Krakow – A city worth celebrating through the medium of the accordion

Rock has a new face, and it’s wielding an accordion. Today was the first of two days celebrating all things that are Krakow in the market square. Actually I don’t have a clue of what it is, other than there’s a really big stage in the centre of the square. Despite humble beginnings of local school performances that manage to raise a chuckle, but not much else – this evenings was everything you could possibly hope for in a clichéd Polish rock band. From the baggy trousers, past the accordion-wielding mad man, all the way to the equally impressive bald goatee-sporting front man with his tin whistle. Rock on.

Yesterday, I stumbled across the scariest statue I’ve ever seen and will continue to haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. A dog looks mournful, with large human-looking eyes staring up at you while two large spidery hands appear to slowly close around it. Wanting to turn and run, but not being able to break away from “those eyes”, I had to draw nearer and see what was written on the plaque – forever fearful that upon stepping closer to the demonesque-statue, the ground would open up beneath it. I would be left falling into the depths of wherever it had come from while the dog howled its delight into the night.

Instead, the story of Dzok the Dog made me go “awwwwww” and whilst still a little sad, “that’s really nice”. The plaque reads “The most faithful canine friend ever. Epitomising a dogs boundless devotion to his master. Throughout the entire year 1990-1991 Dzok was seen waiting in vain at the Rondo Grunzwaldzkie roundabout to be fetched back by his master, who had passed away at the very site”.

All of which I found rather touching. Not least because a statue had been erected to commemorate the fact.

Just two minutes walk away lies the dragons cave where Kraak is said to have killed off the mighty beast by feeding it McDonald’s, or some such. So I couldn’t miss the opportunity to go see THAT. I can’t help but feel I might have built it up too much… There’s a machine out the front where you pay for your ticket which looks not too dissimilar to ones you’d find at a railway station, but instead leads you to see the scariest of scary caves. Once paying, the dot matrix printer spends a good half hour printing out a ticket with a picture of a dragon on it, just to get you really excited. Two steps to your right, and you hand the ticket over to the man behind the desk and are directed to the spiral staircase. About halfway down the staircase, meet a large group of seven thousand schoolchildren and walk very slowly behind them as the echo of every single one of them floats up the staircase and through you, threatening to tear your organs into tiny tiny shreds. The cave is all very well, but it’s really just a cave. There are no dragon bones, smells of things burning, rotting or dying, not even any “uhoh, look what we missed” dragon eggs carelessly hidden off to one side. In fact if I hadn’t read the legend already, I’d be very much left with a feeling of “oh”, by now.

But, once you’ve squeezed past all of the schoolchildren because their teacher’s telling some story in a language you don’t understand, and frankly – they’re taking their time… In the open air outside the cave is quite a large metallic dragon sculpture art form thingy. It’s a little bit modern art, but it’s still pretty cool – at least it’s a dragon, which is more than the caves had. I also learnt this evening that every now and then it breathes fire from the top in short bursts. Which is extremely entertaining to watch while the kids are climbing around on it, so they can get the perfect picture taken.

So what else have I been up to? Well, I beat up an old lady – which was fun. I’ve talked about people on the streets begging for money before, in Prague. There, they had a massive sense of servitude about them. Laying as flat on the ground as they can possibly be, arms stretched out in total silence with their face pointed directly at the ground, begging in total silence for money. In London, the story is quite different – one man, a dog, a blanket and looking very unshaven “spare some chaaaaenge?” … “Well F*** off then!”

Then there’s other more inventive kind. Again, Prague … “Excuse me, some banditos have stolen my wallet”. Banditos. How I laughed at the time. Or London…. “Hi, so, uhhh, I had this car, right. But it blew up. And now I need to raise enough money to buy a train ticket to Waterloo, so I can start a new business selling cups of coffee on a farm, to afford a new car and go and save my sister who has cancer. Did I not tell you about my sister? Well anyway, can you spare us 20p mate?”.

