Krakow, Poland
When I decided to go to Krakow, Poland, I didn't quite know what I was doing, but I knew it was cheap and gorgeous. Little did I know the women would be the best in the world too...
I left out to Spain on Jan. 20th of 2018 with the objective to go to Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium/Netherlands, Ireland, and England. I had no idea I would be visiting Austria, Poland, and now the Czech Republic.
I'm so glad I branched out away from my original plans to visit the more eastern European countries. The price of everything was much more cheap compared to western Europe, the building's just as nice, and the women even nicer.
With about 3 days left in Vienna, Austria, where I went to for a week after Venice, Italy, I decided to make may way up to Krakow, Poland for 4 nights to kill time before I start making my way back down to Munich, Germany, where I have to be on March 20th.
I took a Flixbus from Vienna at 8am to Krakow which I arrived 2 minutes before the bus left. I was the last person to enter the bus and barely made it on before it took off.
On the 8 hour long bus ride, we stopped at 4 places along the way, one of them being Brno, Czech Republic which I thought was a funny name/city and looked like a place I would like to come back and visit someday.
I arrived in Krakow around 3:30pm and met up with my friend Kinga who I had met out in Vienna.
That first night she showed me around the city a little and we got to go to a restaurant and eat some authentic Polish food as well as have some Polish beers on the main town square. Nothing too crazy.
The second day, Kinga and I ended up getting some peroigi (or however you spell it) which is basically dumpings, and some soup with sausage, potatoes, and like chicken broth for lunch. They were so bomb and traditional Polish dishes! I was very impressed with these.
Later on that same day we walked around the town and got to see the castle, we got to see the river and the statue of a dragon that blows fire just about every 15 minutes.
My good friend Liam met up with us. You may know Liam from one of my other blog posts that he was mentioned in. We met in Barcelona about 1.5 months ago and have sort of been traveling Europe together since then.
Liam, Kinga, and I went to a small brewery that evening called Tea Time Brewery, close to the castle, and then to another small brewery called Ursa Maior. I was very dissapointed with both these breweries. Tea Time was an new English brewery that had ALL of their beers on nitrous... very watered down tasting. It was no joke one of the worst breweries I've ever been to. We played darts and I still beat them both with my opposite hand. We walked the half mile to Ursa Maior where they had a little bit better beers, but not good enough for this beer snob. I felt like the labeled their beers based on the demand for beers, not really for what the beers should be labeled. All marketing.
I had an APA, American Pale Ale, and the color was very carmalized, tasted carmalized, and more like an ESB or English Pale Ale. Cooler than Tea Time but still not good enough.
I ended up hanging out with Kinga and her roomate Auga the next night after going sight seeing with Noah, Blake, and Liam during the day. We hopped on the tram (which everyone takes) and headed to the old Jewish quarters in Krakow where they got some ice cream and I secretly had a beer because apparently it was super illegal to drink in public.
When we all finished we headed to this shot bar and got 3 shots each. Each shot was 4.5 zl (zl is their currency and 4 zl is about 1.2 USD). They used their special mixed drink juice to make their shots. The first one was a shot of lemon vodka, bitters, and pepper. It tasted just like coke. The second shot was vodka and Tabasco and just burned going down. The final one was some cranberry juice and vodka. After that, we headed out to a bar where we met up with my friend Manuel that I met in Seville, Spain, and shared a flight. We then walked a mile to go to this other bar and shared a beer before heading to this craft beer bar called, Beerhall, where I had my favorite beer I had in Krakow, it was a juicy IPA.
I spend over 100 zl at this place due to good craft beers. We all have that one thing we spend too much money on... For me that thing is good beer and the brewing of good beer.
Kinga, Auga, Manuel, and I met up with Liam and his friends at Beerhall where we had one more beer. I was pretty tipsy at this point.
We were going to meet with some of Liam's Canadian friends even later that night at a bar that had recently opened up called Space Bar, but they had left by the time we all got there. We get to the bar and my friend from Seville orders 8 shots for the group but we found out it was super expensive. Before we can cancel the order they pour us the shots of their cheap flavored vodka so we had to pay for them and drink them now. We ended up paying for the shitty shots and then leaving. My Sevillian friend left us at that point to go meet a girl so I had to say goodbye to him again. We were pretty drunk now and had some munchies so we got a kebab, ate it, and walked the mile or so home to just pass out to live another day.
Everyone woke up pretty late the next day besides Kinga who had work at a coffee shop early the next morning.
Liam, Noah, the two French Canadian girls, and I walked around town most of the day. Noah has been to Krokaw more then 3 times now as he is half Polish and loves his heritage. He sort of acted as a tour guide for us, showing us around the old Jewish ghettos where the Nazi's stored all the Jews during WW2, showed us where Schindler's factory was and walked around the bridges there during sunset so we could try to get some cool photos.
That night we met back up with Blake and the Canadian girls and went back to our place, drank some 10% shitty malt liquors and some vodka and passed out around 1-2am.
The final full day I had in Krokaw was an emotionally draining day to say the least.
We had gone to Aushwitz, the largest of the many concentration camps from World War 2. It was Liam, Blake, and I. After the 1.5 hour bus ride from Korkaw to Aushwitz we stepped off the bus to see a shit ton of tourists, and it was a Monday! I couldn't imagine going there on a weekend during the summer!
We find the place to get our free tickets because we didn't want to have to pay for a tour.
We go through the security line, through the metal detectors and make our way in to the main part of Aushwitz, where they had set informational museums in the old barracks. We get inside the camp and we instantly feel the emotions.
Not many words were spoken that day. We go walk through the same gates that over 1.2 million Jews and other prisoners were kept and killed, many of them right on the spot. Life had little meaning at this place. One of the stats that I read at one of the exhibits is that they killed roughly 75% of the people that stepped foot through those gates within the first day of arriving,
being sent to the gas chambers, which I walked through, where they were told they were going to "take a bath" and gassed them with Zyclon - B, poisonous gas and once they were dead they would throw them in the cremation chambers, right inside the same building. The remaining 25% were the strong, the ones who were able to work for the Nazi's.
Aushwitz was one of the more hard things I've seen in my life but I am so glad I did it. It's part of history and it's important to feel it in all of it's pain.
We left Aushwitz and took the hour long bus ride back to Krokaw.
I spend that last night by myself, grabbing a pizza and a soda and watched netflix. I needed a little time to recuperate.
The next morning I hopped on a bus from Korkaw to Prague, Czech Republic where I am now for a few days.
Thanks for reading everyone!
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please leave them in the comments below and I will for sure get back to them!
Until next time you awesome people!
Cheers,
Ty Stevenson