Kraków was chosen to be my first country abroad. Always I had a place in my heart for it. It is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland.
I have to say that when I travelled to this city never I had been in other city abroad and never I had travelled in a plane. I was a few months speaking with people in internet,reading guides and planning all visits around the city. All people told me that Warsaw was better because is the capital,but for me all things interesting to visit was in Kraków,so finally I bought my return ticket from Alicante to Kraków and this is the story :
Saturday, 3 of July 2010
I arrive to Cracow at 9.45 AM ,and I take a taxi to my hotel, Hotel Royal
The Royal was built in 1898 and still has its original Art Nouveau facade. Inside there are glimmers of its past secreted around from the art deco banister lights to the imposing, carved archways over the bedroom doors. There are two wings - one has been totally renovated and has beautifully styled deluxe rooms. These feature parquet floorboards, emerald upholstery, gold patterned wallpaper and modern luxurious bathrooms. Weaving along a myriad of corridors in the other wing, rooms are more dated, with thick carpets, heavy bedsteads and chunky large furniture. Parts of the hotel, such as some of the hall carpets, are looking a little past their sell by date. One of our guests sums the Royal up as "its glories are faded but (it) still has charm".
I change some money (about 500 zlotys more or less) and I begin to walk and taking photos :
St. Mary's Basilica
Hard Rock Kraków :
Wawel castle :
This castle was built at the behest of Casimir III the Great, who reigned from 1333 to 1370
From here you can see the river Vistula :
Is the moment to eat something. I would like try Polish food :
Kleparz Market
Sunday ,4 of July 2010
Today is a special day because I´ll go to visit a place very important to me. I love everythings about the 2º World War and when you say the words Auschwitz means a part very important in the history,a horrible place where you can see the horror of humanity
AUSCHWITZ
Auschwitz concentration camp was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It was the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I (the Stammlager or base camp); Auschwitz II–Birkenau (the Vernichtungslager or extermination camp); Auschwitz III–Monowitz, also known as Buna–Monowitz (a labor camp); and 45 satellite camps.
Auschwitz had for a long time been a German name for Oświęcim, the town by and around which the camps were located; the name "Auschwitz" was made the official name again by the Germans after they invaded Poland in September 1939. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka (= "birch forest"), referred originally to a small Polish village that was destroyed by the Germans to make way for the camp.
Auschwitz II–Birkenau was designated by the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Germany's Minister of the Interior, as the place of the "final solution of the Jewish question in Europe". From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over German-occupied Europe.The camp's first commandant, Rudolf Höss, testified after the war at the Nuremberg Trials that up to three million people had died there (2.5 million gassed, and 500,000 from disease and starvation). Today the accepted figure is 1.3 million, around 90 percent of them Jewish. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, some 400 Jehovah's Witnesses and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities.Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious disease, individual executions, and medical experiments.
On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, a day commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 1947, Poland founded a museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, which by 2010 had seen 29 million visitors—1,300,000 annually—pass through the iron gates crowned with the infamous motto, Arbeit macht frei ("work makes [you] free")
And now to visit another important place,where a man saved over 1.100 Jews.
Oscar Schindler's enamel factory
The square measures 13,000 square metres and is completely paved with blocks of grey siennite rock. On the paving there are a series of items of urban furniture, most of which are chairs arranged on a virtual grid of about five by five metres and all facing in the same direction. Each chair is fixed to the ground by a small, slightly elevated metal platform which makes it float on the paving. That, and the fact that they are slightly larger than normal, gives them a certain dreamlike air. That effect is heightened when the square is covered in snow and the darkness of the chairs stands out against the abstract whiteness. Both the chairs and the other objects in the square are made of bronze or rust-coloured wrought iron. And so the waste paper bins, the awnings of the tram stops, the hand pump for drawing water from a well, the bicycle parks and all the traffic signs, stripped of their usual functions, take on a symbolic unitary character and convey the memory of the objects abandoned by the Jews in the 'Umschlagplatz'.
On the north side of the square there is still a small police box which the Nazis, with their macabre capacity for organisation, used to identify and count the Jews. The blocks of the paving run inside the box, the inside of which is coated with planks of patinaed bronze.
In this video you can see how was this place in the 2º World War :
Near you can see the famous restaurant where Steven Spielberg used to lunch
And the famous stairs that you can see in the film Schindler´s List
Now I begin to walk to my hotel
Monday,5 of July 2010
Today I have to visit the famous Salt mine of Cracow.
The Wieliczka salt mine reaches a depth of 327 metres and is over 300 kilometres long. The rock salt is naturally gray in various shades, resembling unpolished granite rather than the white or crystalline look that many visitors may expect. During World War II, the shafts were used by the occupying Germans as an ad-hoc facility for various war-related industries. The mine features an underground lake; and the new exhibits on the history of salt mining, as well as a 3.5 kilometres touring route (less than 9% of the length of the mine's passages) that includes historic statues and mythical figures carved out of rock salt in distant past. More recent sculptures have been fashioned by contemporary artists.
The Wieliczka mine is often referred to as "the Underground Salt Cathedral of Poland." In 1978 it was placed on the original UNESCO list of the World Heritage Sites.Even the crystals of the chandeliers are made from rock salt that has been dissolved and reconstituted to achieve a clear, glass-like appearance. It also houses a private rehabilitation and wellness complex.
Now I´m going to buy some gifts and regards of this beautiful travel and of course have a great dinner :
"" THE WORLD IS A BOOK AND THOSE WHO DO NOT TRAVEL READ ONLY A PAGE ""
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