Now in Poland. They’ve only tried it once, but they won’t try again – I can assure you. Walking back towards my hotel, an old woman dressed entirely in black came running at me, “Please”, she sobbed, with her arm outstretched and cup full of money in her hand. “Please”, with tears streaming down her face. Damn, she was good. I don’t know what she needed the money for, but I suspect for some more onions to chop. I’m all heart, me. “No, I’m sorry”, I replied as I carried on walking. Well, she wasn’t having any of that. As she held out the cup even further, and her arm extended to twice its original size, I still carried on walking, right into said cup. The cup went flying, of course – scattering money all across the street. Convinced that if I helped her collect her change, she’d throw off her old woman disguise and steal all my things, I carried on walking while she foraged on the ground for what little money she’d collected. Street smarts. That’s me.

Determined not to feel bad about scattering the old woman’s livelihood across the busiest area of Krakow, I decided to hang around. What the hell, I’m a tourist – and frankly, I didn’t have anything better to do. So, I did. And sure enough, it didn’t take her long to have the cup outstretched to some other poor sod who again, sent the thing flying. Hag. I resisted the urge to go and kick her in the kidneys while she was collecting the change again, but instead wandered off chuckling to myself.

I’ll finish off with one last thing before I post. I’ve now left the Hotel City SM (I never did discover what SM stands for, but I’m pleased to report it’s not Sado-Massichist). Whenever I holiday, I generally stay in hotels, which whilst giving me all the creature comforts I could possibly desire – as a lone traveller it can prove rather expensive. So, it’s long overdue to have tried out this hostel malarkey and with the help of hostels.com I managed to book one for my last 3 days in Krakow. Not really knowing what to look for, I’ve gone for one with high ratings on the site, good security and a name that could also be used for a South Yorkshire pub. It’s a similar kind of approach I take to betting on dogs / horses and it’s never done me wrong before. So tonight is the first night at the Elephant on the Moon hostel. At Β£10 a night, I shouldn’t have bothered with the expensive hotel at all. I’ll write more about that tomorrow, once / if I’ve survived the night. Don’t want to count my chickens, and all that. But so far, it’s looking good πŸ™‚

Wieliczka Salt Mines: Bit of salt never harmed anybody

As I was saying before I realised my post had got too long… Yesterday, I went to the Wieliczka salt mines. There were two other people in my taxi / little red tour bus. Two older American women from California who had spend the last week and a bit doing the Eastern European tour from Prague, Budapest, Krakow before heading onto Warsaw. I haven’t met many well-travelled Americans before, but since they were doing a lot better than me, I didn’t like to say anything πŸ™‚ “I was in Russia in 1973, but since it was the iron curtain days, we weren’t really allowed to go anywhere because we hadn’t pre-arranged it before.” And this one, this one’s my favourite…

“I was in London a few years ago. I went into a supermarket and saw the most amazing queuing system. Everyone in one line until a cashier was available, where the person at the front stepped forward. Five or six of them there were.” Great, a queuing story. Yes, I get it, I’m British – we love to queue. “So I took a photo of it because I wanted to show people back home. I thought we could use that”. Autotrader eat your heart out. “And this big black woman comes up to me ‘NO PICTURES’ she yelled. Luckily I had a digital camera, so I showed her the only picture I had. ‘There, I deleted it, I’m so sorry'”.

Well at least we gave a good lasting impression, anyway. I assured the poor woman that it was just that we’re very proud of our queueing. We don’t like the secrets to get to other countries. She understood, and I’m sure felt a whole lot better about the terrifying ordeal. To put it another way, I gave in to the stereotype. I sold my soul.

Upon arriving at the Salt Mines, we were shown where to wait by our driver, a time to go in, a ticket and a place to sit. One of the Californians went for a walk before sitting down, “There’s a bunch of very good-looking students from Finland or something, all acting very girly and silly out there.” “And they’re heading this way, right?” I asked. “No, they’re just messing around.” “You dissapoint me”, I replied trying to give it my best dissapointed looking face.

When they walked inside, they were indeed all very loud, ear drums burst and grown men cried. 16,000 students around the age 17-19 all tried to squeeze onto the remaining 4ft of bench next to me. When one fell off her friends lap and fell into the 12mm gap between her friend and me, she giggled “Excusez moi”. “That’s okay”, I promptly replied, giving her my winning smile. Charm, wit and a real conversationist. That’s me.

