I'm a dumpling! Get me out of here!

The day had finally arrived. It seemed like it was just yesterday that I started planning my next adventure, booking complicated flight routes with dodgy airlines, arranging visas and looking for suitable couchsurfing hosts across an array of countries that most people probably couldn't place on a map.
Why was it that I always seemed to be attracted to those nations that got a bad rap in the press? Lebanon, Myanmar, Moldova and now amongst others Georgia.

As my dad and I set off to Cologne/Bonn airport that morning of the 5th of May I had great expectations. The sun was rising above Northrhine Westphalia and I felt positively thrilled. First stop: Poland. Poland, a nation that for some bizarre reason had so far successfully managed to escape every single travel itinerary I had ever made. No, that's not true. In 2008 my friend Mitch and I were meant to go to Krakow for a weekend but then our budget airline decided to cancel the flights, so we decided to cancel the trip.

As I waited in the airport lounge for my flight to start boarding I read a short article in a magazine about a phenomenon called: "Legaslatur" (probably something similar in English). Essentially it means: "The inability to use clear and pretty handwriting due to overuse of the keyboard on a computer or laptop." Was my handwriting really that bad? I feared for my diary.

Later as the plane took off I hoped that I would also receive a sunny welcome in Krakow despite all the treacherous weather forecasts I had read prior to my trip. How deceitful a short nap can be. As I awoke from my involuntary powernap shortly before landing I saw nothing but grey.
Upon leaving the airport building and boarding a cute little commuter train to Krakow Glowny station I was already faced with an early contrast between old and new, communist and capitalist. Having lived in Bucharest for 4 months in 2009 I should have been more than accustomed to this sight, yet in reality it always stikes me anew. Nowhere was this more visible than at the station that was partially blocked from frontal view by a massive new shopping complex called "Galeria Krakowska". All your usual suspects were present, no need to list them all.

After checking into my hostel "Flamingo" I decided to join the free walking tour that was lead by a very Polish guy called "Chris". Our group consisted of a couple of English tourists (completely inappropriately dressed for the occasion and sadly overweight), a handful of Aussies, Canadians and Germans and together we began our wet walk (it was drizzling at this point) outside St. Mary's Church, the main landmark at Rynek Glowny, which also happens to be the largest medieval city square in Europe. Chris lead us through little alleys and past a collection of museums, monuments and gates that all formed an integral part of the old town. Although his speech always seemed studied it was peppered with the occasional joke that made me smile. I like smiling.

Back at the main sqaure he pointed at the Mieckewicz monument just outside the cloth hall. He asked us to take a good look at the statue's details and then walk away from it in a westernly direction until we were asked to turn back and tell him what we saw. Apparenly when the statue was unveiled in 1898 in presence of Adam Mieckewicz's son and daughter, the son walked away in disgust. Why? Because when looking at the statue from where I was now one of the 4 allegoric statues surrounding the main figure, symbolising "courage" looked like it had a gigantic boner. I smiled again.



Krakow struck me as the most religious city I had ever visited, bar Rome. With more than 140 churches and even more monasteries there is a likelyhood that at any point within the city's perimeter you are no further than a couple of meters from several houses of worship. In London the same applies to Starbucks.

The tour finished at Wawel Castle, one of the most dominating sights of Krakow and home to Poland's former kings (and most recently, final resting place of Lech Kaczinski, the late Polish president who died in a plane crash last month). Wawel castle was modelled on the grand palaces of Tuscany although with in this grey sky its glory didn't quite go under my skin.
For lunch I popped into what Chris had described as one of Krakow's few remaining worker's cafes, a place called "Bar Mleczny" that severed hearty Polish fare for less than what I normally pay for a pack of cigarettes back in Amsterdam. I tucked into a portion of Borscht and "pierogi" filled with cheese. Essentially, Polish tortellini.
Later that day I visited the neighbourhood of Kazimierz, which before WWII housed one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. Still today you can see Hebrew inscriptions in the houses and see remains of former Synagogues here and there. Not much remains of this community today however (99% of Poles claim to be Roman Catholic) but one can still feel a slightly Jewish vibe in the air.
What I didn't know was that this part of Poland and adjacent Ukraine was once known as "Galicia". Any connection with the Spanish region of the same name? I wouldn't know the answer.

