Krakow, Poland

Since leaving Prague I had covered an awful lot of ground by train in very little time – over 500 miles, in fact – but thanks to my meandering back south I was still only around 150 miles distant from the Czech capital. Wroclaw shared more than just geographic locality with Prague, though; its soaring architecture also attracted fair comparisons, and the tourist literature happily referred to it as the “little Prague” and played up its relatively “undiscovered” nature (despite it having a well-developed budget travel industry and having been connected to the RyanAir budget flight grid for at least a couple of years). Wroclaw wasn’t all soaring cathedrals and gilded-front town halls. It also had its fair share of Eastern European grot.

I was keen to keep moving, and the next location I had in my sights was the well-known southern Polish city of Krakow. Its reputation preceeded itself; I had heard a number of first-hand anecdotes from people gushing about the place’s beauty.

I was late making a move from Wroclaw, so I decided to take what I thought was an “express” train, a so-called Pospieszny, or POSP. Seeing as it stopped everywhere, I think I got the wrong end of the stick, and by the time the train had reached Krakow it was already dusk. I navigated the streets from the station, risking certain Death By Polish Driver each time I had to cross a road, and discovered my hostel.

The dorm I was put in already had an inhabitant, an English chap called Ray. He was friendly and the kind of person you feel at ease with immediately, and we got on well. He was here visiting his Polish “sort of” girlfriend (his words), but this evening she had a family engagement which he had either wangled his way out of or more likely wasn’t invited to in the first place, and so we wandered out for a few beers and, er, a kebab. English tourists, eh? The evening’s highlight was by far and away sticking our heads in a popular Krakow nightclub and seeing three fiftysomething Polish men in shirts and ties bopping away to Eastern-European europop.

The next day I said my goodbyes to Ray and chipped out for a circuit of the town, which I had largely missed in my dash for the hostel. Krakow had a terrible parking problem; there were cars everywhere, mounted on pavements and the like. As I made my way past a jumbled row of cars I had to stifle a grin as one Polish driver, parked at an angle with one wheel on the pavement, reversed back and ripped her front bumper clean off as she dismounted the high kerb. One-nil to the pedestrians.

The sights around the market square were indeed beautiful. St. Mary’s Church dated back to the 14th century and was the scene of a curious legend. Every hour it rings out not a bell, but a trumpet signal that is purposefuly cut off prematurely, in remembrance of a chap who centuries ago tried to warn the city of a marauding army’s attack but who got picked off by an arrow before he could finish his trumpet solo. And the tough audience he met his end at? None other than the Mongols, when they raided Europe in the 13th century.

Completing my loop of the old city centre at the castle, but not overly fussed with going in and checking it out, I decided I was all baroqued out and went for din-dins then back to the train station to pick up an IC train to the Polish capital, Warsaw, where I had decided to settle for a few days to set up office again. (Preferably in a pub drinking Zwyiec).