The main squares of the cities we visited (Krakow and Wroclaw) in Poland were picturesque. Outside them you can see more of the history of the 20th C. The soviet era rebuilding after occupations by the Germans and the Russians.
The castles have been magnificently reconstructed, seemingly with no expense spared. Wawel in particular has been refurnished with from other castles in and around Poland of the correct style and era to its former glory days. They are permanent museums both of the time that is past to us and also of present sentiments – the need to erase the damages of the past.
But no amount of repainting can change back your society. The Poles do not smile easily. Apparently it is not in their culture. I guess years of repression blunted the will for public displays of joy. Also I guess this are still not the greatest. But they are not bad enough for the continuous stern looks in the face of public entertainment and all manner of modern distractions. I felt positively bourgeois enjoying the simple pleasures of tourism.
I read an articles not long ago saying that blonds were almost extinct – the gene pool too small. I arrived in Poland and my immediate thought was that the author had no idea what they were talking about. Everyone was blond. Then I took a second look. Everyone was a uniform shade of blond. And it wasn’t everyone: just all the women. Actually, just all the women’s heads; their eyebrows and lashers are black as can be. A closer look revealed the ever so even 2 inch dark halo around at least half of the heads. Holy crap Poland must be the world’s biggest consumer of peroxide. At one of the conference dinners a man confided that, in his opinion, the women of this region of the world are the most attractive. So I guess there is a point to being a uniform shade of white blond. Personally, I thought it was Ick!
In Krakow we visited the Royal castle and cathedral at Wawel mound. We also visited some salt mines that have been mined since the 13th C in nearby Wieliczka. We descended to -130m by staircase – it was strange for us to be so deep and not in water!). In Krakow we also looked around Kazimierz, a Jewish distract from the 14th C until WW2. It is where Speilberg filmed Schindler’s List. We had dinner there (good for me as I could eat meat confident that there would be no stomach killing dairy products ;).
Generally, apart from it being hard to ensure dairy free, the food was good. Boar and sausages and venison and veal and, yes, cabbage and good soups. The beer was disappointing (in that they have not the choice of so many brews as their neighbours the Czechs and the Germans). We were a bit random with our restaurant choice our Lonely Planet guide was a few years old. We had expected perhaps some of the restaurants to have changed, but we found even the maps to be unhelpful in places. The pace of change that comes from entering the EU is startling. There are restaurants already from everywhere, which is how come I came to be eating a Norwegian salad in a French Café in a Polish city!
The conference was in the Wroclaw. We transferred by train. The train may have been soviet era and with compartments and toilets that emptied onto the track but at least they ran on time, dammit (this is a dig at the oh-so-quiet and oh-so-late trains that fill the UK)! The conference venues were all good; gorgeous old rooms for receptions and dinner, nice modern conveniences for lecture halls. One of the conference dinners was in a castle some distance from the city. There was traffic and we arrived late and so dinner was immediately followed by supper! Supper was in the castle cellars with much beer and chatter. The highlight for me was watching the very careful removal to safety of a delicate butterfly by of the delegates…
After Poland we had one more night in the UK before flying home. I’m really glad that we missed all the Heathrow chaos. Especially as I had my darling Powerbook with me – I’d have hated leaving it to the whims of Heathrow baggage handlers.