3 January - 13 January





"Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection."

- Lawrence Durrell



Me and Paul's first night in Krakow started off horribly: the train arrived one-and-a-half hours' late, the weather was wet and miserable, and when we got to our flat we couldn't figure out if we were at the right place coz there was nobody there waiting for us. We bought a phone card to try to contact the landlord, couldn't get it to work, then went to an Internet cafe to send him an e-mail instead, before signing ourselves in at a hostel just a few metres down the road.

Having done so, we bought some piorogi for dinner at a cheap but very tasty little eatery, and made our way back to the Internet cafe to see if Jakub had replied to our e-mail. When Paul logged onto MSN, he noticed that our old acquaintance Elisabet was online. I hadn't even thought of adding her to my MSN but I did so then, and we ended up talking until 2 AM that morning (4 AM in Finland). When we finally left the Internet cafe, snow started pouring down from the sky onto the wet, silent streets below, turning the city into the Winter Wonderland that I'd envisaged Krakow to be. And all of a sudden, I felt so happy, so content, that all of our troubles that night simply melted away. And I knew that something special had just begun, not only by our arriving in what I knew would become my favourite city in Europe, but in terms of me and Elisabet, who up until then I'd assumed was lost to the past.


*     *     *     *     *


It's 2 AM in Krakow
And the streets are quiet and still;
Snow is falling from the sky
To decorate the chill;
And though I've seen it fall before,
It still gives me a thrill.

And as we walk in knowing silence
Back to our warm flat,
I let my thoughts drift back towards
Our surreal two-hour chat;
I smile discreetly and tell myself,
'Yes, I'm happy with that.'

The Finnish girl I'd left behind
Was in my life once more,
And now my heart was happy where
Before it was so sore;
A poor start to our Krakow stay
Turned out to be not poor.



Dear everyone!


I'd like to start off by saying that Krakow is without a doubt the most beautiful city I've ever seen: better than Vienna, better than Paris, better than anywhere I've been to so far. Merely wandering around its streets is an absolute pleasure; every street and laneway you turn into seems prettier than the last, and often you're left just standing there, open-mouthed, trying to take in a scene that looks like it's out of another century. There's really no such thing as "sight-seeing" in Krakow, because every time we step outside of our apartment, "sight-seeing" automatically begins. The thing is that almost every street here, no matter how obscure or insignificant, has something to offer: one moment you're passing by the Royal Castle, then past an eleventh-century church, then through the Old Town gates, and before you know it you're at the famous Market Square, an absolutely magical place that looks especially enchanting at night, when the Renaissance Cloth Hall and St Mary's Church are lit up in all their magnificence.

Basically, the city has a historical authenticity that is extremely rare these days even in Europe, and yet, despite its Old World charm, Krakow also manages to cater perfectly for the modern tourist: everywhere, and I do mean EVERYWHERE, there are bars, pubs, clubs and eateries, all catering for the city's vast student population (Krakow has an unusual abundance of young people, due to it having the Jagellonian University, Poland's biggest university and the second-oldest in Europe). Last night, me and Paul went out to a bar called the Black Gallery, set in the bowels of an old brick cellar, and got talking to a Polish student named Joasia and her boyfriend (also called Pawel, incidentally). We spent a couple of hours chatting with them, comparing Australian and Polish drinking cultures while indulging in some drinking culture ourselves. When it was time to go, they decided to have a party at their flat on Friday, to which me and Paul were promptly invited. It seems the fun for us here is just beginning.... :)

