Because of a special offer of an aircraft company, a former collogue from work, Iwona, and myself booked a flight to Kraków. Not for nothing Kraków is known as the culture-capitol-city of Poland. There are many nice places, the famoust and europe biggest market square "Rynek", the Wawel-castle or Juliusz-Slowacki theater or just some of them. We spent three days in this beautifull city and met some people from couchsurfing at a local CS-event.
Location
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About
As mentioned, we arrived at Kraków by airplane. The flight didn't take long. After reaching the cruising altitude, the plane already approached for a landing, just one hour - and we were there. :-)
By airplane to Kraków in just one hour
We stayed at a hostel close to the city center. It was a good one, it had a (free) highspeed internet, flat-tv screen and so forth, but all for a very small price! We bought a tourist-guide, and went to the city center. We also visited the jewish district, south-west of the main square.
I was really happy about learning slovak language, because it did help me somehow even in Poland! For sure, there are differences, but some sentences or words are totally the same!
Skyline of Kraków
The City Center
In the city center, there is the famous mainsquare Rynek:
Krakóws famous mainsquare Rynek at daylight
Krakóws famous mainsquare Rynek at night
Krakóws famous mainsquare Rynek at night, with entrance to market hall
Next to it is the Mariencurch:
Iwona in front of Mariencurch
... were also a head of some statue was - here with Iwona in it's eyes :-)
Some statue with Iwona inside
A very impressing building is the Wawel castle. We went in and "booked" an MP3-audio-guide, which instructed us how to move inside the building (that was funny anyway), and of course with "interessting" information :-)
Wawelcastle
Iwona and me at Wawelcastle
Wawelcastle at night, of course closed...
Another interessting building is the Juliusz-Slowacki theater:
Juliusz-Slowacki theater
Communism Tours
At our hostel we got a flyer for "Communism Tours". You could book a trip through "Nowa Huta" a commuismn/Stalism experient in Kraków. Somehow a strange point of view about those things, but actually we were to late for that. But I found a video about that:
But we've been to the place of the towns former power station as mentioned in the video:
Some old building in an old socialism part of Kraków
Nightlife
On friday and saturday evening, we enjoyed Krakóws nightlife with some friends from couchsurfing. We wrote Alicja from Kraków-Couchsurfing on friday afternoon and she answered very quick! We met her close to our hostel and went in a pub. Alicja also invited us to a couchsurfing meeting on saturday. We saw some nice pubs and a dancing club. I was feeling lucky, because at the local couchsurfing party, I got in contact with a girl from Canada, where I'm currently thinking about to go there in summer!
Overall experience
Those three days in Poland were really nice. I've been to Poland for the first time and, as some of you might know, I love it to "decrypt" new countries and their people :-)
Kraków is a good place to visit, but maybe you should go there in spring or autumn, because in february it's quite cold there ;-)
Full photogallery of Kraków