In the evening I retreated back to my hostel just to find 6 young Dutch guys from the province drinking and listening to Tiesto at full volume in my dorm. God bless this small nation I thought. I migrated to the common room (where they soon after followed) to meet a concoction of interesting characters from all over the world. Most amazing of them all was this young Indian guy who claimed his name was "Will" and amongst other things made us believe he was in the Royal Navy (but currently on forced sabbatical due to his young age), that his family were billionaires with massive land ownerships in India and Canada and that he actually lived just outside Amsterdam at the moment in a place he didn't know the name of. Furthermore, I was unable to understand his profession. According to him it was something to do with valuable paper transport and giving higher credits than banks. Why then I wondered are you staying in a hostel my dear friend?
He also claimed he loved "austrich" people (referring to Austrians) and that he really liked Poland and that he really wanted to live here, just not right now.
A fellow Dutch traveller later reaveled to me over a cigarette that Will and him were meant to go out the previous night and that Will had shown him these pills he had acquired that apparently worked wonders with girls. Upon inspecting them more closely, Martijn discovered that these were in fact sleeping pills and with great revulsion feigned a headache and stayed in.

Good tip at this stage: Never stay in a dorm that has 4 or more testoterone filled Dutch men in it, because you might, as in my case, find that they come back at 4:30 in the morning, turn on all the lights and shout and burp/fart and completely neglect that there are other characters like yourself trying to get a good night's sleep. I was drawing up various revenge plans in my bed as I stared at them from my top bunk.

The next day I embarked on a halfday tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration (or rather extermination) camps. One of the biggest drawcards of a visit to Krakow for me was a visit to these two omminous places of destruction. Not only because of my own family's connection with Auschwitz (the Jewish side, not the Nazi side I'll have you know) but also because as a German citizen these camps form a central focal point in understanding the horrors or WWII.
Again it rained as if god were flushing the toilet relentlessly and as our minibus made its way out town of and towards the camps I thought, how depressing can this day possibly be?
Of course the camps were overcrowded with tourists from all corners of the world and I struggled to make my way through this throng of people to pick up my headphones and find the group I was meant to join. Our guide, Marcin, was in a way typically Polish although I will find it hard to describe him in words.
Most famously of course, was the gate with the headline "Arbeit macht frei" that was apparently stolen last year and now we had to look at a replica instead. Whatever, it had the same effect of causing a cold stream to run down my spine.
Marcin struck me as particularly good because he retold the story from a very neutral point. Amongst other things we were informed that Auschwitz was originally "only" a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, and since the Brits had already been using concentration camps in Africa for a while, Auschwitz became legitimate amongst world leaders. Why shouldn't the Nazi's also have the right to build such a camp?
Only from 1942 onwards was Auschwitz and what was later to be known as Auschwitz II Birkenau a real mass extermination camp for mainly Jews but also every other living thing that did not fit the Nazi ideology. Gypsies, Gays, Intellectuals, you name it.

What struck me as most gruesome were the variuos items of personal belongings that they had managed to recover after the liberation in January 1945. Hairbrushes, suitcases with peoples' names on them, shoes, hair, Nivea cream etc... As we visited the room that housed a miniature replica of the actual concentration chamber we bumped into a group of Israelis (mainly soldiers) and for some reason I became terribly sad. What a horrific place this must be for them to visit.



After we visited a small gaschamber that was still left standing we were driven off to Birkenau to see the actual place where the majority of prisoners "lived" and died. The famous gate with the traintracks running through it and what remained of the barracks formed a sight to behold, in a negative way. The grey skies and the rain caused us to wander through it in horror at the desasterous conditions that these poor people had to endure. Not much was left of the camp.
As I left to return to the car, I witnessed the group of Israelis forming a line outside the camp in order to march inside to a sad trumpet. Apparently this was common practice, which in my view was quite understandable, yet very impressive to watch.
Left with a sour taste on my tongue but richer for the experience we returned back to Krakow where I pursued a couple of more visits to places of interest. Amongst others a display of works by "Marcin Maciejowski" - a very strange collection of paintings from the 1930s onwards, and a visit to Nowa Huta, a neighbourhood outside Krakow that during the communist regime was quite the "workers" paradise according to Lonely Planet. It took me 3 different trams and a ride past hopelessly run down buildings to arrive at Plac Centralny. I wasnt' quite sure what to expect here and what I saw didn't impress me in any way. Quite used to the sight of grand communist type building from my time in Bucharest I wandered around the block once just for my eyes to finally rest on an old Babushka on her balcony up on the 7th floor of a corner building. The way she sat there and stared out at the street, I felt an immense sadness for her. What it must be like to have lived there all your life and despite Poland now being in the European Union and Carrefour megastores popping up everywhere, you still live your life in the same kind of poverty as ever.

Once I was back in Krakow I bumped into Keith (the Canadian with maroon coloured hair) and his lovely but slightly dorky fiancee X - I never caught her name hence X - from my hostel. They told me that there was this little shop that made its own vodkas and other liquors and that we HAD TO GO THERE! Hence we went and these two lovely old ladies smiled as lovely as gummibears while they served us 70% vodka shots and other liquids "JUST TO TRY AND SEE IF YOU LIKE". I ended up buying a bottle of Apple Vodka while X watched her 70% vodka evaporate from her cup. I smiled.

