Tag Archives: Krakow

A walk around Krakow


Posted by Patrick Okens

Dec. 24 – Krakow, Poland

What is it about cobblestones? Do they interest me just because I’m North American and don’t encounter them at home? Is it that I only ever see them in movies, picture books, paintings? Possibly. But there is more to it than that.

I had been wondering what about Krakow made it so intensely compelling, and I finally figured out that the answer was literally at my feet. Cobblestones aren’t alive, but there is life to them. Cobblestone streets were made by people, not machines. You think of labourers gripping heavy hammers and chisels, quarrying rock and roughly shaping it. It is easy to imagine their aching backs as they hunched to place the stones in mortar on the ground. Similar to people, cobblestones all differ. Some are bigger, some are rounder, some are smoother, some cracked and crumbling. No step you take on cobbles will be the same as the previous one, as your soles and ankles adjust to the uneven surface. And like people, when you bring many cobblestones together you can create something important. You can get somewhere.

In Krakow, the rough textures are not only at your feet. Walls, buildings, towers are all made of brick and stone. Some have new plaster. Others, particularly in the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, are benignly neglected, picturesquely cracked, paint faded. The old town is sheltered from the vicious, snarling traffic I encountered in China, Russia, even Ukraine. What struck me about the broad Glowny Rynek (main market square) is that it remains a place for people where cars rarely intrude. The sounds are all human – the general hum of a crowd, the distinct clarity of a mother calling to her child, footsteps. Black-cassocked clergymen doff their hats to one another. Nuns stride in pairs. At noon yesterday, a long line of people waited patiently for their free Christmas tree – a radio station marketing promotion. Last night, from a balcony overlooking the square, musicians took turns playing. A folk singer, a guitarist, a gently improvising trombonist. There were Christmas lights, and booths selling crafts, sausages, pierogies, mulled wine. It is festive but low-key.

Which is not to say that Krakow is stuck in the past. The cobbles are more timeless than time-bound. The market square was always a place for wealthy vendors to trade, and today those vendors have names like Gap, Prada, Bulgari. Steel rails cut through for sleek new trams to pass, whispering loudly. Streetcars have rolled on Krakow’s streets since 1882. And I’ve seen many iPod-wearing joggers taking advantage of their Christmas break to run along the placid, swan-studded Wisla.

I’m going back out to see how Christmas gets celebrated here and will report back tomorrow. To all, a good night!

 

 

 


No sleep till Poland


Posted by Patrick Okens

Dec. 23 – Krakow, Poland

The train pulled into Krakow at 6:30 this morning. I clattered down foggy, cobblestoned streets into the old town, wondering at its elegance and wintry beauty. Such a contrast to the size and pace of the other cities I’ve visited.

At the Kiev station, a traveler told me it would be cheaper and faster to take buses across the Ukraine-Poland border, rather than the train. I took her advice, which still meant a ten-hour rail journey to L’vov. Western Ukraine was picturesquely ugly. Tall, skinny, trees. Plank-fenced, snow sprinkled villages of grey-brick houses. I imagined it had not changed in 40 years, though it probably had. My compartment mate this time, Konstantin, was a nuclear safety engineer from Sevastopol in the Crimea. My conversation-without-language-skills are improving, and I was able to understand that Ukraine’s base energy needs are all covered by nuclear power.

I knew nothing about L’vov or the bus-to-border system, and half expected to spend a frustrating time looking for the connection, perhaps at the other end of town. In the event, the so-called “marshrutka” was right in front of the station and cost the equivalent of $4. For a bit more than an hour, the minibus bounced and shuddered through the night, passing illuminated statues of the Virgin Mary and convenience stores on the way to the border. I eventually found the pedestrian checkpoints and did an awkward luggage-dragging shuffle through the turnstile to leave Ukraine, and again to enter Poland. The Polish customs officer made me open my suitcase, and poked my clothes:

“Vwodka?”

I shook my head.

“Zigaretten?”

I shook my head again and we both chuckled. I guess I didn’t look like a smuggler. He waved me through and called forward the next in line.

As I walked into Poland, long lines of Ukrainians headed for home in the opposite direction, pushing shopping carts crammed with goods. I looked in vain for a bus among the money-changing shops and shashlik stands. A dark figure approached, asked if I wanted a lift – an “unofficial” taxi. I accepted, with the optimism/fatalism of one getting into a stranger’s car at midnight headed somewhere he doesn’t know.

Fifteen minutes later I was at the small railway station of Przemysl, with a ticket to Krakow. I had a two-hour wait in -2C temperatures. There was a semi-heated waiting room, but it contained three slumped, muffled, snorers. I preferred to pace on the platform, while occasionally drunks stumbled past, one couple arguing loudly. The train to Krakow took four hours. I slept poorly, contorted on the bench. When three others came into the compartment, I did not sleep at all.

In Krakow, I had four hours until check-in, I strolled the park that encircles the old town. It’s a popular dog walking area – I saw alert German Shepherds, a loping Weimaraner, two frantic, hapless Dachshunds colliding. A pale sun rose through the bare branches over the Wisla river, casting its rays on the old castle wall’s red bricks. More about the town, in Christmas spirit, tomorrow.