Poland

For some odd reason I cannot find the pictures from Poland. I believe that when I used Mare´s laptop in Budapest to download the pictures from my camera to the memory stick and thus have more space in the camera I deleted them inadvertently. But I´m not going to give myself any grief about that. I believe this could very well be the worst thing that has happened to me since I got here...and that is nothing. If this is the worst that will happen to me then I´m very happy to have lost the pictures!

I flew from Barcelona to Poland (a 3 hour flight) with no hostel reservation but I figured I could get the people at the Tourist Information (TI) office to help me book one. The Lonely Planet guide also had the addresses of a couple of places that I intended to use as my plan B. So after making the 1 hour long immigration line at the newly opened terminal of the Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw I found myself standing inside a tram towards the city center where I could not even understand the names of the stops, let alone what people were talking about. It did not go that bad. I got off on the right tram stop and walked towards the hostel the TI recommended. That afternoon I only walked to the train station to purchase my tickets for the following trips and walked back to the hostel. It was dark, I was tired, it was cold, it was raining and I did not feel like venturing out alone under those conditions. The following day, even though it continued to rain, I walked to the Old Town in the morning. The Old town in Warsaw is undergoing a lot of construction and renovations. Streets are being widened, boulevards and pedestrian zones are being paved, trees are being planted, the facades of many buildings are being painted and restored. Warsaw did not impress me that much. It is a big and commercial city with lots of people out on the streets and lots of shops and restaurants. However, everyone seems to be doing their own thing and the Polish people on the streets (at least the ones in Warsaw) did not strike me as very nice, friendly and polite. But don´t get me wrong... I enjoyed my time in Warsaw sitting at coffee shops watching people, visiting the coolest music store I´ve visited thus far (way better than the Virgin Mega Store of Champs Elysee in Paris) and going to supermarkets (I love to go a couple of supermarkets in the cities I visit and looking at the different types of products they offer).

On Friday morning I took a 2 hour train heading south to the city of Krakow. Krakow is probably the most visited city in Poland and even though it is very tailored for tourists it is worth visiting. I arrived there around noon, placed my belongings in a locker inside the train station and started walking towards the city center (about a 5 minute walk). Krakow has one of the biggest town squares in eastern Europe and it is surrounded by the cathedral and beautiful buildings. The square itself is home to a permanent arts and crafts fair where traditional Polish food is also sold. Besides the town square and the many little but very quaint streets leading to it, Krakow is also famous for its Wavel Castle: the royal castle located on top of Wavel hill which was home to the Polish royal family for about 500 years until the 16th century.

I walked back to the train station that night, walked a little bit around the very modern mall located next to it, had something to eat, picked up my belongings and hopped on the night train (13 hour journey) to Budapest.