A City of Spires, Stars and Raspberries :: Krakow

Taking advantage of Cora having a work conference there, we fulfilled a long time wish to visit Krakow in September. Krakow is a very compact city that you can easily explore by foot. The weather was glorious, so as we discovered different parts of the city we also took advantage of the many outdoor cafes in the Polish sunshine.

Krakow’s historic centre is an UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Main Market Square, the castle on Wawel Hill and old Jewish district of Kazimierz are filled with little lanes and random, alluring sites. We settled into our little bed and breakfast near the centre, and were politely greeted in Polish. This ended up being a regular occurrence, as many saw our Polish/Ukrainian surname and assumed we were Polish.

Having had a really busy few weeks leading up to this short visit, we didn’t venture far off the beaten path and stuck to many of the main sites. We discovered the castle and its surroundings, some of the old synagogues and Jewish Cemetery and generally enjoyed the sights, sounds and food of Krakow.

We had a great time the first night with some of Cora’s colleagues from the conference as we found ourselves in a random little bar with Singer sewing machines dotted all over the place and deep red toned antique decorations. The place was packed but people were still dancing to the most eclectic mix of music we had ever heard. They played reggae and Spanish, pop and rock and some quite upbeat Gypsy music. At one point it even sounded like they were playing Fiddler on the Roof! It was close to 4am before we wandered home having had a great night out!

On one day we wandered across the river to the old industrial district and found the old Schindler Factory, which now houses a fabulous museum to Krakow during World War II. It features elements of Oscar Schindler’s story and how he saved close to 1,200 Jews by employing and shielding them from the concentration camps. But it also showed what everyday life was like and how the Poles, of all religions, coped with, and fought against the Nazi and then Soviet occupations. It was a wonderfully well put together museum that tried to show you through all your senses what life was like during that time, and we definitely recommend it to any future visitors.

If the weekend had a theme, it was probably best summed up by raspberries. Malina is the derivative for raspberries and there are lots of different foods, drinks and even a restaurant using malina in some way or the other. So we had delicious raspberry beer, raspberry biscuits and a raspberry honey sauce on the meat platter we shared at the Miod Malina restaurant. It was a really nice way to connect to an ancestral land and made us feel a little bit special each time we saw it on a label or menu.