At the same time, this whole trip has begun to take on a sense of urgency that's difficult to explain. In Wroclaw, I began to experience what I guess you could call a "mid-trip crisis": I realized that we'd just past our halfway point and had only a month left in this amazing part of the world known as central Europe. Seeing Krakow (and Krakow girls) in all their beauty has only intensified this feeling; a feeling which I realized, while re-reading Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas last night, is really a desire to capture the European Dream. You've all heard of the "American Dream", I'm sure, and I guess what this whole trip has been about is attaining the "European Dream". The problem is that, like Raoul Duke in Fear & Loathing, I don't really know what this dream IS: it's an abstract thing which I don't think I can DISCOVER, but which can only come to me when the moment is right (if ever). I mean, I SORT of know what I mean when I'm talking about the "European Dream": ultimately I guess it's a lifestyle; a world of coffee and cakes, of snow-covered streets, of age-old traditions and sophisticated, blue-eyed girls. Yet it's also something more, something deeper.... I dunno, maybe it's just my European roots telling me that I'm at home. I suppose it's also a product of various people - from Barek in Warsaw to my dziadek in Wroclaw - telling me that I should stay here in Europe, that I belong here, that I should get married here, etc etc. I don't know..... At any rate, this e-mail probably isn't the right place to reflect on all of this, so I'll shut up for the moment.

To get back to what I was saying, Krakow is a city jam-packed with priceless culture and antiquity. There's not a Communist block or edifice in sight: the city is unique in Poland in that its architecture is purely pre-war. Its history is also purely Polish: the "problem" (if you want to call it that) with Wroclaw is that it has a very mixed history, having experienced Czech, Polish, Austrian and German occupation throughout different centuries, with the result that it can't claim to be an authentically "Polish" city (most of the prewar architecture there is actually German-built, not Polish-built). The vast majority of inhabitants in Wroclaw (including my own family) are actually from Lwow, having been deported to Wroclaw after WW2, when Lwow became part of the Soviet Union (now Ukraine) - which means that even the population there is, in a sense, "artificial". Krakow however is as Polish as they come, and indeed used to be Poland's capital city until 1596.

Anyway, I have many e-mails I need to reply to so I guess I better wrap this up - otherwise I'll be sitting here for the rest of the afternoon, breathing in cigarette smoke and listening to the Village People. I hope you're all enjoying the holidays back in Australia, burning yourselves in the sun while Paul and I get paler and paler....


Until next time!


Mateusz



Hello,


Just thought I'd write a quick e-mail to say that me & Paul are in Krakow safe & sound, and that it's absolutely beautiful here. There are also plenty of Deutschbanks around, so I shouldn't have to pay any more fees - can you just check that the last two withdrawals I've made have been free? And yes, I remember about getting Matylda a present - I wandered around the Sukiennice earlier today to buy some jewellery, but nothing really caught my eye. Hopefully I'll come across something special later, but it might have to wait until Prague.... As for snow, there hasn't really been any yet but I'm keeping my fingers crossed every day!


Mateusz



"A traveller without observation is a bird without wings."


- Moslih Eddin Saadi


*     *     *     *     *


I was going to send out some photos from our sight-seeing in Krakow today, but the first Internet cafe we went to didn't have a USB port. Now, having eaten dinner, we dragged our sorry, bloated arses to THIS Internet cafe, only to find out that all the photos I took have come out rather poorly: the weather was dark and miserable today, and all the buildings have come out as silhouttes. Anyway, I'll take a better series of photos tomorrow and send them out then, but since we're here, I may as well make a few observations about this fascinating country called Polska....


First, Polish people seem to be born with an inherent love of silliness (which probably explains a lot of my own behaviour). On the way here for example, we passed three gorale (Polish folk people, dressed in traditional costumes) singing and playing instruments - which comes as no surprise, even though gorale usually reside in the mountains, not in the middle of market squares. However, what caught our eyes was an old guy - dressed in a shabby grey suit and Lenin cap - standing in front of them, shouting out bits of words and twirling around like a madman, apparently dancing to the music. Next to him stood a man with an umbrella trying to calm him down, but the old man would have none of it, and only raised his voice to maximum and danced with still greater fury, til I was convinced he'd fall over and break his leg. He kept up this amazing act for a good twenty minutes, during which me and Paul just stood there laughing (Paul even got his camera out for some quick footage), then, when the musicians took a break, he hobbled over to one of the market stalls and bought himself a warm beer (yes, they drink warm beer here, can you believe it!)

