Previous stop: Leipzig!

After Leipzig, we drove east into Poland. I still had only my cellphone to take pictures with.

Near the border, we saw all these military vehicles; there were Dutch flags on them!

As some who is well experienced with forests next to highways, I found these interesting as the thin spindly trunks and sparse canopies allowed a lot of light down to the ground.

Our first stop was in a city called Wrocław, which I had no idea how to spell when I heard it pronounced. Thank goodness my phone had internet-free GPS (which normally I would be leery of because no one needs to know my position on the globe, but it came in handy this trip) so I could look up where I was. : P Anyway, apparently gnomes (or maybe dwarves? I don’t remember now) are a big part of the city’s history, and there are little statues of them all over downtown doing various things, including more modern activities like watching TV. Some tourists come to participate in ‘gnome hunts’ to find them all.

Pixel street art!

One of the old market squares. There were public washrooms in this square, and I used one rather than the bus toilet, but it cost money and I wasn’t sure how much so I let the toilet attendant fleece me for €2 and it most certainly was not a €2 experience. : P

Looking from the first market square to the second, bigger market square and the former town hall (now a museum).

The roof of this church was so incredibly glittery it was unable to be captured by my cell cam.

So much work went into this town hall, I feel like it ought to be appreciated.

There were a lot of stalls of people selling tourist junk – magnets, keychains, tiny music boxes, street food, flower crowns, plushies, amber. This was a theme throughout Poland, as the other cities we went to had the exact same selection of items, just customized by city. Apparently Poland is known for its amber… but so are the Baltic states so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I didn’t get any amber as it’s not really my colour, or more importantly, my mom’s colour.

I also visited a money exchange and traded €20 for about 80 złoty. (one person in our group kept calling them ‘zlotnies’ which was kind of cute.)

No idea what this is, sorry.

In Krakow the next day, we began our guided tour of the city with a walk around the former ghetto. This is the oldest synagogue in Krakow iirc.

Some of the things our tour guide told us were that Jewish people have been a part of Polish history for a long long time, because according to legend, ‘poland’ means ‘good place’ in Hebrew, so they came and did well, and the local kings were actually pretty reasonable about it (compared to the rest of Europe anyway). In fact one of them married a Jewish girl at one point and it was terribly romantic. I’m afraid I don’t remember clearly at this point in time even though stories are My Thing. Oops!

Also Krakow surrendered without fighting during WWII, so it was never bombed and all its buildings are still original (in comparison to Warsaw, coming up later).

One of the tenors in our choir was Jewish, so we took a picture of him next to this Jewish hero.

We drove around the rest of the ghetto for a while, while the tour guide told us about the lives of the people who lived there during the war, and the people who helped them, but all the pictures I took from a moving bus so they are not spectacular. It was all quite depressing.

Around town, I saw several ads for bands/performers that I knew, including Sabaton, Placebo Flamingo, and Mark Knopfler! I couldn’t get a picture of the Mark Knopfler ad, though.

A view of the old castle! Supposedly a dragon lived under it on the banks of the river. You can see the cave, but for a fee, and through enormous crowds who also want to see the dragon cave. Why they would build a castle on top of a known dragon’s lair seems a bit foolish to me, except it’s a clear defensive position. So… maybe how they built the castle over a known dragon’s lair is more questionable.

The seminary, which is still in use.

I like the statue of the dude, it looks like he’s saying “Welcome to my castle!”

The range of styles on this cathedral is a little bit ridiculous but it’s over 900 years old so we’ll forgive it.

Remains of other medieval churches within the castle grounds.

Another metal model! This picture was taken in the .75 seconds between one tour group leaving and the next one showing up to cluster around it so thickly as to exclude any other tourist from getting remotely close. You can see at the bottom of the model the dragon’s cave.

This end of the castle is a Renaissance palace containing vast amounts of art. It’s particularly famous for tapestries.

Another selfie, this time with JP2. There’s statues to him all over Poland, it’s a little bit crazy.

The Renaissance courtyard as seen irl.

I liked this door.

Next we went to the old city centre; this is St. Mary’s Basilica, at the top of which a trumpeter sounds the hour every hour in all four directions – and gets shot by an arrow at the end of it. They must go through a lot of trumpeters.

Several of the cities we went to had horse-drawn carriage tours; this was one of the prettier ones.

