Krakow, Poland

Random but every time I hear Krakow, I always think of this cartoon...

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I'm not much of a history buff, I'm sure my past high school socials teachers can attest to that, but one area I was always interested in was World War II. Maybe it's because it hits closer to home. I remember hearing lots of stories from my parents and grandparents about the experiences my grandparents had in the war, and it always made me proud to be Canadian because if it weren't for the Canadians liberating Holland when they did, most of my family would have died and I probably would not have existed. This brings me to the next destination on my journey around Europe - Krakow, Poland.

Fountain in the Main Square

I have always wanted to see the Auschwitz concentration camp. It has always intrigued me, and I think it's a valuable part of world history to remember. Another reason I wanted to go to Poland was to complete the Europe music tour I went on in high school on my own terms, in the country of my favorite classical musician - Chopin. While planning the trip, we decided to eliminate Chopin's birthplace, Warsaw, because it is quite far out of the way and would have taken up a couple extra days that we just didn't have. So, we decided to stick with Krakow. We didn't know very much about the city itself, aside from the fact that Auschwitz is not far from it, so we went in without clear direction of what we wanted to do. We discovered a free walking tour of the city run mostly by local university students, which was a great way to see the city. A lot of major European cities have free tours like this. (Free as in by donation)

Main Market Square

We spent our first day exploring the city. We arrived early in the morning after an overnight train that was super cramped and a little cold, and very old, so we were a little tired, but after a nice shower and some breakfast we were ready to explore. The downside? After our free walking tour it started pouring outside. Being from Vancouver we are very used to rain. But this was rain like I had never seen before. Torrential downpour. Not to mention thunder and lightning. We ran for cover with the locals in whatever buildings we could.  There were even these guys dressed as beer steins, probably promoting a pub, who ran down the street looking for shelter. This might not be funny to anyone else, but having the visual remembered in my mind is actually making me laugh out loud.

The next day we decided to go take a tour to see Auschwitz and Birkenau Concentration camps. I was going to talk more about that in this post, but it's getting long, so I'll cover that in the next one.

Tower from the old medieval city wall 

On our last day in Krakow, we took another free walking tour of the old Jewish quarter. There are very few Jews still living in the city after WWII, but the old synagogue, school, and the Jewish ghetto are evidence of the large population that was there before. We went to Schindler's factory, from the movie Schindler's list. It has been turned into a museum about the whole city of Krakow during WWII and it's a super unique museum. I'm not usually a fan of museums, but this one was pretty sweet. Well done.

Our next stop was Budapest, Hungary, only a 6 hour train ride away.