Funny stuff and walk through Krakow

Funny stuff and walk through Krakow is my last post from Poland, from this visit, because I will go back to Poland. So, the funny stuff first, although not all can be seen as funny. Also, I will talk about Krakow and Przemysl (border town).

First of all, I will start with transportation. It’s time for a not-so-funny-but-still-funny-story. We got an Uber from our hotel to get to a museum which was not in the city centre. The driver didn’t speak English. Soon after leaving the hotel, which was near the airport, the driver decided to ignore the red lights of a train level crossing, and push through. The police stopped him. At that point we realised that the driver, from Pakistan, was not speaking Polish either. He tried to bribe the police, but they were not impressed. The police then went on to use google translate to communicate with him. The officer asked us for details with a good level of English. He and his colleague were having a bit of a laugh about the situation, which was funny indeed. We had a chat between us and cancelled the ride, before leaving the car. The driver was getting more and more upset.

The officer came to us to chat. He tried to reassure us that the process of giving a ticket to the Uber driver will only take a few minutes. My husband replied that, well, the driver did ignore the red lights and drove on a train line, which was clearly active. So, we tried our luck with another Uber driver. The police officers had another laugh, understandably.
The funniest part is, of course, that we could have gotten killed by a Pakistani Uber driver in Poland… after safely coming back from a country at war, Ukraine, and having had 3 air alarms in 2 days in Kyiv.

In Krakow one gets tickets for a period of time, not of distance. It might be a bit iffy early in the morning if you need a ticket which is borderline for the shorter period. Also, one can get tickets from the tram, but you need to validate it. So, you buy the tickets from a ticket machine in the tram, then you use another ticket machine to validate it.
Well… it took us a stop to figure out which machine is for buying, because it was in the middle and we boarded the tram in the front, where there were a few validating machines. After buying the tickets we thought that was it, and spent a couple of stops without a validated ticket before someone else got in and validated theirs, which we quickly did as well.

The trains in Poland are cheap and often, but not at night-time. So, when we got back from Ukraine, we had to spend a night in Przemysl due to the lack of trains to Krakow. It was also a reason why we spent 3 nights in total in Poland and not only 2, with the flight back being very early in the morning. So, we had the choice between a 2 stars hotel and a 3 stars hotel. We chose the one with 3 stars thinking it is worth getting a taxi to it, as the other one was just beside the train station, a short walk.

We didn’t expect this though! How on Earth this thing got 3 stars is beyond me. The beds were squeaking. As for decor, this was presented as “relaxing warm colours”!! It’s safe to say that while Przemysl is a lovely city worth seeing, I wouldn’t sleep there for more than 1 night and I would try to avoid that as well.

In case you were wondering, we booked a double room, not a twin room. Also, the fact that we were in separate beds didn’t mean that I wouldn’t get up if my husband would move from a side to another because the beds were incredibly squeaky! I think he would get up as well when I moved.

In Krakow we stayed at a 3 stars hotel which looked lovely, as you can see. It was clean and nice and a place I would stay again without any doubt.

Going back to what we saw in Przemysl, it included this statue of Pope John Paul II, who was Polish.

Memorials to Katyn were both in Przemysl, above, and in Krakow, below. The Katyn massacre happened in April-May 1940, when after the soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, they imprisoned Polish military officers, some of whom believed that the soviets would help them to defend the country which was invaded by the Nazis. Nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia were executed in 1940, in 3 forests and buried in mass graves.

I am not sure which of the memorials I like best. Also, I loved seeing fresh flowers at the memorials.

In Krakow, which all the following pictures are from, there were bird art installations in a few places. They looked lovely.

Krakow Barbican is a 1490s defence gateway which was linked to the city walls. Now this is a part of the Historical Museum.

The old Krakow city is gorgeous. For centuries Krakow was the capital of Poland, so there is a lot of history there.

In the city centre there were street artists performing, very skilful and impressive.

This is a view of Krakow from the entrance to the Wavel Cathedral.