We went to a 14th century university next, which Google tells me is the Muzeum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego Collegium Maius. This well is in the courtyard.

It looks super medieval, doesn’t it, with the pointed arches and random staircases?

One of our performances was in a church here in Krakow; there was a choral festival going on, so we also heard a choir from Norway and two choirs from Sweden. This was the altar end of the church; we performed at the other end and there were chairs set up facing the other end.

We had a rehearsal in a small chapel beforehand, but no one told us we had to stop when evening Mass started before the concert (but the chapel is apparently audible from the sanctuary), so suddenly a very angry Polish man burst into the room during rehearsal and yelled at us and I had a panic attack as a result, even though he wasn’t specifically yelling at me. So in a fit of salty pique I decided I wasn’t going to take any more pictures of their church. Also I’m pretty sure the piano settings changed between our soundcheck and the actual performance. Not my favourite venue.

Thank goodness for the healing properties of power metal.

I don’t remember which meal this is, but it’s beet soup and the colour irl was even better than this.

I believe the next morning had an option for either Auschwitz or the Salt Mine, but I didn’t go to either. I was really tired still (not a morning person) and Auschwitz at 8am would have destroyed me. And I wasn’t sufficiently interested in the Salt Mine to go either, although I heard from other people who went that it was fascinating and beautiful. I just slept in and enjoyed it.

In the early afternoon after being taken back downtown, I asked an information guide to direct me to the nearest electronics store (in a very large modern shopping mall surprisingly close to the old city centre) and I bought a new 16GB memory card (I think my old one was 2GB). HALLELUJAH

Being on my own was a little scarier in Poland than in Germany, as I know a little bit of German from a first-year university language course I did in my undergrad, and I know two words of Polish: ‘świetny’, and ‘proszę’ (great, and please), from watching a Polish ASMR artist on Youtube. But then again I know zero Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, or Finnish (unless ‘perkele’ and ‘sydän ei vastaa, sydän on hilja’ count) and I somehow made it through.

There were still old buildings right around the modern shopping mall, including this one.

After that I just wandered around the perimeter of the old city centre, and through, and back to places I’d been the day before to get better pictures, until my feet in my paper sandals were dead on the cobbles.

The old defensive wall around the old city. In many places it has been torn down, but the moat area is now a green space wrapping around the old city.

The main city gate.

The Barbican, the old defensive structure that would need to be captured to have even a hope of assaulting the main city gate.

You could go inside… for a fee.

Typical street, containing dozens of identical gift shops, money exchanges, and the occasional normal store for the locals.

We saw this on the guided tour the day previously but these pictures are better. This is the old Cloth Hall in the market square; now it’s a tourist mall. 80% of the stores are amber stores but I did buy a prettily painted egg ornament with lilies of the valley on it. There is an art gallery in it as well.

The town hall tower. Not sure what happened to the town hall.

This sculpture was on the other side of the tower but I don’t know what it signifies.

This is where JP2 would give addresses to his adoring fans; unfortunately if you’re across the street, there’s 20 tram cables between you and the window.

Typical non-commercial street.

I thought this was clever.

St. Mary’s again.

The oldest church in the city.

A surviving piece of the old defensive wall.

Our hotel had the major landmarks of the city as a decor motif! This was the main carpet choice in the halls. In rooms the carpet had the same motif but smaller.

This was on my wall, showing the different landmarks used.

The story of the dragon living under the castle.

“The Wawel dragon (Smok Wawelski) is said to have had his lair in a cave beneath Wawel Hill, on the banks of the Vistula River. He killed the citizens, pillaged, stole their cattle and devoured young girls. The only way they could appease him was by offering him a sheep every day, and sacrificing a girl once a year. All except one, the King’s daughter, Wanda. Countless brave young men from the city set forth to fight the dragon, but none succeeded in killing him or driving him away. The King offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to the one who could vanquish the dragon. The cobbler’s apprentice, Drotevka, stuffed a dead lamb with sulfur and placed it outside the dragon’s lair. Devouring it, the dragon became unbearably thirsty. To quench his thirst, he rushed to the Vistula River and drank so much he finally burst. Drotevka married the King’s daughter and they lived happily ever after.”

The view from my room late at night. I think there were ruins on the bottom left but I never got a clear view of them.

Next stop: Warsaw!