The first Saturday, or Sobota, of Language Camp the exchange students were taken to see the Krakow Main Square. This is what I talked about visiting before with my host parents. I got to see some of the same things and saw a few new things as well. One of them was the castle in Krakow where ancient kings used to live. I couldn't take any pictures inside because we weren't allowed to, but it was an amazing place. I did get to take pictures of an ancient bell though, only used on extremely special occasions, the last of which was when the Polish Pope John Paul II became a Pope, which was a historical event for the extremely catholic Polish people. On a side note, it is actually difficult to go five minutes without seeing something Pope related here in Krakow. But after that we returned to the main square and got free time to explore it. During that day there was actually a pierogi festival going on in Krakow so the first thing most of us did was follow my host sister to where the pierogies were being sold. I ate five of the traditional Polish dumplings, though I had already had them with my host family my third afternoon in Poland. With my host family I had pierogies filled with mashed potatoes and a kind of Polish cheese, but in Krakow I had strawberry filled pierogies and meat filled pierogies. So far my favorite are the meat filled pierogies. After finishing our pierogies, my new friends and I (the four of us are from different places in the US) got on a horse drawn carriage. I was actually only $15 dollars for the four of us. That took fifteen minutes, after which I showed my group some of the things I had already seen in the town square. After getting some souvenirs we all went up this really tall tower that is older than the US to get a great view of the city. The problem was that the stairs were steep, the ceiling was low and I was clumsy. I spent most of the climb up complaining that I was going to trip, roll down the stairs, and kill myself and everyone below me..... my friends made sure to climb in front of me. But I managed to make it to the top without dying or killing anything and was rewarded with a spectacular view of the city.....then we had to go back down. This time I did trip though I only tweaked my ankle. The rest of the climb down was painful but manageable. From here we went to see some art and had some really fancy ice cream before meeting up with our group.
From here we went to see some more of Krakow, including the Jewish portion of it. They explained some of the scenes from the movie Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg were shot at some of the places we went to as well as that the movie was entirely shot in Krakow. We got to see many many historical things, more than I have time to write about. After that we went to a portion of the Jewish Quarter where there are a lot of clubs and such that college students hang out at. My friend Luis from Chicago found a kind of sandwich you can only get in Krakow and got mad that I live here and not him after eating it. We found some shops that were interesting, one sold butterfly knives, I thought was interesting to see something that is illegal in the US sold for 45 zloty (50 zloty is about $15 for comparison.), and I also found one of the head massagers from Mrs. Szczepaniak's class. I spent the next hour going around and sneaking up on the other exchange students and using it on them, laughing when the jolt it sends down their backs made them jump. After that though we had to return to the castle where our bus was waiting for us to take us back to the school.
Well I was going to write about everything I did this last week, then I realized that just Saturday (Sobota) took a novel to explain, and the Polish Salt Mines will probably take another one. So I'm going to write about that tomorrow.
Giant Bell
View From the Tower
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