Krakow, the land of hipster birdcalls

Part II of our trip was a whirlwind tour of Krakow. The photoessay continues:

Krakow’s main square, Rynek Glowny, was a great place for peoplewatching. The indoor market in the centre sells all kinds of souvenirs – I am now the proud owner of a beautiful blue Polish old lady scarf.

The magic of Krakow was that it made me briefly like pigeons. They belonged there, and when these ones lined up so nicely for a photo I had to oblige. They look like happy Polish pigeons with puffed out chests and somehow not the English/French flying rats…

We were wandering the streets in search of food when we saw a wooden carving of a smiling Grandmother. Thinking this obviously = traditional Polish food, we stepped inside to find ourselves in a museum with marble busts of prominent old men with moustaches. This corridor led to a courtyard, which in turn led to a wooden shack filled with dolls like this one…

We started to get a bit scared to say the least! We actually had no idea what was happening, until we went through one final door and found ourselves in a dining hall! The food was so good that we went twice.

Such a beautiful church! It was breathtaking. The ceiling was my favourite part, it was dark blue and covered in golden stars. I like that God blessed people with such creativity and talent to build something beautiful that would bring glory to Him.

Krakow was also the city of pierogi, mashed potatoes, a surprising amount of R’n’B clubs, Jewish history…and this cheesy photo taken at Wawel castle:

The title of this post comes from the fact that if you say ‘Krakow’ fast enough, it kind of sounds like a bird signal…which was used whenever we saw hipsters. It was used a lot here.

Of course, Krakow is not far from Auschwitz, and we visited here. I’ll write about that in a separate post once my thoughts are collected on it.

Some Hungarian highlights

Our trip to Budapest and Krakow was so jampacked that if I described everything we did, you would probably die of old age. So here’s the visual version:

As in capital cities everywhere, all over Budapest you can see padlocks chained to trees, fences, bridges…lovers are supposed to engrave their names onto them, lock them to something then throw the key in the river and their love will last forever. Judging by the rust, these two have been together a long time…

Forget goulash, this is Hungarian cuisine at its finest. Cheese wrapped in chocolate. ( Before you judge, think chocolate cheesecake) So so so so delicious and sadly only available in Hungary. If you’re headed that way send me a box or five in the post.

I fell in love with the trams in Budapest, they’re so Eastern-European-Der-Vorleser-ish.

Pretty roof tiles on a church betraying Hungary’s Turkish influences.

Market traders taking pride in their displays.

The best night out in Budapest – In the Jewish district, plenty of ruin bars can be found. Built in the dilapidated ruins from the Communist area, these bars are sprawling, full of secret staircases and hidden nooks, piled high with Trabis, bathtubs, kaleidoscopes and films projected on the wall of horses learning how to swim. Naturally.

A poignant memorial of the Holocaust – shoes strewn along the riverbank mark the spot where many Jews were shot into the river by the Nazis. Someone had been here before us and left a white rose by every pair of shoes.

The Szechenyi (YES to spelling it right first time without looking) Baths, where we spent a very relaxing day in the naturally hot water, absorbing the minerals until we were prunes and people watching characters like these guys:

Legends.

Lush.

The sunshine is back and all is well. I’ve had the chance to discover some beautiful scenery on my doorstep. Molly’s family were visiting and were very generous and lovely and let me tag along on some of their outings. We took the bus to Eze which is a tiny village between Nice and Monaco, and we took the perilous Chemin de Nietzsche trail from the hilltop down to the sea. We weren’t quite aware of the state of the trail and its length when we set out, but it didn’t matter when this view accompanied us all the way down the hill:

Later in the holidays one of the teachers at my school invited me on a daytrip to ‘le Paradis’. Needless to say I was pretty intrigued! We hopped on a train and enjoyed the beautiful sun-soaked countryside until we reached our destination, Le Dramont, which was enveloped in a thick sea fog. Undeterred, we headed to a tiny cove and waited for the sun to come out, which it always does. From the cove you can see a tiny island with a castle built on it – this castle on L’Ile d’Or was the inspiration for the Tintin comic, L’Ile Noire (which actually takes place in Scotland).

Copyright Herge

Afterwards we went walking in L’Esterel which was just beautiful. Red rock and green trees everywhere. We sat still beside the pond and could hear the frogs croaking to each other. So much beautiful creation to be appreciated around me.