Peirogi – the best thing since.. well Chinese dumplings

After months of planning with Ula, the first couch surfer we’d known from prior given that she surfed our couch in Sydney, here we were in Cracow, Poland.

Chapter 1: Throwback at Krakow

We stayed in Cracow with Wadim and Mariola, a top couple who welcomed us into their houses with wide open houses. Wadim was one of the nicest blokes we’d met, what with him picking us up from the center to take us home once we’d arrived into Poland from the Czech Republic. Although they were both busy with their jobs, we found enough time to whip up and share a meal and down a bottle of wine! They had plenty of stories to share, right from their bike riding and hitch hiking across eastern Europe to their impending travel to Central America this year – hopefully we catch them in their tracks!

We spent our last night in Cracow with our old time couchsurfer Ula and her mates Karolina and Krys. The weekend was the Erasmus weekend, which essentially is a weekend where foreign exchange students come in hordes and wreck havoc upon a little unassuming town. We joined in the mayhem and partied on an extremely foggy night with barely 20 metres of visibility on the ‘Party Tram’, so much for not drinking on public transport. As with such parties, it was just pure carnage and was a pleasant throwback to our early 20s.

Chapter 2: Grim

From the high of a tram party with 19 somethings, we were brought back down crashing to earth when we visited the infamous WW2 concentration camp at Auschwitz. Most of you familiar with WW2 history would know of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany under Hitler’s reign during WW2, but to see it second hand in person left us with plenty of think on how low humanity could be pushed to with effective use of power. It was a grim reminder to us on the extent of the atrocities currently going around in the world in places such as Israel, Syria, Egypt, incidents which when solely viewed objectively do not depict the harsh reality of war and crimes and the extent of human cruelty.

From the visit to the ‘train station’ at Birkenau, the camp adjacent to Auschwitz, where hordes of Jews would be brought to everyday and seperated into 2 groups – those who would be subject to hard labour and those who would have to undertake the ‘shower’, to the cells in which they were kept prisoners, there was a sombre feel lingering in the air with silence being observed even with thousands of visitors in the grounds . Our visit to Auschwitz was as subjective a view as one could possibly get of an historical event of significance.

Chapter 3: Warsaw

We took a 5 hour train from Krakow to Warsaw, where we had to sit on the floor the majority of the time as the seats had filled up – never thought we would have that experience to savour in a ‘first world country’. Nevertheless, we had a whale of a time with Ula and Karolina spending most of our time nursing hangovers from the Erasmus weekend at Krakow.

The city of Warsaw is reputed to be just another megalopolis – dull with no major attractions, however I was pleasantly surprised to feel otherwise. I would attribute that primarily to our new Polish mates – Krys, Karolina and of course Ula who spared no effort in ensuring that we got to view their home city through their eyes.

They took us on a tour of the Uprising museum, the event being probably the most famous one of historical significance in Polish history. The museum definitely rates as one of the best I’ve ever been to and was made more intriguing as we got to hear passionate stories of pride and valour from Krys and Karo on how their grandfathers had contributed in the restoration of the city’s square post it being bombed during WW2.

Post the visit to the museum, we went out to sample some polish food and Dee and I now have a new favourite dish – Pierogi! Pierogi are essentially dumplings baked in butter with onions and stuffed with mince meat, mushrooms, cheese or veggies. A typical serving of pierogi includes a minimum of 5-6 pierogis per person. Despite being a carnivore primarily, highly recommend the mushroom stuffing!

Post dinner we took a walk around the central square which had been very impressively restored in the mid 1950s post the WW2 bombings. I personally found this square far more attractive than the massive square at Krakow which is far more popular with travelers. We walked past the tomb of the unknown solider with 2 soldiers guarding the flame at all times.

Autumn had set in well and truly and walks around the park close the president’s palace had us gasping in awe at how beautiful the leaves on the tree looked and the entire scene with ducks wading through the lake and leaves falling down silently made for a very serene setting.

Although we would have wanted more time to explore Poland, given our love for summer, we made a hasty exit to the Greek Islands to soak in the sun and sand.

The Facts