POLAND
WARSAW & KRAKÓW
30.01-03.02.2013
Lovade ju nog redan ett tag sen att ladda upp bilder från min Polen resa som gick av stapeln i månadsskiftet januari-februari. En liten försening blev det, men här kommer bilder från första delen av resan! Bilder from Auschwitz lägger jag i ett annat inlägg även om vi var där redan under vår andra dag i Polen.
EN: I know I promised you to upload pictures from my Poland trip in the end of January-beginning of February. Little delayed, but here's pictures from the first part of our trip. I'll upload pictures from Auschwitz later in another post, even though we visited the place already on our second day in Poland.
Wednesday the 30th of January
Hotel number one. Four star Radisson Hotel Sobieski in Warszaw.
Tiramisu and jasmine tea.
Thursday the 31st of January
Train at 5:30 AM towards Krakow. It took about three hours.
I'm tots imagining a person throwing things to the toilet as the toilet would be a dog :D
More dessert.... My first gaufre ever (I think), and think I lived in France the country of gaufres for almost five months!
Stare Miasto (Old Town) in Krakow where we lived:
Our 12 person hostel dorm room where we lived alone for about 10 € per night. Rynek7 Hostel was the name of it and it was very central and had super nice staff so definitely price worthy.
Royal Palace in Krakow
We went for dinner in an amazing restaurant called Restaurajce Horoscope!
Best pepper steak I've eaten so far and it cost only about 10 € or so.
Polish vodka, Zubrowka, mixed with Cappy apple juice. Yummy!
Apple pie with a cinnamon heart.
Polish beer, Perla, at a random bar we found by mistake in the Jewish Quarters named Mijsce or something like that.
There were alcohol signs everywhere to obviously let people know where alcohol was sold.
Friday the 1st of February
We went on a free-walking tour around the Jewish Quarters and later we visited the Schindler's Factory with the same guide. This tour started at 11 AM and we were finished sometime in the evening about 6 PM after both tours. I like the concept of free-walking tours by the way. You can take these tours in various cities around Europe and they don't cost you anything, but at the end of the tour you can decide to give something to the guide as a pay if the tour was worth your time. This way the guides really try to entertain you, give you interesting facts and absolutely do their best in guiding you.
A reconstruction of how the Jewish businesses looked like before the Second World War.
A house not reconstructed after the war.
This is the passage, staircase and balcony from the movie Schindler's List where the woman in the movie hid from nazis.
Below the only Christian church in the Jewish Quarters in Krakow. It's said that a Christian priest built it there so he could be closer to a Jewish woman he was in love with without raising suspicion, because it was forbidden to mix among religions and Jews were pretty much hated by Polish. So much love amongst all the hate!
Crossing Vistula River to visit the Jewish Ghetto.
Love locks are popular everywhere!
The chairs on the market square in the old Jewish Ghetto represents a pile of burning furniture the Russians found when they invaded Krakow at the end of the war. The Jews hid their valuables, like gold, in furniture so the nazis wouldn't find it, but of course they did and afterwards they burned the chairs and tables etc. On this market square lots of Jews were executed for "fun", because they spoke, tried to escape or someone tried to help them by throwing food or news to them from the tram passing the square. Also the ones who helped Jews got executed and their whole family, this was a general rule. Here people got picked out or forced to a transport to labour or concentration camps as for example Auschwitz.
The last piece of the wall that surrounded the Jewish Ghetto so that Jews relocated here were easier controlled and couldn't escape easily. Also famous director Roman Polanski known e.g for directing the movie The Pianist, and Roma Ligocka lived within these walls during the war. The guide told us that at the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto two women suddenly sprang at each other crying and hugging and people around who wondered about the incident got told by the women that they were living in the ghetto as children and now many many years later met again.
Schindler's Factory is more of a museum that depicts the war and tells little about the "Schindler's List" and Oscar Schindler who saved over 1200 Jews by employing them to his factories.
Some of the people that got saved.
People in pictures before the war.
A death puppet coming upon Hitler puppet.
Russian pierogis at a restaurant after the tour.
Drinks at Alchemia bar later on. It was a kind of cool underground bar where people smoked inside (that part I wasn't so fond of though) and you walked from different sections in the bar through wardrobes as in the saga Narnia. Very bohemian.
Dagen var ganska emotionell, men inget jämfört med dagen innan då vi besökte Auschwitz och Auschwitz-Birkenau. Jag slapp gråta i alla fall, men ibland kom den där klumpen i halsen och man funderade att hur människosläktet kan vara så elakt, egoistiskt och hemskt. Den här resan var värd varenda cent jag spenderade och jag rekommenderar verkligen Polen, särskilt Krakow, till dem som vill uppleva historia (även av den värre sorten), kultur, mycket sevärdheter, billig god mat och dryck, mycket fest och vackra vyer. Nu var det ju vinter och ganska grådaskigt när vi var där, men jag tror Krakow är ett superfint ställe på våren och sommaren. En annan sak som var bra med resan var att jag nu kan säkert allt om vad som hände i Polen under andra världskriget! Sista dagens bilder kommer också i ett skilt inlägg.
EN: The day was pretty emotional, but nothing compared to the day before when we visited Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I didn't cry once though, but sometimes that lump appeared in my throat and I wondered how man kind can be so evil, egoistic and cruel. This trip was worth every penny I spent on it and I really recommend Poland, especially Krakow, to them who want to experience history (even the worse kind), culture, many sights, cheap good food and drinks, parties and beautiful views. When we visited it was winter and rather grey everywhere, but I think Krakow is a very beautiful city in the spring and summer. Another good thing with the trip was that now I surely know everything about what happened in Poland during WWII! I'll upload the pictures from the last day also in another post.
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