Poland was pretty awesome, I have to say. I’ll let Marisa talk about the more emotional aspects of our trip to the country and focus more on our experience in the city of Krakow itself. While it has a lot of the classic ‘European’ traits like really old buildings, large market squares, and light rail, it also feels a little different. I think a large part of it is hearing Polish everywhere. This was the first time I’ve been somewhere that primarily spoke a Slavic language. They don’t use the Cyrillic alphabet but Polish sounds very much like Russian. Also, it feels a bit more beat down than the other cities. The walls of the buildings are completely covered in graffiti, which is something that we’ve really only encountered in the ‘rougher’ parts of cities. In Krakow, it’s just everywhere. It’s mostly tagging and very little graphics, unlike Vienna for example, where both sides of the canal are completely covered in huge pieces of street art.

Besides the graffiti, which really wasn’t that big of a deal (since it’s everywhere and something that is everywhere kind of becomes nothing), the most notable thing about Krakow was the large amount of restaurants we found that specifically catered to vegetarians. I think there were at least half a dozen in the downtown area, though we only visited three. They were Cafe Mylneh, Momo, and Green Day. Momo is actually a vegan place and did a kind of mix-and-match thing where you could choose from 10 or so different dishes. Green Day is a little self-service cafe place where you could get different pastas and whatnot. Cafe Mylneh is attached to a bed and breakfast of the same name and had some really good breakfast options (first time I had a plate of cheeses, bread, and fruit, second time was pancakes with sweet cream cheese). We were surprised to find vegetarian stuff so easily in Poland. It seemed from a distance like there would be a strong tendency for Polish food to revolve around meat, but that turned out to be completely inaccurate.

Why are there so many vegetarian places, you might ask? I can’t really say, but it did seem appropriate considering the youth that we saw walking around town and eating in the establishments. I’m willing to bet that Poland has an active underground/youth/whatever culture, a product of a communist economy that was then treated with ‘shock doctrine’ therapy. Vegetarian restaurants seem like they would fit right in. Though now that I think about it, pierogis are pretty vegetarian-friendly, aren’t they? At least these were.

And you know what? They were amazing.

Since it’s almost impossible for me to look back on our brief time in Poland without thinking about World War II, I have to mention something I learned while I was there. The nazis were treating Poland as a laboratory for their ultimate plans for Europe. This included the displacement of Polish families from their homes by German families, the extermination of the Jews and other unwanted peoples, the ‘Germanification’ of Polish culture by destroying monuments and limiting access to education. These were all being tested by the nazis on the Poles. They planned to expand them across Europe. Can you imagine ghettos in Paris, concentration camps in England? When the nazis said they were building a master race, they were not fucking around. They wanted to put their boots on the throat of the entire world. It was very sobering to see the impact of their plans on the Polish people. I don’t know if the nazis could have pulled it off, but it’s really scary to think what Europe would have looked like today if they had.

That being said, I found a lot of beauty in Poland. Here are some pics from our time in and around Krakow. I have a couple dozen more that I would like to share (and probably will, someday) but these are enough for now.

 

Another typical Krakow street.

Scene from the Krakow ghetto at the Shindler Factory musem.