Krakow, in Possession of the Greatest of Squares
Trip Start
Jun 30, 2006
1
14
42
Trip End
Jun 30, 2007
Krakow,
Poland
Saturday, July 29, 2006
We arrived in Krakow at around 5.45 this morning, after a bit of a stressful train ride. There weren't any sleeping compartments on the train so we were left in the free-for-all of the seated compartments, lying down, fearing that at any stop another 6 people would try and come in and wake us from our pretended sleep sprawled over 4 seats and make us move. That and the never-ending fear of being robbed by gypsy children. Never happened, but it stopped any of my potential sleep for most of the night.
Anyway our youth hostel (The Stanger Hostel) is pretty great, has a giant couch area, free Internet, and a huge projection screen for watching movies. Hopefully we will be able to tear ourselves away and actually go out tonight.
We didn't do much today really, apart from going on an insane quest for a cafe at 8am (no-one in this city wakes before 8am we realized, and there are no goddamn cafes outside of Old Town), and then looking for some hair-dressers. Made a bit of an embarrassing faux-paux when I went up to a random bloke waiting for his wife to be done with her hair and started asking him hair prices in Polish, thinking he was a gay hairdresser. Simple mistake I'm sure.
Eventually we made our way over to Old Town and the Main Square, and people really weren't kidding when they raved on about how great it was. From an inauspicious beginning when I was a bit under whelmed when I saw that it wasn't so greatly aesthetically impressive, it improved by spades. In the space of 20 minutes it went from same-old European sunny square, to dramatically overcast, the air full of electricity, wind blowing everywhere, dandies in 17th century outfits playing violin, horse-carriages rushing past, crowds of people gathered around a group which was alternately break-dancing and hopping around dancing in time to each other like the funniest of boy-bands, and all topped off with bands of drunken English tourists sprinting about in the rain in either football shirts or bared chests, yelling drinking songs at the top of their lungs.
It's a quaint little place, Krakow Old Town. Despite all the lovely modern shops and the crowds of tourists in horrible modern fashion, and the boys with their amusing little modern yelling, it still manages to feel so very very ancient and comfortable.
And so this entry ends, we haven't actually finished today so we better hurry and do so. Tally ho all!
PS. Yeah so we went to one of the most famous squares in all Europe, and the only pictures we took were of a violin guy, a drink, and ourselves with ice-creams. Figures.
