January 12, 2007

Cracovia - Yo-ho-ho, merry new year! (II)

Cracovia - Yo-ho-ho, merry new year! (II) magnify
Part II - Ze Cracou


The following days (27-8-9) me and Cristina visited Cracovia. For those who don't know she's my lovely girlfriend We caught a night train which looked slightly better that the rapid in Romania, but wasn't heated properly. Thank God it was a warm night. There were temperatures above 5 degrees almost all the 'winter'. Ionut waited for us at 6 am in the station in a memorable heroic act of defeating the morning sleep in a holiday. Well the battle was just half won because we all 'fell' soon after arriving at his and Ioana's residence in Krakow.
Krakow is a really nice historic city, less tourist crowded than Prague, kind of an Iasi situated in a better context. The whole center is surrounded by a park giving it a pleasant look. I think there was the biggest square I've ever seen, 200x200 sq meters. Other than that, the castle, of course with a view over the river (I guess this is repeating itself a bit everywhere) and a really nice inner yard(repeating again everywhere there's a castle in a way or the other), a church inside the yard (!!!) and everything you'd expect to find by now in a castle. Don't think I wasn't impressed by it or anything, it was really beaauuuutifull. It's just that old cities in Europe tend to look very much alike by my mind.

The food was also quite similar to the czech ones. I admit it tasted a bit better. We were in a really nice restaurant, half 'rustic' half really elegant right in front of the theater. Beer's twice the price as in Prague btw :p.

On the 28th there was Ioana's birthday, we went out with the trainees from Krakow to a club where they almost didn't let Cristina in because of id checking, I guess she didn't look 21 to them . Club was nice, typical house noize and kinda smokie. We got to know some of the people which was nice, for instance some indian guys which belonging to different casts had quite different upbringings which were clearly visible through their behaviour. They're even often discriminated among each other on this matter. Another fortunate event was the snow!! weee, it was the first 'serious' snow i've seen this winter, streets were all white and nice and at least that night it was really beautiful.

On our last day we visited the jewish quarters, the getto and Schindler's factory. For me it was quite emotional having known that all I've seen in the movie actually happened right before my eyes some 60years ago. The getto was looking very grim, all the buildings seemed to be left to crumble on purpose. The really cloudy, gloomy day also added to the effect after 2 days of bright sunshine.

The jewish quarter though had plenty of good looking buildings, fancy narrow alleys and synagogues. We also had the traditional kind of polish pizza, the zapekanka or something like that, cheese, mushrooms and spices on a loaf of toast bread with butter with salami or other kinds of toppings. Interesting stuff, good especially if hungry :)

For the drinks, one shouldn't miss the Zubrovka (Jubrovca), traditional polish vodka, very aromatic and with a herb inside :) The combination of that and apple syrup (Juberek) is totally irresistable to girls (or so I've herd) :p

We had a really good time in Kracow and i totaly recommend it to everyone :) especially if u have friends living there (unfortunatelly the Ions -Ionut+Ioana- ended their stay there).

So until they'll post their side of the story on our visit there, take my word for what i said was very close to the truth

1 comments:

Ovline said...

It's interesting reading your post about my adoptive city over a year after you visited it. It's seems that you really enjoyed it allot (the athmosphere, the cuisine and the drinks).The place where you ate is called Babcia Malina (which would me Grandma Raspberry), one of my favorites actuallly. I guess you went downstairs if you saw the elegant part, but upstairs is totally rustic. I didn't recognize the club from you description, though... :)