Krakow II

Yes, I am back in Krakow. For those who didn't know, I came here in 2001 and fell in love with it. After hearing me rave about it, as well as his many Polish friends, Dean was pretty keen to see it too.

There have been a few changes in the last four years, many can probably be attributed to Poland joining the EU in 2004. This means - no visa for Australians (yay), lots of cheap flights between Krakow and far western Europe, and lots of Poms figuring that it is a great place to drink cheap and see their money go a lot further (including stag nights of course). This, of course leads to English translations on the menu, more vegetarian food and drunken stag nights being the norm. All this makes it feel a little less like Poland.

Luckily for us, we were reminded of something very Polish on our arrival. They love Popes. I'm not sure if they liked them this much before their homegrown John Paul II, but they certainly loved him and apparently his predecessor. What is the relevance you ask...

We arrived to thousands of people at the train station, many of the nuns, priests, etc. waving Pope flags, Poland flags, all wanting to get on our carriage that we wanted to disembark from! Yes, we arrived in Krakow on the day Pope Benedict was in town. Apparently, 1 million Poles had gone to a service for young people in the park that morning - the population of Krakow is around 800,000 - so do the math of how many were trying to leave that afternoon.

The catch of having the Pope in town is that the government may want to hide the fact that the Poles can drink (thier lovely beer and vodka, yumyum). To hide this, the government banned the selling and serving of alcohol for the time the Pope was in town (2 days). Strange we thought, but oh well. Then we were chatting to our room-mates. They had just come from Warsaw, where the Pope had also been touring. So they were enjoying their 5th day of no alcohol on their week holiday in Poland. They laughed it off and shared with us their wonderings of how many English stag nights had been caught out... we saw at least two, perfectly sober groups of English lads walking the town... quietest stag nights I've ever seen. I wonder if they were enlightened by his holyness...

Oh and no, we didn't see the Pope. We'll be at his place in the Vatican next week so maybe he'll offer us some tea:)

So what did we see in Krakow? We saw the sights of Krakow (along with far too many school groups arggghhhh!). Wawel castle, the old Temple, the Salt Mine and Dean went to Auschwitz. We also caught up with our friend Gabi's sister and beau to check out some of the local spots.

Despite the rain that insisted on pouring, Krakow was still gorgeous, and yes, I would go back a third time.

Ps. Yes Gabi, Crepe Nalesniki is still there:p