There are many more examples of public randomness that I could cite, but I don't want to stay here too long - except to mention one guy at a party in Wroclaw who got so drunk that he couldn't find his glass, so he found a tin of peanuts instead, opened it, ate a handful then tipped the rest into an ashtray, THEN filled the now-empty tin with some horrible home-made wine. He then proceeded to drink the wine from this tin for about fifteen minutes, before cutting his lip on the metal rim, asking himself how it happened, then falling asleep on the table with his hair in the peanut-filled ashtray. Lol.

The second thing is, Poland is definitely NOT a country you'd want to live in if you're a vegetarian (Josh, Matylda and Elisabet take note!), or if you're trying to lose weight (not brave enough to name anyone here). Tonight, me and Paul made the mistake of going to a Polish restaraunt called Chlopskie Jadlo (basically, "Manly Food"), and what the Poles call "manly" is what most people would call "fit for pigs". The (free) entree consisted of slices of bread served with lard: yes, you're supposed to spread the lard (also known as "fat") on the bread and eat it. As if this isn't repulsive enough to a tourist's cholestoral-conscious sensibilities (not that I give a shit, personally), they give you an entire CUP of this stuff to spread on the bread. After me and Paul consumed our slices of bread 'n' lard (Paul ate his rather gingerly, I must say), we both ordered some pork mains and two small beers. The waiter promptly came back with two very LARGE beers, and ten minutes later dumped down our meals: gigantic slabs of pork accompanied by a few roast potatoes, swimming in butter and oil. I laughed when I saw Paul's reaction to the meal placed in front of him: "It's a bit fatty" he explained nervously, staring at the pork in front of him like it was still grunting.

Generally though, the food in Poland has been delicious, and one of the few words that Paul has come to memorize - thanks to it being repeated over and over again, when we were in Wroclaw and Gdansk - is "jedz" ("eat"). Whenever we sat down to eat breakfast in Wroclaw, my grandma would come over pretty much every two minutes and, regardless of how much I'd stuffed into my mouth, or how much I'd loaded onto my plate, she'd crinkle her forehead with worry and plead for me to "Eat! Eat!", as if I'd just been liberated from a concentration camp.

One weird thing about Poland is that you have to pay to use public toilets. Naturally, this struck me as a pain in the arse at first: it's not the most convenient thing, having to dig into your pockets to find coins while your bladder's screaming at you to Let It Flow - but I've gradually come over to supporting this system, as I haven't yet come across a single unclean toilet (plus it's always funny, seeing some guy hopping from one leg to another while frantically searching for some groszy). The more annoying thing is using a toilet in a restaraunt: these are always free (provided you're eating at the establishment in question), but you have to ask the waiter for a key. Paul tried to do this himself a couple of times, but his pronounciation of the words was too garbled for anyone to decipher, so now, it's always up to me to ask for the key, whether it be for me or for the benefit of "moj kolega".

On the fascinating subject of toilets, the other interesting thing is that toilets here are marked with a circle and a triangle, instead of the little stick figures we've come to know and love. Tonight I went to the toilets at Chlopskie Jadlo (having consumed my Very Large Beer), and was stopped in my tracks when faced with these two unhelpful shapes. I presumed the triangle was for men (since it's a "penetrating" shape), but decided I'd better make sure, so I waited for a lady to come down the stairs and asked her which shape was for men. She replied (with some disguised amusement) that the door I was after was the triangle, as I'd guessed. When I returned to our table, I asked Paul (who'd gone before me) "How'd you know which toilet to use?"

"Oh, I knew it was the circle," he said, without even looking up from his plate.


Oh dear.