In the evening Will offered me to drink his Zubrowka vodka with Apple juice, which I did and then he disappeared with his "girlfriend" - OR WHATEVER. Sadly, that meant I had to drink the whole vodka on my own and slightly tipsy I ended up following the group of obnoxious Dutch boys to the club opposite our hostel: Club Frantic.
As opposed to my inital perception, the club was actually in the basement of the building and not where momenents befor bubbles had been blown out of a window and onto the street. Sadly the music was aweful and I suddely felt horrendously drunk so I hastened back outside and in a spur of the moment figured it would be immensly clever to eat a Beef kebab. Also sadly, that came back up only moments after laying my head to rest. Urgh.

The next day I was meant to leave for Gdansk, the Polish city at the other end of the country that played a significant role during the start of WWII and where I hoped to finally find some sunshine. Normally when I have a connecting flight and my first plane is delayed I am never lucky enough for the second plane also to be late. This time however as I rushed through Warsaw airport's transfer gate I found that the flight to Gdansk was indeed also late. Phew.

Upon arrival in what was formally known as Danzig I made my was to the main train station in order to purchase a bus ticket for my next trip to Kaliningrad. Needless to say this was not fruitful in the slightest.
After finding my hostel "Old town" and laying my backpack down I ventured into the old town's center, a place that struck me with its elegance and beauty. Gdanks was almost completely flattened during WWII but the Poles did a very good job in rebuilding the city to its former glory as one of Europe's leading Hanseatic cities (Hamburg being another).

As I walked down Dluga Targ I noticed a group of pidgeons, one of which accidentally got trampled on by a passer by. Then, it just sat there on the ground as if in shock at its own misfortune and slowly but surely it hobbled towards the nearest step in search of cover.

This evening I dined in this restaurant called "U dzika", which was baffelingly recommended by Lonely Planet. Especially the "fantastic" dumplings with cottage cheese, cinnamon, raisings and peach were highlighted as something one must try. As a real anti-raisin I opted (once again) for a serving of Borscht (this time with meat) and dumplings with veal. What I was eventually served looked and tasted more like a redwine wonton soup and dumplings with veal.

The next day I rose earlyish to a pretty decent breakfast and BEHOLD! sunshine and blue skies. I couldn't believe my eyes. First off however the adventure of buying a ticket to Kaliningrad. As I stood in the tram towards the main trainstation it struck me that it was almost 50% filled with old ladies i.e. +60. Where were they going or where did they all come from I wondered.
In the station there was an underpass where old babuschkas sold single flowers. All of them had facial hair (the women not the flowers) and I couldn't help asking myself, why in old age some people just let themselves go.

After finally finding the right window I was faced with a comical situation. Very much like the sketch with Carol Beer from Little Britain the clerk exhaled loudly in disgust at my request to purchase a ticket to Kaliningrad. Then: WHEN? - ehm tomorrow please. WHAT TIME? - 3.30 if that's ok? FIFTY ZLOTY - sure there you are dear madame. I wish you pleasant day. URGHGGHGHGHGHGHAFKNSVL

What followed was a very relaxed venture through the old town, passing the beautiful Royal Chapel of the Polish King - John III Sobieski with its salmon coloured facade, the medieval port crane overlooking the Motlawa river and a series of amber shops down a small alley and the famous Neptune fountain outside the town hall.
Everywhere I went I encountered German tourists (mostly in groups) and I wondered, what must the older generation think visiting Gdansk, the city where WWII started?
I certainly for one felt kind of sad mainly because everything I was looking at was rebuilt and not original.



In the afternoon I took a local commuter train out to Sopot, the suburb 11km north of the center that used to be a very popular spa resort and apparently still is Gdansk's party town. The streets were crowded with visitors who were either enjoying a drink in the sun, walking up and down the famous pier or like some, getting married in the local church.
I enduldged in some very dangerous belgian hot chocolate that I really hoped wouldn't make me fat. Kidding.

The next day I started writing this blog but eventually had to stop (I think this is already enough for a novel?) because my friend Leon picked me up to take me to lunch in what was formally a very popular communist restaurant on the 16th floor of a tower. The view was truly stunning, especially the sight of all those ancient cranes that made up the big harbour. Leon kindly forced me to try a local specialty, something called "Flaki" and which for the life of my I could not identify. It was a soup yes but what was floating inside looked like nothing I had ever tasted. As it turned out it was cow stomach (hmmmmm) and I followed that with you may guess?
That's right... Dumplings.
Leon also showed me a couple of beautiful villas that once made up the entire neighbourhood where we now were. Sadly I forgot the name but it sounded something like Dzesz...

So, my time in Poland came to an end. I felt kind of overloaded with impressions and history but at the same time I was glad I came. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to miss Warsaw out this time but Poland strikes me as a place I'd like to visit again. Not for the dumplings though.