Playing in Europe's Playground a.k.a A Brief Overview of my visit to Poland

As the tour guide on my Krakow city tour mentioned, Poland is considered Eastern Europe as it was behind the Iron Curtain, is now Western Europe in its outlook and mentality, and geographically is part of Central Europe.  I was expecting it to feel like Eastern Europe.  The prices seemed more akin to things I’d find in Eastern Europe, but that’s about it.  Granted, I was in the tourist areas almost the whole time, but I think at least the cities have caught up to Western Europe on many levels.

Of course, in contrast to Georgia and Russia, Poland only suffered under communism for 44 years.  Still, they took their toll.  Independent Poland had a GDP double that of Spain at the beginning of WWII.  In 1989, it was half of Spain’s.  Ouch.

I appreciated that Poland was still a budget traveler’s friend, since even after having to pay way too much for the train from Krakow to Warsaw due to some bad directions from the girl at our hostel (she told us our ticket was for a different and more expensive train than it actually was), I spent less than $300 on the trip.  It doesn’t hurt that the exchange rate with the dollar seemed to be pretty good.  It was difficult not to think of things in terms of Georgian lari.  The dollar is about 1.6 GEL and about 3.5 PLN (but I kept making calculations at 3 złoty to the dollar), so things seemed expensive at first glance until I realized they were very cheap, some things being even cheaper than they would be in Georgia.

January was not such a horrible time to go to Poland, either.  While it was cold, it was no worse than Georgia, and often better than in my village.  Hostels were cheaper and attractions were much less crowded.  We also met lots of Australians, as this is their summer so many take the time to backpack now instead of our summer.  My favorite part was that the cities were still done up for Christmas, with gorgeous lights along the main streets and large Christmas trees in many of the squares.  In Warsaw, I also got to see the last two days of the Christmas market, where stalls selling winter gear, trinkets, and hot food and drink lined the Old Town square.  I also could have bought Elvis’s “Blue Christmas” at one of the stalls selling all sorts of Christmas CDs but refrained.  Nat King Cole would have been a steal, but my backpack is already brimming.

Once I got the hang of the crazy spelling of Polish, I could sound out lots of words and figure out what they meant since they were so similar to Russian.  This helped me out except I still could not speak aside from a handful of very basic words.  One of my tour guides did not like that I suggested Polish and Russian were so similar (he claimed they had about 5% of words in common), but that is because the Poles still have a lot of reasons to hate (dislike, distrust, blame) the Russians.

It’s hard to encapsulate the trip, so I’ll try to hit some highlights.  In Krakow, we spent a day in Auschwitz; a day touring the adorable Old Town, including going inside the Wawel Cathedral and inside St. Mary’s Church (the one on the main square) and getting a taste of Polish karaoke; and I spent the next day taking a tour of Wielczka Salt Mines, a salt mine where miners have carved gorgeous chapels and statues from the rock salt there.  In Warsaw, we walked around the main street and Old Town a lot, spent a full day in the Warsaw Uprising museum (definitely go if you’re interested in WWII Poland or want another reason to hate the Nazis and Stalin), hit up some parts of Jewish Warsaw, drank some of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had, went to the only working 3-D photo display (Fotoplastikon), went to a park where there were some palace-like homes, and made several trips to the airport.  Food and drinks in Warsaw were definitely more expensive than in Krakow, partly because Krakow still has several milk bars left.  Milk bars are a holdover from the communist era when the government would subsidize cafeterias so that food was incredibly cheap, cheap enough for the common laborer to be able to afford a filling meal out.  I had my fill of pierogis, borscht, paczki (basically jam donuts but they’re a Polish specialty), kebab/schwarma, and plenty of other good Polish treats.