Finally, one characteristic of Krakow is that finding a restaraunt or bar can be like undertaking an RPG (finding the Black Gallery, for example, is an endeavour roughly comparable to completing Myst). To use the example of Chlopskie Jadlo again: we saw the sign on a street just off the Market Square, and thought to ourselves, "Yes, manly food - sounds good." So we walked up a short passageway and through a glass door, which was actually the door of a hotel. A porter greeted us very politely and asked us which floor to take us to. "Umm, actually we're after Chlopskie Jadlo" I explained, so he motioned for us to keep walking along the corridor. We walked along the rest of the corridor, through another, smaller door, only to find ourselves in a courtyard occupied solely by pidgeons. At the other end of the courtyard a statue of the Grim Reaper caught my eye, and next to it: another door labelled "Chlopskie Jadlo". This opened up to reveal a flight of stairs, which we walked down before finally arriving at the restaraunt. By now I felt like Alice in Wonderland, and half-expected a hookah-smoking caterpillar to greet us from behind the bar.... but that didn't happen.

So yeah, a few things to keep in mind for those of you who wish to follow in me and Paw's footsteps!


(Oh, and another thing.... you have to get used to paying for water.)



Mateusz says:

I think European girls are much prettier than Australian, usually.

Justyna says:

mmmmmm

Justyna says:

thanks you lol

Mateusz says:

lol

Justyna says:

I regret

Justyna says:

that nice Polish boys leave Poland

Mateusz says:

yeah, i regret it too

Justyna says:

lol



To start, a few more interesting Facts about Poland.....


1) Girls in Poland drink beer through straws. Me and Paul thought this was pretty weird at first - a bit like the concept of Warm Beer - but then we noticed that the beers girls drink have an unusual reddish tinge to them: owing, as we later discovered, to the fact that girls have their beer mixed with raspberry or ginger juice (the mixture being known as "piwo z sokiem", or "beer with juice"). The resulting flavour is actually really good (at least to my effeminate taste buds), although the sweetness CAN get a little sickening after a while.

2) Traffic rules are treated as "suggestions" rather than law in Poland. Crossing the road in Poland is a test of nerves: more often than not the only way to cross a busy road is just to WALK RIGHT ONTO IT. Looking left and right has the same effect as looking down when you're about to dive out of a plane: your immediate reaction is to recoil, freaked out by the Fiats and Polonezs screeching along the roadway at speeds normally reserved for Grand Prix tournaments. The key, I've learnt, is just to pretend you're playing Grand Theft Auto: walk briskly onto the road and hope to God the cars have time to stop. The problem is, if you act hesitant, the Polish Driver will notice this and accelerate: to him, any pedestrian with Intention to Cross is an inconvenience, which must be frightened away from the road. But if you step out onto the road fearlessly, with the resolve of a Native Pedestrian, they'll realize that they have no choice but to brake - usually some 20 or 30 CM before your feet. Unfortunately, Paul still disagrees with this pseudo-logic and, all too often, I've been left on the other side of the road, waiting for him to cross at a safer, more "sensible" time.

3) The third thing, which I mentioned in an earlier e-mail from Warsaw, is so amazing that it's worth describing again. Alcohol in Poland is, quite literally, cheaper than bottled water in Australia. A half-litre of very decent beer costs the equivalent (in Polish zloty) of about $1.50 - and that's in a pub/bar. In Gdansk, I remember buying FIVE BEERS (Okocim Mocnes) from a local bottle shop, and the lot came to just THREE DOLLARS - that's just over 50c a bottle!! Yesterday, Paul bought a bottle of Chopin vodka (Chopin vodka being seriously top-shelf stuff; the sort of vodka you'd suck from the carpet if you accidentally spilt some) for 55 zloty: that's less than $25 a bottle, or the same price you'd fork out for some complete shit like Smirnoff or Karloff. The only drawback is that whisky, for some reason, is extremely expensive here: possibly even more expensive than in Melbourne, which means I haven't had a Scotch & Coke for quite some time. But with vodka this good, who's complaining?

