TRIP TO KRAKOW: First the Good Side

Welcome to Krakow! This huge soccer shoe greets the many tourists at the Krakow International Airport. (This isn't my specialty, but I didn't think soccer players kick the ball on the tip of their shoes, isn't that how old white guys like George Blanda used to kick field goals?)

Initially, I went to visit the camps and the Jewish ghetto, but was pleasantly surprised to discover that long before Krakow became covered in blood, it actually was (and is) a delightfully cultured city. One is initially struck by the fact that Easy Jet flies a ~$100 round-trip weekend flight from London to Krakow which fills the city with British tourists who are only interested in the cheap food and unlimited beer. This is not a Holocaust tour group, but a "get out of Britain, cheap" crowd.


The town is just packed with fun things to do and it is hard to believe that not too many years ago this was a dreary Soviet satellite. The Poles must have really hated it and the city is filled with timeless Gothic architecture intermixed with Soviet style lifeless block housing. There is a new mall Galareia Krackowia which is the largest I have ever seen (except Mall of America) it is three floors of just modern stores and a food court with part MacDonalds and part authentic Polish food. I ate Polish sausages non-stop and when I did stop I ate Pirogis (12 for $4)

I know this is racist (sorry) but I saw the most incredible Polish bookstores. (oxymoron?) This picture was of a coffee shop with probably every Holocaust book, new and used ever written. I was told the Poles read more books than any other Eastern European country. BTW: The Polish language is impossible except for Scrabble enthusiasts and actually a Yiddish speaking Polish Jew invented Esperanto here which lost most of its followers in the Holocaust. In addition Krakow is a university town and the home where Copernicus began his studies in the 1500's.

One of the more chilling scenes was of the old Jewish cemetery at the edge of the city. There were thousands of unkempt graves going back to the 1800's, a gap during the war and then hundreds of new tombstones erected recently by children of Holocaust survivors in memory of their parents. Overlooking this wooded and very spooky cemetery was an imposing and equally unkempt Soviet-style apartment complex with very old people hanging out of the windows watching us take pictures. Everyone of these onlookers was the type of person you wanted to ask, "what did you do during the war?" You could feel the clash of vibrations between the war survivors in the tenement and the souls of the departed in the graveyard.

Every night there is some kind of classical music concert at each of the about 10 local churches as well as folk and klezmer bands. The recital we saw at The Church of Peter and Paul not only featured the haunting song I had heard the harmonica players perform at Yad Vashem (theme from Gallipoli) but they also played another song which I couldn't get out of my head and we finally identified as the theme from The Scent of a Woman.