April 22, 2011: Krakow, Poland Day 1

April 22, 2011: Today I accompanied the kids to the bus station so that they could catch their bus to Prague, Czech Republic in the morning. After they had boarded the bus, I returned home to prepare for Ruth and my trip to Krakow, Poland in the afternoon. We went to the same bus terminal and boarded the bus for our seven plus hour trip. Ruth and I sat in seats on the aisle so that each of us had another person sitting next to each of us. The lady who sat next to me turned out to be a Romanian professor of English Literature (14 years experience), so we had a lot to discuss on our trip to Krakow. It was nice to hear the stories of her experiences teaching in Romania, and from the sounds of her stories, I could tell she has the same passion towards teaching that I have. She also shared many interesting experiences traveling to other countries in Europe and the US, many with the same sort of humorous twists that I've experienced teaching in Malaysia, Korea, China, Hungary, and the US. It certainly made the long trip go fast. 

As we talked, the bus traveled through Slovakia, the country neighboring Hungary to the north, and although we had traveled only a short distance to reach Slovakia, going through Slovakia, it felt very different than being in Hungary -- the houses seemed to be in slightly better shape than those in Hungary, and of course the signs were in a different language. As we traveled north, the bus climbed into mountainous regions until at one point, we reached a ski area where the ground was still covered with snow and in the distance I could see ranges of snow covered mountains. A bit further north, we crossed a flat plain in the middle of which were several tall hills and on top of one was an enormous castle. I've looked up castles in Slovakia using Google and believe that it was the Orava Castle. Here is a picture of the castle that I've copied from Wikepedia:
 

Can you imagine riding on a seemingly rural region and encountering that? A couple of hours later we crossed into Poland where once again the houses and countryside seemed very different from those in Slovakia -- the houses seemed to have four floors rather than two as in Slovakia, and the houses had steeper roofs and more wood in them than the stucco houses of Slovakia. We eventually arrived in the large city of Krakow which is quite a bustling city. After getting off the bus, I checked with the information desk to see how best to get to our hotel. We were told that the hotel was no where nearby so we had to take a taxi. You can imagine what happened next -- we ended up paying about double for the taxi since we were obviously "tourists".  As our taxi driver drove us to our hotel, we passed a procession of people carrying a large wooden cross that was being lowered in front of a church. Obviously, the people were celebrating the Easter season by recreating the resurrection section of the Bible.


Upon arrival at our hotel, I approached the checkin desk and the gentleman said "Mr. Halverstadt, I presume?" Quite surprised, I answered "Yes, how did you know?" and he said without much forethought, "I've been waiting for you since this 7:00 this morning. Welcome to Krakow! -- No actually, you are the last guests who have not checked in today so I figured it must be you." So you can see that my first impression of Polish people is one of congeniality, humor,  and friendliness. The other people of the hotel were similar in demeanor.


After checkin, Ruth and I dropped off our bags in our room and returned to the hotel dining room for a rather late dinner. After that, it was time for much needed rest. The next day we decided to go on a tour of Aushwitz. We figured we really needed to visit this somber site right away so that the rest of the trip would be more relaxing and enjoyable in comparison.