KRAKOW POLAND

The shopping Centre in Krakow! (Krakowska Galleria)


Day 163 1 zloty (PLN) = 2.3 AUD

Here we are! In Poland!!!

Took us 7 hours to get here and 3 passport control checks and 3 train ticket checks (leaving Austria, at Czech Republic border and arriving in Poland!)

Poland. A country surrounded by 7 others..amazing eh?

At first i thought it'd be really poor country..but now we've been here a bit longer, i realise it's quite upmarket. Greg came here in 2001 (To Gdansk where the shipping yards are and where the creation of Solidarity took place!) and he said it was COLD when he came...way below zero. Frozen in fact!

So for both of us..this is something quite different..it´s warm and not as oppressive as we both thought it would be!

Well, the main shopping centre is anyway! The Krakowska Galleria. It's like stepping into Paris! The other buildings surrounding it are pretty shabby and grey tho..and one thing i noticed is the bright red colours (red and white are the Polish flag colours) the women wear..and shiny...and also, people are carrying bunches of flowers around...hmm. And there are a lot of fruit and veg shops..ohlala.

Also, it's very quiet in the streets. It's like people are too scared to talk. People walk along very quietly. I remember i felt this in Antwerp (Belgium) as well. Seems civilised. I wonder if, here, people stay quiet out of habit..maybe it's been drummed into them not to speak for fear of recrimination or judgement.

After all that i've learned about the Nazi regime and the Russian takeover here in Poland..i just wouldn't be surprised if this is left over from then. It hasn't been that long since Poland has become a country out of fear.

Nevertheless, whatever the reason...the streets seem silent. Reminds me of robots walking around. OK. Not quite that bad but it did cross my mind! We must be such a rowdy bunch in Aus for me to notice such a contrast!

The train trip here to Krakow from Vienna was pretty crap...it squeaked and rattled all the way here. But after 7 hours (slow train!) we finally made it! Talk about being starving hungry once we arrived! Thank god for train stations...! (Honestly the train stations in Europe are like another city..all decked out with lots of cafe's and fruit marts and newsagents etc) It's great!

And our apartment is FANTASTIC!!!

So cheap. And clean. And big. We have our own kitchen and bathroom and it's half the price as the hotel we ended up in in Vienna..so we're very happy! Probably stay a day or two longer just to catch our breath and do some of our own cooking.

Today we went looking for a vege peeler....to build up our kitchen goods! hahaha

That's one thing...we dont have to buy much. Everything is here...as far as kitchen stuff goes..except the vege peeler!!!! (the last apartment in Vienna didn't have one either so i wonder what they use!)

So tonight..i'm going to cook up so many veges i think we'll probably burst. The one i made in Vienna lasted us two days...and we called it Goulash soup in honour of Hungary's "goulash soup"! (That isnt really typical hungarian..its just a tourist thing they cottoned onto!)

Might make this other dish as well...one i found in a Polish book from the tourist office. (where i am now!) It has flour, eggs and water mixed to make a dough and filled with cabbage....then blanched in water and shallow fried. It's called a pierogil. Sounds good eh.

Some of the other Polish foods in the book which look really good are kielbassa (sausage), Golabki (cabbage rolls), and a vegetable soup that has boiled eggs, dumplings and mushrooms. I'm getting hungry just looking at the pics!

Here's the doughy one below...apparently, according to the book, you can have cabbage or meat or make it a sweet one using dried fruit. Lots of room for variation. My type of recipe!


















Anyway, it's exciting thinking of doing our own cooking for a few days!

I'm in the Tourist office at the moment..so better go.

Hope you don't mind my grammatical and spellos in here...sometimes i'm in here so fast..that i don't have time to even think and i just have to splatt out the words and don't have time to edit...Mind you, every country has it's own spelling anyway, so somewhere in the world it has to be right!!! Ie Restaurant in Italian is ristorante..in Spanish it's Restaurante...in English it's Restaurant..and in Polish it's restaurancje!!!!!! Funny eh.

So sorry about the spelling at times...!!!!!

It's the bane of my life, not being able to edit!

I know i'm 'the teacher' as Andy reminds me...and I should be able to spell the words....like 'definitely'!!! But, I tell ya..'definately' looks so right!!!!!! I've probably been spelling it wrong for years! And i'm so pedantic usually about spelling...as my wonderful work colleagues can attest to...Caza Bob..and Suzie..hehe

Okies...enuff!

Going, going, gone.

PS Still trying to sell Telstra shares! Geepers.

PPS GO DOCKERS!!!!!! What legends they are.................................

BYE BYE AUSTRIA

Wine growing in Wachau region, Vienna, Austria Isn't it beautiful?



Day 162

Aww...we're leaving Austria tomorrow....

Such a beautiful place..and we loved having our apartment so we could cook up a storm (had a huge vege soup for 2 days) and loved everything about it.

For my birthday we went to the Wachau Region which was so lovely..and cruised on the blue Danube...ended up at Melk for lunch and looked through the Benedictine Abbey..got a bit waylaid on the way home when the freeway got shut due to an accident and we literally stopped for an hour and a half! Which meant we didn't have time to get back to our hotel in Vienna and get changed for the concert..aww.

The Mozart and Strauss concert was brilliant..so comical too..a real act. The musicians were modern and exciting!

It wasn't just the standard (sometimes boring) classical music..it was everything..an act with singers, musicians, dancers and plays and it was just great!!! The musicians played mostly Strauss and Mozart..but also Beethoven and Hayden as well.

The Blue Danube (Strauss) was my favourite...with the couple dancing the waltz...So beautiful...The whole concert was great...although it was hot..and at the same time it was thundering! There was lots of humour in the night as well..

It was so funny after when the people that were going to dinner got herded up ready to go..all the muscians and dancers were dressed in their normal gear and scambled to get outside like the rest of us!! I wonder if that's what Mozart and Strauss did in their day as well??? Weird to think hey...

The dinner after the concert was not so good! It ended up being really late...and we were tired...and in our clothes we'd been in since very early...in a place we didnt know because they led us from the concert to this remote restaurant (it was a dinner concert ticket) and so at midnight..we were eating dinner!

Then we had to get home.

And because we"d purchased a train, bus, ferry ticket all in one for 72 hours, we wanted to use that instead of using taxis (have only caught TWO taxis in our whole trip, once in Cape Town and once in Dublin!!)and so it became quite taxing. So to speak.

Catching trains at 1am in Vienna is not that much fun......there are some whacko's out and about that's for sure. But unlike when we arrived, because we knew better by now, we didn't have to pass the red light district to get to the hotel. We caught the metro train...then a tram. So it was better! (Looking on the positive side!)


It was LATE! By the time we got to bed...

Really late..later than i thought. Was about 2ish...geepers..and we had to get up early to go to Krakow in the morning!!!

But we knew we could sleep on the train so that was ok.

Still, it was great having my birthday in Vienna. Greg had his in Paris. I think the both of us will always remember them!

Was so weird though...cos i got a heap of birthday messages at about 6 - 7pm (Our time. Euro time) which meant it was about midnight in Perth......and i thought that didn't seem right! Something really happened with the mobile that day.....i also got messages that id already got...strange.

Was good tho..cos i ended up getting messages on my phone from everyone all day!! haha

So....off to Crakow...