the war Schindler was completely bankrupt from all the bribes he had to pay to save these people. He was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion.

Schindler’s desk:

It was a really nice way to end our time in Kraków. Hopefully we will be back to this city. It is a really cool city.