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Europe, March-April 1998 Krakow, Poland On the night train to Krakow we passed through Slovakia with much the same fanfare of PASSPORT CONTROL as when we went to Budapest. Only this time, we were closely questioned by the officer. Do you have any cash? No. Do you have any traveller's checks? No. Well, do you have any credit cards? Yes. He seemed relieved that we could somehow pay our way, but disappointed that we didn't have anything to bribe him with. Of course, I can now say that we lied to him. We're such rascals! This was the first of our planned hops, we decided that we didn't really need to stay in a hotel when we could just board the next overnighter to Prague and so-on, so our trip to Krakow was rather hurried. In one day we visited the Welizka Salt Mines, ran around Krakow and had a couple of really good meals. We contemplated going to Auchwitz-Birkenau but Casey decided that he didn't want to go alone and I absolutely cannot go there again. I highly recommend everyone going once in their lives, to remind themselves of what humans are capable of doing to themselves and each other, but I will never step foot in those places again. We started off the day by going to a milk-bar, recommended to us by a Fullbrighter in Budapest. There, we were pleasantly introduced a relic of the communist era. Milk-bars were concieved by the government to provide a nutritious, wholesome place where the proletariat could go out to eat. We found it largely to be true. Of course, we could not read polish, but upon the good advice of that wise scholar in Budapest, we were instructed to order the last line of perogis. We ordered two bowls, but not being sure if that was going to be enough, we also pointed to the egg salad sandwich rolls that some other patrons had ordered and got four of those as well. The egg salad was very oniony, but being famished travellers, we just dug in. Our perogis arrived, to our delight, just as we had envisioned, accompanied with a jug of cream and a bowl of sugar. We had ordered strawberry perogis! The dough wrapping was thin, but with a nice chewiness. The strawberries inside were unadulterated and very fragrant with a bit of tartness. The cream was cold and the sugar was coarse grained and I was in heaven! I have never had the like again, sadly, but I vow to learn to make good perogi dough. Our next stop was the salt-mines. They did not have an English tour within our time-frame, so we went on a French tour, with me as translator. It didn't really matter since the pamphlet we received was very informative and I had already taken the tour the previous trip. The salt-mines were very very old and Nicolae Copernicus had once visited them. There were all sorts of beautiful statues around, carved in salt. The very oldest statues had melted from the moisture in the air, but we walked through various beautiful cathedrals all carved from salt, with great chandeliers, also made of salt crystals. The most interesting was an area underground with a giant salt lake and a pretty gazebo. Apparently in the 1800's it was a popular boating area and as such with it's share of mishaps, but thankfully no drownings because the water is so salty, everyone floats, like in the Dead Sea.
Upon our return from the mines, we walked around the town, looking in at the leather market which really sells more amber and silver. We went up the church tower and took a picture with the trumpeter who plays the legendary alert that saved the town of Krakow way back when. The story was that a guard spotted invaders and sounded the alarm, but mid-way through the signal, the guard was shot and killed by an enemy arrow. Thus today the trumpeter in the tower signals every hour, but only the segment sounded by the heroic guard of long ago. We went up the hill to the castle and explored the castle grounds, only to come down behind it to my favorite restaurant in Krakow. Unbeknownst to me, the quaint little restaurant is well-known in Poland, having won a national award for preserving cultural heritage. The restaurant was modeled after a farmhouse and many of the tables were constructed from what you might find in a real farmhouse. One table was a horsecarriage, another was a sleigh, and yet another a sleigh bed cut in half and turned into a booth. When you sat down, they brought you a bread board with good, dense country bread and two mugs. One mug was filled wtih garlicky soft farmer cheese, the other with herbed lard. Both were good and we both had quite a bit of bread smeared with alternately cheese and lard. The salt at the restaurant came from the mines we had visited and was served rough, so it was grey and a bit gritty. I can't remember what I had, but the ambience was great, the food was good, and the band was Polish folksy. After dinner, we were on another train to Prague.
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