Anyway, life in Krakow, the City of Bread Rings and Buskers, has been thoroughly enjoyable on the whole. Our lifestyle, admittingly, has been far from healthy: usually we get home well after midnight and get up an hour or so after midday. Thanks to me, our apartment - so immaculately clean and neat when we arrived - now looks like it's been occupied by squatters for six months. The double bed I'm sleeping in has degenerated into a human-size rat's nest: used and unused clothes all heaped to one side (I can't even tell which are which), mixed together with used and unused tissues, guide books, maps and brochures, empty water bottles, some really stupid drawings I did a couple of nights ago (Paul with the body of a bulldog; that kind of thing), and several empty, crumpled packets of Herron and Sudafed, which I've been consuming in medically unsound amounts to alleviate the headaches I've been getting from the winter weather, alcohol consumption and sleep deprivation. The bathroom - if you want to call a broom closet with a toilet inside it a "bathroom" - looks like something out of The Ring: water leaking everywhere (even dripping from the roof somehow, which means you can't stand and take a pis without getting your head wet), soaking-wet towels and underpants strewn all over the floor, and the air thick with the stench of cheap hair spray, cheap air freshener, Hugo Boss aftershave and an aroma we will subtlely call "Bowelle", produced almost daily by Paul after our last meal of the day.

But, enough about that - the main question to be addressed here is, What have we actually DONE over the last five days, except for belching, giggling at our own stupid jokes and musing about life in Europe? The answer is Plenty.

On Friday night we went on an Alcoholic Tour of the Market Square with Joasia and two of her friends: Wojtek (the third Wojtek I've met on this trip) and Ania. At 200 by 200 metres, Krakow's Market Square is officially the biggest medieval square in Europe, and contains over 300 bars, clubs and pubs: like I said, they're EVERYWHERE, and no matter where you look you can see the familiar blue-and-red Zywiec sign. We kicked off the tour by going to a pretty crowded but chilled-out reggae bar - and I seriously DO mean "chilled-out"; you can actually smell pot smoke if you sit anywhere near the back tables. From here we moved on to a four-storey dungeon-theme bar called Bastilia (Bastille), where we consumed about 10 litres of beer between us, then dragged our whoozy arses to a live jazz joint conveniently close by. The plan was to keep going and try out some bars in Kazimierz, the former Jewish quarter, but it was 1:30 AM by the time the live music finished, and we were all in grave danger of losing our eyesight within the hour.

The following night me and Paul met up with Justyna, a very cheerful and likeable young lady I met over MSN some months ago. While Justyna herself looked and behaved exactly like I expected, what I WASN'T expecting was the beauty of her cousin Paulina. Usually, the photos people send of themselves are better-looking than they actually are, but the photos Justyna had sent me didn't prepare me at all for how unbelievably stunning her cousin was: and, to me and Paul's complete disbelief, she was SEVENTEEN; probably the most developed seventeen-year-old I've ever seen. Sexy as she was, she didn't really have that feminine mysteriousness I like so much - but I could tell that Paul was thoroughly impressed. Anyway, the plan was to spend the night at Frantik, Krakow's most popular nightclub and Justyna/Paulina's venue-of-choice, but I insisted that we go for some drinks first so that we could chat without having to compete with club beats. After several beers (with raspberry juice and straws for the girls, naturally) we walked to Frantik, after briefly meeting up with Justyna's boyfriend, whom she introduced to me almost apologetically. The boyfriend was, quite frankly, a bit of a dickhead: lanky and messy-looking, with a slurry voice and vodka on his breath. Before going into Frantik we had a quick bite to eat at McDonalds, and the whole time I was eating my frytky (fries) this guy talked shit into my left ear. I stopped paying attention after about two minutes; just nodded whenever he paused for approval and smiled at Justyna, who kept glancing over at us, obviously embarrassed at the state of her scruffy boyfriend.

