King Krak and the Slutty

Well, just got back from the Krakow trip after 12 hours on a Polish train, and it was a blast. Krakow isn't exactly the first place any of us here would consider visiting--those with travel plans all have their sights set on Spain and France and the UK and whatnot--but after having done the trip I'm very glad I went. Krakow is a very interesting little city.

The downtown (which went practically untouched during WW2) is the archetypal old European city- cobbled streets, big central town squares, castles, etc., but the periphery of the city is really kind of drab. Poland has a beleaguered history to say the least, and it really shows in the people, the economy, the sort of run-down quality of the place. It's currently about 1 Euros to 4 Polish złoty (which we, in our profound maturity and cultural sensitivity, pronounced "slutty" for the whole trip).

But anyway, best to begin with the beginning. Almost immediately after leaving my homestay I realized that I had completely forgotten to pack clean socks. I never, ever, ever fail to forget something when leaving on a trip, and if I had forgotten extra pants or deodorant or something non-vital/easily replaceable then it wouldn't be a huge deal.

But socks.
Where the hell do you buy socks in Poland?

Before the train ride I'd rented a bike, and had spent most of the day riding around seeing the sights around the city, so I not only had only one clean set of socks, but dirty, sweaty socks at that. "Well," I thought, "Messed that one up, eh? Too late to turn around now, gonna be late if you go back, time to man up." Definitely not an optimal way to start a four day trip to Krakow.

We all boarded the train at the Lichtenberg station at about 9:00 on Wednesday night. Normally the train ride to Krakow takes about 5 hours, but seeing as we were riding on an overnight train, we hit up a bunch of different out of the way stops along the way. I'm pretty sure we doubled back at some point in the night. The whole ride lasted about 12 hours. I really didn't mind though. Everybody bitched about the train ride, complaining about the cramped little six-person sleeping compartments and how slow we were going, but I actually like it a lot. It was nice to stick my head out the window and watch the forests and little towns pass by, and we had a lot of fun just hanging out and messing around on the train. Plus the fold out cots were actually a step up from my bed at my homestay, they at least had a little cushion to them. Sleeping on the futon here is like sleeping on an ironing board.

Upon our arrival around 9:30 we boarded a bus for our hotel. Driving through the outskirts of Krakow was an interesting experience. Not only did it have a very...industrial, minimalist sort of quality to it, but everything was in Polish, which may be a dumb observation to make, but it was jarring to be in an enviroment where I didn't know what anything meant. In Berlin if I don't know exactly what's being said I can at least tease the meaning out of the words, but Polish (a Slavic language) is so completely different from German and English (Germanic languages) that I could maybe pick out a word or two here and there. I thought I'd be able to pick up some phrases or words, but all I managed to take away from the trip was the word for water (woda).

I also felt a little ignorant and imposing. It's one thing to attempt to order something in German and have the shop owner answer you in English, but to just walk up to a native Pole and start speaking English to them was embarassing. On a couple occasions shop owners would flat out pick the currency out of my palm because I took too long to figure out what the hell all of their strange little coins were worth.

We got about an hour to move our stuff in, recuperate, and have breakfast, and then we headed off to downtown Krakow with our tour guide Marcin (pronounce Marchin, which is the Slavic version of Martin). Marcin was a great guy. He was definitely the type of guy you'd expect in the Eastern Bloc: greasy shoulder length hair, beer gut, thick accent. He'd been giving tours since about 1994 I think, but his English was still pretty spotty. He'd say stuff like, "You must remind that Poland was at one point occupated by both Germany and Russia," and "this club is a great place for making a party." In standard Central European style, it was raining the whole time, but the city tour was very nice. Berlin is absolutely filthy with graffiti, you can't go ten feet without seeing some, and while it's all sort of faded into the background (I kinda like it now), the relative cleanliness of Krakow was really refreshing.

After the city tour we broke up and went exploring by ourselves. A group of us got a little ice cream (only 1 Slutty a scoop!), and went exploring the shops in and around the city center. Around 3 or 4 a couple of us took a break in the park that surrounds the city to find a bench and sit around for a while. We sat down on a bench in the shade and immediately smelled something strange. We figured it was the bum taking a nap on the bench next to us, so we walked across the path and sat down on an adjacent bench. We discovered the source of the stink almost immediately: behind the first bench was another bum with his pants around his ankles pooping next to a tree.

We were speechless.

There have been a precious few moments in life where I've been completely, utterly at a loss for what to do, and that was one of them. He was muttering to himself the entire time, and wasn't really trying to hide himself either. He was pooping next to the tree as opposed to behind it, and the whole scene took place about five feet from the sidewalk. Me and Caitlin tried to avert our eyes the best we could, Ian decided to take the initiative and snap some photos. After thirty seconds we couldn't take any more and walked to the other side of the park.

NEXT UP: Auschwitz, more sight seeing in Krakow, and a real life Eastern European club experience.
PS, miss you guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luRG8XXcZ84