Brain Assassin

Last year my friend David and I decided to make a short trip to a Euro­pean coun­try any­time soon. On Fri­day, March 14, we finally went to the des­ti­na­tion of our choice: Krakow. Since he has already worked there for almost a year he knew what we were get­ting our­selves into. Any­way, we flew to Krakow and checked in at the hotel we had cho­sen in advance. Note to self: If there will be a next time, choose a hos­tel. The hotel was quite nice, really, although we decided to go for the cheap­est rooms avail­able. Cer­tainly not high stan­dard but then, all we really needed was a shower and a bed.

After hav­ing checked in we went strait to the main square were we had our­selves a late break­fast at 1400. This was the first time I ever vis­ited Poland and I found it to be really nice in Krakow. Most restau­rants have their premises under the earth so you almost always have to descend a stair­way. And man, they do like dec­o­ra­tion. Wher­ever we went, what­ever pub or restau­rant we chose to pay a visit – it’s almost impos­si­ble to find more than a few square feet of undec­o­rated wall. That cer­tainly adds to the under­ground style you are likely to encounter in quite a few East­ern Euro­pean countries.

After “break­fast” David showed me around and explained a few facts to me. You can look them up for your­self on Wikipedia if you like, I only want to con­cen­trate on my impres­sions here. We fol­lowed a few streets around the main mar­ket square and then slowly headed back to our hotel. On the way back we made a stop in two pubs and drank a few beers. Nat­u­rally, we went for Żywiec which is def­i­nitely among the best beers I’ve ever enjoyed. Unfor­tu­nately, I for­got my dig­i­tal pocket cam­era so there are no pho­tos avail­able from any of the pubs. Sorry folks.

Three beers later we looked for a store and bought four more beers and a small bot­tle of Vodka for the hotel room. There we just sat down and did some talk­ing. Later we went to another club and then things became blurry real fast and so we headed back to the hotel to finally go to bed. Actu­ally, I don’t remem­ber get­ting back to the hotel, get­ting the keys for our room and falling into bed. Since I woke there in the morn­ing we must have made it. Need­less to say that David was in bet­ter shape than I. Barely.

Break­fast wasn’t really good but they got eggs, ham, cheese and bread so I won’t com­plain about that. Cof­fee sucked big time, though. Next we bought a few non-​​alcoholic drinks and went for the Wawel, one of the most impres­sive build­ings in Krakow. Shortly there­after we explored the Old Town and had a small lunch at the Rooster, which is quite rem­i­nis­cent of the famous Hoot­ers. The weather sucked, it was cold, foggy, windy and it rained from time to time so we had a small nap in our room.

Then we went to the main mar­ket square and helped our­selves to a tasty steak which helped greatly in recu­per­at­ing from the last night. Well, that’s it. We went to one of the pubs we vis­ited the day before and drank a beer. Finally, we got back to the hotel and went to the restau­rant. There we got a per­sonal wait­ress who proved to be very nice and oblig­ing. Even more so than usual, as we soon dis­cov­ered. Any­way, there we had a soup and then we almost drowned in beer. Almost six hours later we went to bed.

On Sun­day, noth­ing spe­cial hap­pened. We had break­fast, checked out and went to the air­port. That’s it. I still have a few obser­va­tions though. First, the Pol­ish are really nice peo­ple and they cer­tainly look after the city of Krakow. It’s very clean there and you can hardly find any cig­a­rette stumps on the streets. I under­stand that isn’t quite com­mon in the rest of Poland, though. I guess they are deter­mined to keep Krakow clean because it is often referred to as the cul­tural cap­i­tal of Poland.

Bot­tom line: It was a nice trip and if we’re going to repeat it one day we will do so with a slightly big­ger time frame in mind. I don’t have any­thing planned for my next vaca­tion but my girl­friend would like to see Prague and I promised that we would go there this year. Lon­don is an option too, but I don’t know for sure right now. David and I are going to make a few more short trips in the next years and we got plenty of coun­tries – speak: cities in dif­fer­ent coun­tries – we would like to visit.

Enjoy the pic­tures, few as there are.