We continued to debate whether these students were French, Finnish or from deepest darkest Africa. Armed with my new knowledge that they spoke French and that they wandered off into the mine with a tour guide with a French flag on his helmet … I think I faired rather well.

There are a little under 400 wooden steps leading down the first 65 metres to the first-level chambers. Despite the signs at the top of the staircase saying “No Grafitti”, there is a rather impressive collection of names scrawled into the woodwork all the way down, and all the way through the rest of the mine. I don’t exactly support graffitti of this world heritage site, but the enormity of this collection of signatures is really quite astounding. We travelled 2 kms through the small part of the mine that is open for tours. We visited maybe 12-15 different chambers and every passageway in between was filled with people writing their names, countries or favourite music. I feel as though it has reached such a point of a self-evolved guestbook that it would be a shame to now cover up this part of the mines history.

When I’m wandering around mines and caves as I so often find myself doing whilst on holiday – I always think of Ali and her unhealthy love of all things that are rock. She’s also the only one to leave a comment so far, so deserves this special mention πŸ˜‰ That’s probably going to put anyone else off leaving a comment at all, but oh well. Whilst I’m not sure your geological insight would have been particularly helpful in this visit, “Oh, oh, what’s that one ??” “Rock salt, Kevin.” “Wooooooow. What about this one!?” And so on… I’m sure you would enjoy a visit to Wieliczka all the same πŸ™‚

When I’m wandering around mines and caves as I so often find myself doing whilst on holiday – I always think of Ali and her unhealthy love of all things that are rock. She’s also the only one to leave a comment so far, so deserves this special mention πŸ˜‰ That’s probably going to put anyone else off leaving a comment at all, but oh well. Whilst I’m not sure your geological insight would have been particularly helpful in this visit, “Oh, oh, what’s that one ??” “Rock salt, Kevin.” “Wooooooow. What about this one!?” And so on… I’m sure you would enjoy a visit to Wieliczka all the same πŸ™‚

Nonetheless, our tour guide was great, proclaiming that every sculpture we saw had been carved from rock salt from the mine. The first of which was Copernicus, the famous Polish astronomer who is said to have visited the mine. And if we don’t believe her? Well, “every visitor to the mine is allowed to consume up to three kilos of the rock salt. It is included in the ticket price. We only ask that you do not do so from Copernicus, as he would soon disappear if every visitor did that.” When you spend most of your time giving tours in a salt mine, you develop a certain sort of sense of humour. I was enjoying the tour immensely.

All of which was great news to the group of four american students in our now-extended group. Last seen with their tongues stuck to a particularly cold piece of rock-salt.

The most breathtaking part of the tour was on the third level – 135m down. The Blessed Kinga’s Chapel was completed in the early part of the nineteeth century, stretches 50m long and is made entirely of rock salt. Everything. The stairs, the altar, bannisters, carvings, even the chandeliers. And if that’s not impressive enough, this work wasn’t completed by teams of sculptors. Instead, it formed the lifetime-work of 3 individual miners working one after another. It is truly amazing and definitely worth the visit alone. Scenes from the life of Jesus adorn the walls including his birth and the infamous last supper. Towards the back is a newer addition, a large statue of Pope John Paul II, and at the front an altar where every word can be heard all the way to the back up in the gallery. The venue has been used for concerts, a banquet hall (for ex-president George Bush Snr.), and mass is still celebrated here every Sunday. You can even rent the entire hall out for weddings for the bargain price of 1,000 US dollars per hour. As our guide explained “A bit expensive but you never know. I guess you’d only want to do it once.” Perhaps it’s not for me, after all.

Also, the fake salt lakes added entirely for the benefit of the tourists. They used to run “fairy boat rides”, until a group of drunk Russians started rocking their boat, got trapped under it and drowned. When you’re stuck under a boat in salt water it is very difficult to swim out from under it. The salt keeps you afloat and contains very little oxygen (there’s the maximum of 33-34% salt in this water, more than the red sea). So no fairy boat rides for us. But thanks for telling us anyway – we weren’t disappointed before.

