Part of the green ring around the city. In the 19th century, the Austrians began taking down the Medieval walls around Krakow, and replaced it with walking trails and green space. It's about 8 km around, and one of my goals this semester is to run around the whole thing, but only when it warms up a bit.
The crew. From left, Caitlin, John and Christine.
convenience store, for the essentials.
Where I buy groceries. Mmmmm...food.
Safety first! Don't worry, Mom & Dad--this is about 2 1/2 blocks from my dorm.
The cute little fruit stand where I buy oranges & apples.
Google.pl headquarters. Also, a purty building.
Confusion on the tram.
A familiar after-dinner mint.
Cloth Hall at night, the main market square in Krakow
What remains of Krakow's medieval Town Hall.
The museum for my school, the Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest unis in Europe.
Glockenspiel in the courtyard.
Giddy walking.
A familiar figure--Copernicus rocks my world. Also, my universe.
The man himself.
Ritzy mirror within the Collegium Maus, the museum we visited.
The auditorium, used for special occassions. Yes, I go to school at this university (or will, once classes start.). It's so kickin'.
The most surly of surly tour guides. He kept his leather jacket swung over his arm the entire tour, only putting it on at the end. He was particularly disdainful of the older British women in our group who asked questions he deemed not worthy of his time. He. Was. Fantastic.
Cloth Hall during the day, with a controversial modern sculpture in the foreground.
Giddiness, again.
The main market square. At 200 m x 200 m, it is the largest market square in Europe.
The line of market stalls inside Cloth Hall.
Amber is huge here. I already bought a nice pair of studs (for a little over $10--everything here is SO CHEAP.) that I am now referring to as my “Jurassic Park earrings.” It's only a matter of time before they start sprouting a stegosaurus or two.
St. Mary's Cathedral. Pigeons, by the way, are everywhere, much to my chagrin, although, according to legend, they are really Polish knights turned into the little rats with wings by a witch. So that's fortunate.
Gee whiz, I love Cloth Hall. The fences in the front of this shot are covering up an excavation that is going on underneath the square. Our program director, Beata, is an archaeologist working on Wawel Castle, in another part of the city, but has arranged with her friends at this excavation for us to go down there and take a tour sometime during the semester. Wow, am I excited for that.
Outside the medieval part of the city looks a bit more, erm, Eastern Europe-y.
The tram system, however, is very good.
Still, Baroque architecture is prolific throughout Krakow.
Sipping with the crew.
This latke was truly fantastic. Polish cuisine, surprisingly, is agreeing with me, even though their main vegetables--pickles, cabbage, beets and mushrooms--don't.
Remains of the Medieval wall.
The gatehouse in the background is the Florian Gate. And in the foreground are racks upon racks of oil paintings for sale. It's truly a magnificent sight.
An abbey just outside the city limits.
Part of the Zwierzyniec district, one of the oldest parts of Krakow.
See? Eastern Europe? What did I tell ya?
German shepherds are EVERYWHERE. That, and dachshunds (though none even close to as cute as Charlie. Duh.).
A familiar name.
We took an excursion to the Kosciuszko Mound, which is a large, well, mound built as a tribute to Kosciuszko, who rebelled against the third partition of Poland in 1794. The rebellion lasted for nearly 2 years and Kosciuszko is something of a national hero. The Polish build mounds, apparently, frequently in remembrance of those great to their country. It was quite the climb.
winding up and up the mound.
A rock at the top.
Normally, the top of the mound offers a spectacular panoramic view of Krakow. However, this was a bit of fog.
Ah, the city is lovely, no?
Another familiar name.
The Kosciuszko mound from below.
Still, it had a lovely entrance hall. This was once a chapel for a fort the Austrians build atop this hill in the early 19th century.
a little dose of urban decay, part 1.
part 2.
part 3.
As we passed by a large graveyard, there were several stalls set up, selling flowers and candles to place on graves. I loved this concept of capitalism, and found it ingenious, warped and a little morbid--a perfect blend.
I bought a vase and flowers at the main market square. Think spring!
A gate in the Jewish section of Kazimierz. Krakow was originally at least four or five villages that grew into each other, and were compiled as one city in the 19th century. Kazimierz, while it is made up of both Christians and Jews, is known for its Jewish population. Before the Holocaust, Krakow was home to 65,000 Jews. Afterward, there were 5,000.
The main square of Kazimierz. This is where Spielberg filmed the portions of Schindler's List that took place in the Jewish ghetto of Krakow. The actual Jewish ghetto has been completely down since WWII, so this area of town was the closest to resembling the ghetto of the 1940s when Spielberg was filming in the early 1990s.
Inside the only synagogue that is still in use in Kazimierz. This was once a private synagogue, used by only one family. After it was restored in the 1950s, it is now used by many families for worship.
A graveyard outside the synagogue. Destroyed by the Nazis, this graveyard has been painstakingly rebuilt since the mid-20th century.
A wailing wall made up of the old gravestones borders one end of the graveyard.
In lieu of candles, those visiting the cemetery will also place small stones on gravestones in remembrance of the dead.
We got this amazingly huge almost open-faced sandwiches for lunch called “zapiekanki.”
They're suriously enormous--and yes, had pickles and mushrooms on them. But still, a tasty experience was had by all.
Posed! and cold.
Spielberg also filmed here.
