Five of us headed for Krakow last Thursday to investigate the social scene in the city! Though tired coming back, we all had had a great time.
It started Thursday night after we got to our apartment and dropped our bags and stuff. We decided we’d head to the Irish bar, called Nic Nowego (I think that’s spelled correctly!) first. Some sampled the Guinness, and the rest of us went for Polish beer. Apparently, the Guinness was pretty good, though one of the lads reported it was a bit watery. We had a chat with the owner, who gave us the name of a few clubs to try out. We went on to one of them later in the night, but I think the bouncers weren’t happy about letting in a group of five lads. Tom, the owner of Nic Nowego, had told us that the clubs were getting sick of stag parties, and so it would be difficult for a group of lads to get in. So we went to another Irish bar (well, Irish in as much as it had an Irish flag outside it), had a few more beers, met (and Duibhir “educated” in his own special way!) a few English lads and played some pool before moving on again. The rest of the night will remain in memory, but not in print!
Friday, obviously, started slowly. Four of us headed out for a walk around the city in daylight to see what was around, and to grab some food. Duibhir, an bándearg, stayed in bed complaining like a girl of being hungover. His true intentions surfaced later that day however! We went to Roosters around 2pm for our lunch. This was followed shortly afterwards by beer, and continued through ’till 10pm or so that evening! We were joined virtually (via webcam, text message and phone) by a few people who couldn’t make the trip while there. Friday, though, had to be an early night – we finished up around 1am because we had to be up early on Saturday morning. It still turned out to be a great night though. We had a guide to show us a few good clubs to visit, and to help getting us in!!
The early rise on Saturday was for a pre-planned trip to Auschwitz and the Salt Mines. We were collected at 8:30am by Simon (as Marky christened him), the taxi driver, to be in Auschwitz at 10am. The tour started with a short film showing photos and film clips from when Auschwitz was in use by the Nazis. This was followed by a one and a half to two hour tour of the camp itself. This was the most daunting part of the entire weekend. We were shown cells used for starvation and suffocation, a replica execution wall and the living quarters of the inmates. The most difficult section though had to be the rooms filled with posessions of the inmates. All these rooms had glass walls from just below waist height to the roof, and were stacked with certain items. One contained two tonnes of human hair, which was collected by the Nazis from the victims of the gas chambers, and used in making carpets and for stiffening the collars on the SS uniforms. Another contained suitcases from the Jewish victims who thought they were being relocated, another contained shoes. One of the worst to see was a room filled with childrens’ shoes. Having seen the detail of this camp, we moved on to finish the tour in Birkenau – a much larger concentration camp about nine kilometers from the Auschwitz camp. Here we really saw the scale of the camps; Auschwitz could take 10,000 inmates, Birkenau could take 100,000. The gas chamber in Auschwitz was only capable of killing 700 people at a time, and took 2 days to cremate the bodies; the gas chambers at Birkenau (which the Nazis destroyed before leaving the camp) could kill 2,000 people at a time – and there were five of these chambers. Auschwitz was initially a Polish military base, and so had solid brick structures and when the Nazis needed more buildings, they copied the ones that were there. In Birkenau, however, the housing structures were cold, leaky stables. We saw the detail of the camps from Auschwitz, but we had to see Birkenau to see the scale of them.
From there, we went to the Salt Mines, via a restaurant for food. We saw plenty of sculptures and chapels, but I think the outstanding feature was definitely St. Kinga’s Church – a huge church carved out of the rock about 130m underground. Of course, before returning to the surface, we had to have our underground beer!!
After getting back to the apartment, we took a bit of downtime before heading out again. We picked up a few beers from the 24-hour off-licence next door and sat in for a few hours, then we headed out again to the bars and clubs around the city center. This ended up with a bit of club hopping, and we eventually got back home around 5:30am.
On Sunday, we were all feeling considerably more battered than previous mornings. The first port of call was Nic Nowego’s for a full Irish breakfast. With that in us, we headed back in towards the square at the center of the city to find a bar with a pool table to keep us entertained for a few hours. We found one, and it entertained us! We moved from there to a steakhouse for food, and from there back to the apartment. Some slept, some packed and cleaned! After a couple more hours, we cracked open some more beer from the fridge and as people woke up, a bit more life showed up. Again, we headed for the main square, around which were a good number of pubs and clubs. Sunday seemed to be a quieter night than the previous two though, so it was easier to get into the clubs. Most of the pubs and clubs were underground in converted basements or cellars. They were all pretty similar, with the old stonework walls, a couple of bars and one or more dance floors. But the atmosphere was different in each one. This night, though meant to be another early one, ended up finishing around 3:30am after making our way via clubs and a kebab shop to a club called ‘ProZac’ which was on our way home. This club filled up with med students from NUI Galway just before we went in, rendering our cúpla focal useless for hiding what we wanted to say!
Monday morning, we were up early again to finish packing and cleaning before heading back to the airport. After the strict security checks, a trip to the duty free, and a bit of a wait for a delayed flight, we were on the plane and bound back for Ireland.
Photos haven’t been uploaded yet, but I’ll link to them when they are.
