Backtracking Part 1 -- Polska for Pleasure

Man, it's been so long that I don't even know where to begin...

Well, first off, traveling to Poland was a bit of a concern to me, primarily because of the fact that the Polish language is in no way a descendent of the Latin language..? (does that make sense?)

I think my main objective of going to Poland was to make a visit out to the WW2 concentration camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau, that and a chance at picking up a road-side garden gnome...but the latter never really worked out...

Anyway, let's get right to the meat of this blog...

The first thing I did was head straight over to Auschwitz-Birkenau.



I have to say that having visited Berlin a month before, definitely made the visit to the concentration camps "easier"...if you can even call it that. If anything at all, I think that some of the emotion of the visit to the camps were a bit off-put because of how quickly the tour rushed each group through the sites. There was next to no time to stand and examine the sites from different perspectives, or even think to ourselves adequately without the guide already moving on to something else to talk about.

On the bright side of things, during the course of the tour, I was able to make friends with two amazing Spanish girls, (from left: Marian & Anna).



And since we all wanted to experience a true taste of Polish cuisine before leaving, we pretty much spent the rest of the day with together, stuffing our faces with a variety of perogies, and some sort of cheese-tomato-sauce-garlic-chive-flatbread that I can no longer remember the name, and drowning ourselves with some of the local brew.

The next day, I after a delicious and extremely filling lunch of perogies at local Milk Bar...



...I made my way out to the famous Saltmines.



I gotta be honest, the mines themselves were impressive, and the statues and reliefs carved out of the salt were incredible, but the rest of the whole setup was absurdly hokey. I understand the point is to appeal to the tourists, but it was just ridiculous with all the lame-assed gimmicks that were being thrown out at us.

In any case, no cultural journey would be complete without more traditional cuisine?

Welcome to Chlopskie Jadlo! Shitty service, but great tasting food!



Let's what I had...first off, it was complimentary bread with 2 types of spread.



The one on the left is a dry cottage cheese with chives and onions, and next to it is lard with chunks of deep-fried lard! Tasty!

Next is the Borscht with cream and potatoes. Which was then followed up quickly with the Beef Flaki. Which was essentially a tripe stew with carrots and leek. Ooooh! Cow stomach never tasted so good!



Lastly, I gotta give a shout out to my man, Martin.



He helped me out when Alitalia lost my luggage in transit to Krakow. And he also helped me book the tours and gave me some insight on Polish culture and the local customs and poeple.

All in all, Krakow is a beautiful city.



And I must admit that I didn't nearly do as much planning for this trip as I should've done. I mean, keeping in mind that Krakow is not a very big city, there was easily much more to see and do other than Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Saltmines. But I didn't know that...because I didn't plan for anything else! And that was my mistake, but even still, I did have a good time nonetheless... =) I'm going somewhere with this, but I won't reveal it until I the Paris blog post. Anyway...1 blogpost down...3, possibly 4 more to go?