What is this - Eastern Europe??

So I spent this past weekend in Krakow. :) With Rachel. And it was FABULOUS!

I arrived on Thursday afternoon at Krakow Airport and exchanged some money (so frustrating - everyone just move to the Euro!), trying to figure out how I'd get into town to my hostel when I heard, "Sarah!" I can't even convey how awesome it was to see Rachel at the airport. She'd come to pick me up and wanted to surprise me, which she definately did. It was so good to see her again and it was like no time had passed, even though the last time I saw her was at the beginning of May.

So we caught the bus back to our hostel and went to go see some of Krakow. We didn't get to see very much. Not because of my blindness (though that really didn't help me), but because even though it was 4:30pm it was pitch black. It felt like it was at least 8pm and we were looking for restaurants for dinner before realising what time it was. Woops.

Anyway, things that are awesome about Krakow:

It is stunningly beautiful. It's a little bit Paris and a little bit Florence and it has so much history.

It's hard to decide what my favourite things were - the food, the buildings, or the dragon. Yes, the dragon. There's this legend that there was a dragon in a cave under Wawel Castle and it was terrorising (yes) the locals. Then a lowly cobbler volunteered his services and using his brains because he lacked the braun of the sword-weilding knights that had preceeded him, killed the dragon by tricking him into eating a sheep stuffed with tar and sulfur. The dragon, his stomach feeling like it was on fire, ran to this river:

So then, the dragon drank and drank and drank... until he exploded. Pop!

And that was the end of the dragon.

Oh, and did I mention yet that Rachel and I totally slayed one too?

Or at least, had a dragon come up to us we would have been prepared fo sho.

Other things I liked about Krakow: how much they love John Paul II. I get it, right, he's Polish? Yeah? And he's all over the city. Rach and I saw one girl praying (and crying!) to a relief of JPII on the wall of the Dom late one night (actually, it was 8:30pm, but it was so dark it felt like 1am), there were several statues and pictures of him throughout the city, and there's even a banner outside a house that he lived in back in the day when he was a priest:

Actually, the building was on a really cool street, allegedly Krakow's oldest street, dating from the Middle Ages. I dunno though - it was pretty and all, but it seemed a bit new for Middle Ages, and considering the fact that Poland was pretty much flattened during WWII... but who am I to argue with the guidebook?

You can't visit Krakow without making a trip out to Auschwitz. I think it's really important to visit places like this. I'd already gone to Sachsenhausen when I went to Berlin, so I knew what I was in for. It's still so depressing though.

We also went to Birkenau, but because of the timing and everything we basically had 20 minutes there. So not enough. And because it was very dark and cold, we basically had a look at the train tracks and the bookstore.

Then the real adventure began. We took the last bus back to Auschwitz and it was packed. Sardines, man. Then everyone from that bus stood waiting for the bus from Auschwitz to Krakow. By this stage Rachel and I were tired and hungry, and deciding we would never all fit onto that bus, and seeing that there was another bus an hour later at 6:20, we decided to head across the road and have dinner. Gosh we are full of awesome.

Tummies full of borscht and pizza, and patting ourselves on the back for our brilliance, we stood waiting in the dark for the bus. The bus that never came. With no idea of what to do we asked for help from the man at the gate of Auschwitz, which was now completely deserted except for him, a whole lot of fog, and a bunch of ghosts I'm sure. He told us there was a bus at 7:30. We decided we didn't believe him on account of a particular bus that was supposed to arrive at 6:20 that never did. After wondering what to do for what seemed like forever (it could have been 2 minutes, but 2 minutes in minus weather is a very long time), we headed to the hotel across the road and asked them if they knew anything about a way to get home. Luckily for us the man on the desk was lovely and looked up the train timetables and told us how to get there. It was only a 20 minute walk away. Oh good? We also might be able to find a bus back from the bus station which was at the end of the road on the way there.

So we left the hotel and started heading into the mist. We had noticed two guys talking to each other on the other side of the road, but when we walked past one of them broke away and started walking behind us. When he started saying something I kind of maybe freaked out and Rachel and I started walking faster to put some distance behind us. Anyway, long story short (and we all know I have trouble achieving that), we eventually "lost" them when we made it to the bus station. I'm sure they were perfectly respectable boys who just wanted to know directions to something, or were asking for a light, but it was dark, they had obviously heard us speaking English and knew we wouldn't understand them, and it was cold and we were very worried we wouldn't be getting home that night. So we were really freaked out by this incident.

Anyway, bus station = no more buses that night. In fact, I think that 6:20 bus left from the bus station, not from the bus stop at Auschwitz. If that was the case, A LITTLE FREAKING SIGNAGE WOULDN'T GO ASTRAY. (Wow, it's a lot of effort to do Kanye West capslock.) Eventually we made it to the train station with me saying the entire time, "Are you sure this is the right way? Shouldn't we be there by now?" Poor Rachel. But it's her own fault, what with being blessed with the ability to read a map. We waited another 40 minutes for a train and made it back to the hostel by 10:30. By this time all thoughts of a big night out went out the window, and we had a lovely night of nanna-age watching Seventeen Again. (Which, I might add, is surprisingly HILLARIOUS! Wow. I actually rate Zack Efron. Something is not right.)

Sunday was spent wandering the town because we had booked our trip to coincide with bloody November 1st, All Saints' Day. Seriously, the airline should have warned me when I booked my dates and said, "Are you sure? Cos on Sunday EVERYTHING will be closed." Grrr. At least pubs, restaurants and cafes were open. Which meant that we got to drink the world's best hot chocolate at Nowa Prowincja (basically just melted chocolate. Epic WIN), have a couple of tatankas, which is a Polish drink consisting of Żubrówka, which is vodka made of bison grass, and apple juice (YUM), have some nasty Polish beer, and eat again at the restaurant we ate at on our first night with the best barszcz (beetroot soup with dumplings) I've ever tasted. Ok, so it was the only barszcz I've ever tasted, but it was amazing! I hate beetroot, but I love this.

So that's pretty much our weekend. If you want to see all the photos they can be found here. Next stop - MUNICH on Friday. Aaaah yeah.