Polish for the weekend

(Warning: this is a long post)

Getting to Poland was an actual nightmare. We (Taylor, Hannah and myself) got on a night train headed to Kraków on Wednesday night. We had to transfer trains at another station in Czech Republic at 1:15 AM. Fine, good, whatever. We knew we wouldn’t get much sleep but a simple train transfer was something we could handle. We thought.

We found ourselves at the worlds smallest train station, with no open information desk, no employees, and no one that spoke English. The board listing train departures didn’t have anything matching the train we were supposed to be getting on, but there was another one headed for Kraków a little later so we figured we would just get on that. We also saw that it was delayed 10 minutes, and since it was freezing and dark outside we thought “we’ll just wait inside until the time it would normally have departed. Then we’ll have 10 minutes to get on the train and situated” …but the minute we walked outside, our train took off without us.

Unfortunately for us, there were no other trains headed to Kraków. Fortunately for us, a group of men told us (actually hand-signaled to us, since they spoke no English) to get on a random train, get off at the next stop, and grab a train to Kraków from there. So that’s what we did, and to sum it up: after jumping on a random train, getting fined for it, and Hannah throwing up in our train cart, we made it to our destination at 7 AM. Coincidentally we ended up on the same train as Lexi, Colin, Austin and Molly who we were meeting for the weekend, so we were conveniently able to get to our Airbnb all together and start our weekend in Poland.

Kraków

Day 1 in Kraków was exhausting because of our lack of sleep the night before, but we made the most of it. We went to breakfast at the Milkbar Tomasza. Who knew breakfast could be so cheap and so delicious at the same time. Then we spent the day wandering around, trying a lot of food (peanut butter lattes, caramel popcorn cupcakes, zapiekankas — open faced pizza/sandwiches that are a common street food in Poland, and more). The food was probably my favorite part about Poland and I have no shame in admitting that. Not only was it delicious, but it was easily the cheapest food I have come across in Europe thus far. We spent our day exploring cathedrals, interactive museums, Kraków’s Old Town, Saint Mary’s basilica, the Wawel castle, the Jewish quarters, and Cloth Hall which was a marketplace with the best souvenirs. Can’t say what I bought because I don’t want to give anything away for some people at home, BUT they were very cool. Thursday night was an early night, which was okay with everyone since we were headed to Auschwitz concentration camp the next morning.

Auschwitz. It’s something I never expected to see in real life. I’ve seen pictures, heard stories, watched documentaries.. but seeing it in person is a lot more authentic, and a lot more emotional. I know a lot of you are going to ask me about Auschwitz and how this experience was for me, so I apologize in advance for not giving a very good answer. It was hard to see so it’s hard to explain. Saying it was a “good” experience feels wrong. Saying it was interesting and emotional doesn’t do it justice. It made my stomach turn and made it hard to talk for a while, and I still can’t fully fathom what went on there. For lack of a better word, I am happy I got to see this huge piece of our world’s history. One thing I will mention that stuck with me is the Book of Names. There was a “book” (see below, it was much bigger than any book I’ve ever seen) that named 4.2 million Jews that were executed during the Holocaust. I don’t know why I got the idea to search, but I looked up my last name. I’ve never met anyone with the same last name as me before; the closest I’ve seen is “Haussmann” but there they were, 4 people with the last name “Housman” in this book of names. It wasn’t anything I expected to find, and was unsettling to say the least.

Touring Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau took up the majority of our day.

When we got back, Taylor Hannah and I found a sweet Polish street vendor selling 5 types of pierogies. Yes, we all tried one of each. Yes, we went back for more. Yes, they were among the best foods I’ve tried abroad. They were filled with combinations of spinach, potatoes, cheese, pork, basil, sun-dried tomatoes and who even knows what else. I could cry just thinking about it because I will probably never eat a pierogi as good as those for the rest of my life.

Once we joined back up with Colin, Austin, Lexi and Molly we headed out for dinner. Italian, because why not? But we had heard a rumor that Poland had the best Italian food around. It doesn’t make much sense but it definitely held true. Afterwards we headed to the House of Beer to get some drinks and enjoy the nightlife in Kraków, but we didn’t last too long before heading to back to our aAirbnb for the night.

 

Warsaw

Saturday morning we got up early and headed to the train station. We were headed to Warsaw for the night, a short 24 hour trip, and one that I’m very glad we took. After seeing both, I definitely prefer Warsaw to Kraków. The Old Town area was beautiful with narrow streets and old buildings that reminded me of Prague, but it was also a very lively city with a lot going on. Within our first hour in Warsaw we actually found ourselves stumbling into a protest that was taking place outside of our hostel.

Since we only had one day in Warsaw, we set out to make the most of it. We wandered around to find Old Town, the Royal Castle (that didn’t look anything like a castle to be honest) and a marketplace. Eventually we headed back to the hostel and hungout for a while before heading downstairs to the bar. The walls were covered top to bottom in bottle caps, and there must have been at least 50 beers on tap in this place. We played cards for a while (thanks for teaching me how to play euchre, Austin Lexi and Molly) and then headed out to sushi for dinner. From there we went straight to a shot bar. If anyone remembers me describing the shot bar I went to in Barcelona that involved marshmallows, fire and whipped cream, it was essentially the same thing. We tried our fair share of shots that included all of the above and with names varying from “girl scout” to “TNT” to “iScream” and everything in between. I think the most interesting one was the iScream, which was literally an ice cream cone that somehow incorporated alcohol. Looked delicious, tasted atrocious. We ended the night at a club called Bank, and danced until we were outshone by the locals.

Our morning consisted of being woken up by the children in our hostel, finding a bagel shop for breakfast (FINALLY), and being lectured by our taxi driver about how America was not a good place for “normal people” to live and that Poland was much better. Life.

Overall, Poland was great. The weather might not have been great but the food and Polish mojitos were delicious, the souvenirs are fun, everything is cheap and we were in good company so what more is there to ask for? Now I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of Lauren who comes to visit on Tuesday!