Day 1: Kraków

My brother asked me quite some time ago about the feasibility of doing a WW2 roadtrip, taking in Berlin, Munich and Auschwitz within the space of a few days. The answer to that was that it was totally unfeasible, which has led to a refinement; we're now in Poland with a view to visiting Auschwitz on Armistice Day. Our group has swollen from us two to include our other brother, our father, and our brother-in-law.

Getting here relied upon that universal constant, the very early start, and two aeroplanes. In something of a novelty for me, we flew from my local airport, Birmingham, with KLM to Amsterdam, and then caught a connection to Kraków. Having landed and exited without needing a passport check, presumably because we flew Schengen to Schengen, the next trick was to track down our rental car, a 9-seat monster. It's a good job I bought external insurance because the prices here are through the roof; a scratch on the bumper will set us back 367€, according to a document I was asked to sign.

We registered Rob as an extra driver since he too has experience driving in Europe. He was soon thrown into the deep end in a downpour, since it occurred to me that he's driven around Europe in vans bigger than this one, whereas I've only used small cars and never driven a van in my life. My logic missed out on an obvious flaw once we pulled off though (having waited around fifteen minutes for someone to come and manually open the gate to let us out): Rob's only ever driven right-hand drive. Whoops. He did a really good job and we were soon in Krakow, having spotted our hotel and attempting to find a place to park. In the end, it seemed easiest to complete a loop and return to the hotel to drop the others off, whilst Rob and I looked for parking. Approaching the hotel, we noticed a spare place on the corner of the street, and Rob drove into it.

As it happens, the very friendly staff at our hotel helpfully informed us that this was illegal, since although that particular spot, like the others on the street, is free to park in, it's only available for residents, who are identifiable by a sticker on their windscreen, conspicuous by its absence on mine. Not all the visitors seem as amicable as the staff, however, judging by an entry I spotted in the guest book:

After we'd all checked in, Rob and I headed off to find a private car park, with me driving this time to make up for debuting him to left-hand-drive earlier in the day. Inner-city driving is horrible on your first day, as I learned in Tenerife a couple of years ago.

Once back, we all convened and decided to go for a stroll. We're staying in the old Jewish Quarter, and that soon became clear when we saw the shop names:

We'd peeked into a few restaurants on our journey and noticed that the prices were very reasonable, although they all seemed to be narrow affairs limited to two-seater tables. We were now into a bigger square where we noticed the inverse: the restaurants could comfortably seat us but the prices were notably more expensive:

At the very end there was one with decent prices and which allowed us to get out of the rain, which was bucketing down. Whilst we were waiting to place our order, I pulled out a map to help plan what to do next. Regular readers who know of The Curse will have no problems guessing what the first street to jump out at me was:

Yes, Esperanto again in the form of another Zamenhof Street!

I was highly tempted at the thought of goulash but its accompaniment sounded very unappetising: cabbage pancakes. I gave in, prioritising goulash, and buying a portion of chips as back-up. It turned out that I didn't need them because the cabbage was rather like Rösti or hash browns:

I'd wanted to visit Wawel Cathedral but we were approaching 16:30, when the sun was supposed to set, and it would've been a bit of ground to cover. We decided instead to remain close by and head in the opposite direction to see Oskar Schindler's factory. The journey, again under a barrage of rain, involved crossing the Vistula:

Rob navigated us using his phone but all we could see was an art gallery where the factory should've been:

It was then that Matt's eagle eyes spotted something: the factory was preserved within the exterior of the gallery!

It was extremely dark at this point, and so it was time to leave, in the hope of finding somewhere drier. As we were leaving, the others read a plaque by an otherwise unassuming piece of brick wall. It turned out that it was part of the Gdansk shipyards which were the source of the Solidarity protests from the early 80s:

On the way back from home, Matt led us to an Irish pub he'd seen. We popped in but it was cramped and my glasses steamed over with the heat, so Dad and I left other three to enjoy their time there whilst we headed back to the hotel. My clothes are now drying on the towel rail whilst I write this blog. I think it might now be time to try tracking down the other three, since there's a pub next door and I have a few złoty in my wallet. But if I can't find them ... well, that leaves more for me, doesn't it?