Krak-O-Mania!

In terms of most things good, it doesn't get much better than Krakow, that's why four of us -- Chad, Rozalind, Gaines and I -- set out for the promised land with the second half of our "autumn" break. (They simply don't say the word "fall" in these parts.)

Long train rides in Eastern Europe are not always good, especially those of the overnight variety. Comfort plays second-fiddle to destination around here. We were willing to spent the 60 dollars (round-trip) to get ourselves, via overnight train through the Slovakian mountains, to Poland's magnificent queen city. All the Rick Steves groupies had talked it up as their favorite city so far, and the guidebooks rave, so I was more than excited to see the city.

The girls were rather concerned with the overt sketchiness of overnight travel, and sounded suspiciously like mothers as they retold urban legends of luggage theft or other misdemeanors. In no mind to convince them otherwise, Chad and I agreed to devise an elaborate locking system in our train compartment. Simply put, we strung my backpack through the door handle and the luggage rack and found ourselves in a vault. Two people slept in the vault, two in a different compartment, we were lax enough to want to stretch out. One significant flaw in the plan emerged over the course of the evening. Seemingly every hour we would cross a new border, and new immigration control patrols would storm our cabin, banging on the doors. And when it wasn't border guards, it was ticket collectors, very insistent on not letting anyone slip through the cracks, even if it came at the expense of our beauty sleep.

But it was all to be worthwhile, as we had friends in Krakow. One of Roz's Harvard friends (how fun it is to toss that term around so casually) studies and lives in the city. And my long-lost friend Luke-Ji has been working in the city for more than half a year. He was born in Tokyo to Japanese and American parents, went to an English-medium high school before jetting off to Madison, sight unseen, for four years of study. We met in Hindi class, the only two clueless ghoras, and spent two years together sampling Indian language and culture classes. After graduation, he met a Polish girl while on an internship in India. You can see already where this story is headed. Now he's at another internship in Krakow, she lives more towards Warsaw.

I have come to pick friends well, apparently. Luke-Ji met us at the train station the moment we arrived...5:30 am. Unbelievably stellar performance. He dragged our sleeping bodies and heavy luggage through the city, and on the bus ride to his Soviet-era apartment, we watched the sun rise slowly over the city of 700,000.

The Krakovian city centre is simply picture perfect, a thing of legend. The old towne is largely preserved. City walls protected the city better than most in Europe, but they were taken down in the 1800s. Now, a beautiful series of parks and walkways completely surround the downtown area. A majestic castle stands over the river, complete with fire-breathing dragon of legend and statue. The very center of the city is a two-block by two-block grand market square, I would gladly claim the best in Europe. Churches, cafes, shops and museums line the heart of the city, it pulses with people.
(And pigeons.) We walked and talked, it was wonderful.

Luke-Ji turned us over to Dahm, our other Asian-American friend turned Krakovian thanks to a Polish girlfriend. Dahm managed to pull some strings, and we sauntered our way up to Uniwersytet Jagiellonian, one of Europe's oldest and most renowned universities, as if we belonged there. And in a funny way, we did. We had gotten ourselves invited to a two-hour lecture on the intricacies of vodka, a Polish favorite. Complete with guest lecturer, PowerPoint presentation, history, culture and -- of course -- interactive samples from eight distinct types of vodka. I was in some sort of strange paradise. This was the institution where Copernicus had studied the stars! Within these walls, Pope John Paul II studied theology! And here I was...studying vodka right alongside them. Genius.

The second day, Rozalind and Chad took the solemn trip to Auschwitz. But Gaines and I, noted Germanologists, had already been to German concentration camps, and opted to ventured to the far more merry Wieliczki Salt Mines, not far outside of Krakow. Some sort of freak of nature, the mine sits on a rock salt deposit that once accounted for half of Poland's entire GDP! These days, it is an odd UNESCO-sanctioned tourist trap. For dozens of generations, miners have carved tunnels, statues, rooms -- even entire chapels -- out of the rock salt.

Yes, I did lick the walls. And yes, it did taste good. I am proud, too, that I even coerced Gaines into licking her finger, then touching the rock wall, very high where certainly no one else had ever committed a similar foul, and then tasting her finger. Strangely delighted, would be my guess as to her reaction.

An early evening stroll along the River Wiszla, nibbling on pastries, was spent in good company, alongside Gaines. In exchange for my lessons on the fine art of peeling her own orange, an exercise she had never performed before, she seemed to agree to be my wandering partner in Krakow. It's very nice to have a friend.

But as our time in Krakow progressed, Rozalind slowly fades out of the story. She was ravaged -- brutalized, beaten down -- by illness, probably the same illness that had haunted us most of our travels in Romania. We got her safely back to Budapest, but it is safe to say that she didn't enjoy Krakow as much as the rest of us.

We ate and drank interesting things at interesting places. (Hot spiced wine goes down as a favorite.) When we got desperate, we went to McDonald's. We saw mummies and Da Vinci's, but alas no Rembrandts. Krakow's piece had been sent to Milwaukee, of all places, for an exhibit! We read a week-old USA Today and considered it a privilege.

And we shopped. Amber's a specialty in Krakow and Chad's mom sent him on a specific buying mission, but I'm far too attached to one specific amber purchase to browse lightly. So I spent time walking and looking at Polish girls. It is fair to say they are very pretty girls. For some reason I seem to have an attachment to Polish girls, although I'm not sure of the origin. Perhaps I'll have to take several trips back to Krakow to research the answer...

Maybe the vodka will help, too.