At any rate, Frantik was pretty cool, as far as clubs go: no gangstas, no teeny-boppers, and really good, hard music (no Kylie Minogue here, that's for sure). Even better, the guys in Poland are so awful at dancing that me and Paul must've seemed like Michael Jackson in comparison - generally they just stood there, in their Adidas jackets and white shoes, looking excruciatingly bored and resentful. As in every club there was one Resident Freak: in this case a sexually deviant Barry Humphries lookalike, about 40 years old, with greased greying hair, a drag-queen face and a long, sleazy black trenchcoat. He pranced around like a complete lunatic, sweeping past girls, shamelessly flashing his trenchcoat and grabbing his cock at every opportunity. Every now and then he'd swirl over to the bar and tilt back some orangey-pink drink, then rush back to the dance floor to continue this tragic-comic routine, providing plenty of entertainment for me and Paul but ensuring that no-one dared to step onto the dance floor for quite some time.

The following day we didn't do much: we were meant to go to Zakopane (a mountain town famous for its spectacular scenery and folk culture) with Wojtek and Ania, but I had to cancel on them as we were simply too tired and hungover. We went out for a meal and some quiet drinks at a Georgian restaraunt that evening, but the atmosphere was poisoned by a group of American students (Texans, no less) sitting at the table in front of us.

The contrast between these Americans and the Polish people to their right and left couldn't have been greater. The Polish girls at the tables near us were all tastefully dressed, slim, with pretty faces and intelligent conversation, while the Americans... well, basically they were over-sized slobs, consuming more food and wine than I thought was humanly possible, and talking (or shouting rather) at their top of their voices, in their revolting American accents, about whatever subjects entered their pea-brained heads ("sex at college" seemed to be the favourite). The thought of any of those pigs having sex was enough to put me off my meal, and, judging by some of the dirty glances the Polish girls were aiming at the American table, I wasn't the only one. There's few things more crude and irritating than a bunch of American tourists, and I was sorry to see that the infection's spread as far east as Krakow. At one point, upon hearing me and Paul talk in English, one of the Americans - a grotesquely obese, curly-haired guy - asked us a few questions, the reply to which was inevitably "right on":


Random Fat American #1: "So where you guys from?"
Paul: "Melbourne."
Random Fat American #1 (nodding with dopey smile): "Right on."
Random Fat American #2: "Do you go to college?"
Paul: "Yep."
Random Fat American #1 (nodding with dopey smile): "Right on."
Random Fat American #2: "What year you guys in?"
Paul: "Uhh, third."
Random Fat American #1 (nodding with dopey smile): "Right on."

.     .     .     .     .


One good thing about this place though was that, instead of ordering individual glasses of beer, you could order a Big Glass Tube of beer, about 2 metres high, which holds 3.3 litres worth of golden-bitter goodness. Seriously, Nath, Pete and all you other beer-lovers, you would CREAM yourselves if you saw one of these things: in fact, me and Paul are considering introducing these things back to Australia and starting up our own beer-tube bar in St Kilda (possibly under the name of "Beer on the Pier"). Australians would absolutely love these tubes: they're novel, they mean you get to be your own barman, and - most importantly - a single tube provides at least an hour's worth of effortless beer consumption: you don't have to get out of your seat to order another one. I reckon we'd be getting every trendy shithead from south-east Melbourne pouring into the place during summer, dishing out fat wads of parental pocket-money on European beers they've never heard of before, dispensed from stylish, transparent glass tubes.....


....but that's a side topic we can discuss later.


This morning we were up at 8 o'clock (so approximately six hours earlier than we've been waking up normally) to go to Wieliczka, a small Polish town famous for its historical salt mines. The Wieliczka salt mines have been in operation for some 800 years, and are basically a vast complex of underground mines carved entirely out of rock salt, complete with ornamented underground hallways, saltwater lakes and a massive, chandelier-lit chapel. Walking through certain parts of the mines, you feel like you're walking through a Quake level -- there's a distinctly otherworldly atmosphere that makes you wonder if there isn't a Fiend waiting to "eviscerate" you just around the corner. Overall the complex was very impressive, and, as always, photos were taken and shall be sent out later, together with many more photos of Krakow.

