Skip to main content

Krakow

I never cease to be amazed at how popular some bands are in places that you wouldn't expect, For example on the train trip from Wroclaw to Krakow a lot of young people got of at a place called Katowice. At little suprising as Katowice looked like the worse side of Elizabeth (my apologies to the people who have actually been and\or lived there, I wait to be corrected) turns out Tool and Chris Cornell were playing there. My loss, or not, I'm not sure these days.
I was told Krakow is a beautiful town and it has a lot of history. But its really hard to confirm these things whens it bucketing down with rain. You virtually have to put the proverbal gun to your head to force yourself to leave to confines of the hostel and make the most of it. In the process of getting soaked I checked out the Castle (overrated), the Jewish quarter (under rated) and the old Jewish Getto from WW2 (by this time I was sick of the rain so sat in a cafe for 3 hours waiting for the rain to stop).
I went to the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in Oświęcim. The first thing that really hits you is that the place is way too pretty. I think that every photo i've ever seen of the place was taken in black and white and after a healthy snow storm. Its really hard to get a grasp of the horror that occured here when everything looks so darn.... nice. The thing that really disturbed me wasn't that so many people were murdered here, it was the place was run like a business. How can we speed up the process? How can we made more profit? What can we learn from it? How can we be more efficent? Wankers.
Although I only stayed in Krakow an extra day because all the museums were closed on the first day i was there, by luck it happened to be a National Holiday, so the museums were closed anyway, but there was a lot of other stuff going on. For one there was a Pierogi (A bit like ravioli) festival. I more or less went to every stall and said I'll have one of each. Secondly the Red Bull Formula 1 team had a demo to promote the upcoming Hungarian Grand prix. They closed off a street (same street as my hostel as luck would have it) and had the car race up and back and few time with a few go arounds thrown in for good measure. Otherwise the weather was good everyone was happy. Nice.



cheers,
Schuey.


-icecream, americans, swede, food.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Strung Treng

Strung Treng was an unexpected stop over, more a hospital visit then the usual tourist stuff. I was waiting in a guest house restaurant for the bus to Laos when i was rather suddenly overcome with a fever and fatigue. I rented a room and slept for almost 24 hours straight. The manger was understandably concerned, he thought it might have been Malaria, and sent me to the doctor for tests. It wasn't Malaria but was probably Dengue Fever but I needed a 10 hour bus trip back to Phnom Pehn to confirm this. Either way the 'cure' was Panadol, plenty of water and rest. I was going to do this in Laos anyway so decided against the bus back to Phnom Pehn and caught the bus to Laos the next day instead.
Post a Comment
Read more

Al Hudayda

I asked the hotel manager in Manakhah about getting to Al Hudayda. He assured me I just had to catch a taxi to Al Magraba on the main road and wait for a taxi to pass by. And so I waited. And waited. And waited but of course taxis don't leave Sana'a until full so I wasn't having much luck. Not that I minded much. I just sat in a road side cafe drinking tea,watching what was going on around me and answering the same three questions to anyone that cared to ask. With the help of a local I eventually managed to hitch a lift as far as Banjil. Turned out for the best really. Its must more comfortable on the bends when you have the back seat of a land rover to yourself. The drive out of the mountains along a wadi was quite impressive but once out of the mounatins the drive to Banjil and the shared taxi to Al Hudayda from there was like the drive from anywhere to Port Augusta. Long, flat, hot, featureless, boring. During the day Al Hudayda is dead. There might have been a bit going...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amasya

Lonely Planet suggested that Amasya is one of the prettiest towns in Turkey. Set in a mountain valley with a river running down the middle, I couldn't agree more. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves when I eventually post them. Once again the weather was perfect and it hadn't snowed here at all which was good because I had a lot of walking to do. It was a strange town. Mostly because it was one of the more modern towns I had come across, it almost had a cosmopolitan feel to it. But then there would be a horse and cart parked in the street. Most people spoke some English. They would come up to me (blond hair = foreigner), especially children and say hello, welcome, what is your name? where are you from? but that would be it as if that was as far as their grasp on the English language would go. This was excellent but as the conservation wasn't going to go any further (my Turkish matches their English) it made for a weird silence until one of us went on our way. I d...
Post a Comment
Read more