Krakow! Berlin!

This is going to be short because I'm way behind but...

Krakow was lovely!!! On the way there we stopped off to see my great aunt Sabina who smelled like jasmine, and my mother's cousin Basha and family, who live in southern Poland and whose children speak excellent English. Southern Poland, near the German border, is clearly more wealthy and -not surprisingly - more German than other parts of Poland, from architecture to general living conditions. There are also a few castles, and quite a bit of industry.

Then, Krakow. Krakow felt less Polish, more European than Warsaw. Again, not surprising given its situation in the South, and the large amount of non-Polish tourists there, much more than any other place we had been. The Old Town is beautiful, left untouched by most wars and distinctly medieval; the old Jewish quarter is now the hip part of town, trendy and filled with cafes and antiques and synagogues that must feel filled with ghosts instead of people during services. As far as I know, there is hardly any actual Jewish people left in Krakow, and Poland generally, having either been killed during or left after the Holocaust.

But Krakow. Its much smaller than Warsaw, and its easy to get out of the city into the surrounding countryside; Kim and I biked to a (relatively) nearby Benedictine monastery, and the ride was lovely, all along the river and past rural houses. On a side note, shops selling Benedictine products are quite common; not sure if they're very good or not, although the fizzy lemon honey drink we tried was, while their chocolate was not (should have seen that coming).

In general, Krakow is smaller, trendier, more European and younger than Warsaw, home to the oldest university in Poland, Jagellonian University. As the old capital, its an emblem of the more glorious Polish past, and the old town is truly lovely. I don't know which one I would prefer to live in; but Warsaw really feels more Polish.

From Krakow we took a 10 hour train to Berlin. Amazingly, you can tell immediately when the train crosses into Germany; suddenly everything is more neat, industrial, grey. Berlin hadn't changed much from when I went to it last (see Adventures Far North). Still quite cool, very big, and very, very Western. And English is spoken everywhere. It really was a bit too Western for me; although the city has a fascinating past, its present doesn't really seem all that different from America, or any other big Western city in a lot of ways. Although it has truly excellent transportation.

And now I'm in Sweden! But more about that later; for now I have to go experience it.