One thing that surprised me, incidentally, was the diversity of our tour group: far from the usual medley of Poles, Poms, Yanks and the odd smattering of Germans, we had people from as far away as South Korea, Japan and South Africa. There was even an Indian family who must've been wealthy as hell (maybe the husband was the guy who invented Hotmail), because they had a hired photographer to follow them round and take photos of them as they toured the mine. At first I thought the guy was just a pervert, but yes, he WAS actually there just to take photos of this couple and their young daughter.... weird.

I have to say, it's hard to believe that we've only got three days left in this city, with its unbelievably talented buskers (God knows how many coins I've given away, to all the brilliant accordion- and xylophone-players on the Market Square), its relaxed, Old World atmosphere and medieval, underground bars. And there's still so much to see and do, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to the majestic Wawel complex (Krakow's Royal Castle and Cathedral, the residence and final resting-place of generations of Polish kings). But, as always, time is short, and so too is money: I actually had to buy a second ticket to Wieliczka today coz I left the first one on a seat inside a church. This church, incidentally (St Mary's Church, the twin-towered building in the photo I sent out) is, inside, the most breath-taking church I've ever seen. Breath-taking quite literally: without being ironic, I couldn't help whispering "My God" when I first stepped in: the atmosphere is so thick and powerful that it almost re-converted me to Christianity, right there on the spot.....

But yeah: our time in Krakow is rapidly nearing its end, and I'll be very sorry to leave this city on the 14th. My only problem is that here, as in Vienna, I'm finding it incredibly hard to get to sleep: the moment the lights go off, my mind switches on, as tangibly as a light bulb, and refuses to give me any rest. I've noticed that as our trip has sailed closer to its final port, I've become more and more prone to these unavoidable and painfully intense moments of introspection: lying there at 2 AM in complete darkness, listening to "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane and rolling over in my brain that passage from Wagner's Ring cycle:


"I feel it, and yet I cannot understand it.
I can't retain it, nor forget it,
And if I grasp it, I cannot measure it!"

.     .     .     .     .


Maybe it'll all become clear to me eventually.....


Anyway, I better leave it there for now: I think I've just made history for writing The World's Longest E-mail, and I doubt anyone's gonna beat my record for quite some time.... I'll send out more photos soon and write again when we get to Praha.


P.S. I saw part of this poem engraved on the shipyard workers' monument in Gdansk, and just found a full English translation on the Web.... I think it's quite powerful, so I may as well include it here to provide some meaningful food for thought.


"You who wronged a simple man
Bursting into laughter at the crime
And kept a pack of fools around you
To mix good and evil, to blur the line,

Though everyone bowed down before you,
Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,
Striking gold medals in your honour,
Glad to have survived another day,

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.

You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.

And you'd have done better with a winter dawn,
A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight."


- Czeslaw Milosz, 1950

 

We owe a lot to the poets of the world....



St Mary's Church, part of the magical ambience of Krakow's Market Square.

The magnificent Sukiennice (Cloth Hall), situated in the middle of the Market Square. It's often surrounded by temporary stalls selling everything from books to beer.

Musicians busking in traditional Cracovian outfits.

Elegant ground-floor interior of the Cloth Hall. Today it's crowded with tourists and locals, checking out the dozens of stalls selling souvenirs, religious icons and other trinkets.

Paul the Pidgeon Man. The stall behind him sells bags of bread crumbs to feed to these permanent residents of the square.

Pidgeons taking flight off the Market Square.

Santa comes to a grisly end in one of Krakow's lanes.

The Royal Cathedral. In front of it used to be Poland's oldest church, but it was pulled down by the Austrians during their occupation in the nineteenth century. To the right is the former residence of Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Krakow during World War 2.

Renaissance-style courtyard of the Royal Castle.

The Wisla (Vistula) River, which runs all the way from the Baltic, through Warszawa and Krakow, to the southern border of Poland. On top of the hill in the background you can make out Kosciuszko Mound, where General Tadeusz Kosciuszko is buried.

One of the many ornate chandeliers inside the Wieliczka salt mines.


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