Having walked down even more steps than the original 400, we were lucky enough not to have to climb what would be double that to get back out. Instead, there was the smallest two-levelled fastest lift in the world to take us back to the surface. With everyone crammed in tight enough that the doors wouldn’t close, we managed to fit a massive 20 people into what I’m quite sure was originally the prototype for a Silverlink Trains carriage. The lift operator lit the fuse, and the lift ascended at approximately 12,000mph.

By this time it had started raining quite heavily. The bright boiling hot sunshine was gone, and the evening and night was full of very loud thunder and lightning. It seems like it was a good day to do the underground tour after all πŸ™‚

Hotel City SM. Location Unknown.

Yesterday I found myself visiting the Salt Mine at Wieliczka, approximately 15 km southeast of Krakow. I say “found myself visiting” because it wasn’t entirely planned. I was planning on going to see the dragon, as I said before – but after I spoke to the front desk at the hotel, my plans changed slightly.

“When do you want to leave?”
“Wednesday would be great.”

“2pm today?”
“Wednesday would be better.”

“They won’t be going tomorrow.” Said front-desk dude.
“How about Thursday?”
The receptionist spoke a little more to what I was convinced at this point was the talking clock, before putting the phone down.
“She says they won’t leave tomorrow, and after that, she doesn’t know. It’s too early to tell.” That’s Poland for you.

And so I found myself all booked up for 2pm just like the God’s, fate, the travel organisers and the receptionist had wanted me to. But more about that in the next post πŸ˜‰ Meanwhile, this extra time gave me a great opportunity to spend the morning figuring out where the hell my hotel is in relation to everything else.

On my first trip into the great unknown of Krakow I’d forgotten to take both my trackstick and guide book with me. The trackstick probably wouldn’t have been a whole lot of use. As I’m sure you remember from my blog posts from Croatia (you do remember, right?) the trackstick has no visual display other than a blinking LED that can be either red (no signal) or green (good signal). This is generally only helpful if you’re trying to figured out whether you’re indoors or outside and even then it might not be the easiest way to reach a conclusion. The guide book on the other hand, that one. has maps.

So on my first trip into Krakow on Monday, I learnt that the centre is a really long way away. I now know it’s about 5km. But there are also other things around my hotel like a hypermarket, a cinema, roadside out-of-town shopping centre, a campsite, a whole lot of residential housing, and an incredibly large amount of green. Just down the road a couple of minutes is a huge sky-piercing “if communism were a religion”-looking church. Sanktuarium Bozego Milosierdzia (Sanctuary of God’s Mercy) is actually much newer than that, completed in 2000 but it still reminds me more of a stadium from the communist era, or as Rough Guides say “a beached ocean liner”. Beautiful.

Towards the campsite area is a large woodland area with scattered paths seemingly leading nowhere, but lined with benches dotted about regular intervals. These benches are constantly filled with groups of Poles meeting and walking dogs. I’ll say this for Krakow, the canine culture is one filled with dogs that I want to steal. There are very few “cutesy” dogs in this area. You won’t see Paris Hilton fleeing the law to Poland and walking down the road with a chihuhua under her arm. That’s because the real dogs, the gorgeous looking Alaskan Huskies will kill both her rat as well as her. We hope.

That’s where I am, anyway – in case you were wondering. I sure as hell was. I’m a little dissapointed to learn that I did take the most direct route into the center on my first day, and it is indeed 5km. But on the other hand, knowing where I am is very helpful in learning that the number eight (of a possible 75 that I’ve seen so far) will take me unimaginable distances at the speed of a tram. It’s also nice to be a little way out of the centre when you’re visiting a place. You’ll always make an effort to go and see the centre – but if you’re already there, that’s kind of it. I certainly wouldn’t have read the guide book and thought “oh really. Looks like a beached ocean liner, you say? Well I can’t miss that.” Having seen it, I’ve become a much better person, I think

This site is designed for the Wii … seriously.

Hot on the tail of Google Labs with their updated RSS reader now supporting the Wiimote, in almost eyebrow-raising excitement – I wanted to congratulate this Michael Bolin guy on his Wiimote javascript libraries.

So I did a little more digging, and I found a nice little Wii WordPress plugin that detects if you’re using a Wii and displays the site accordingly. Nice big text, easy to navigate links, perfect for that in the armchair browsing we all wish we could do.

That’s all very well, but it doesn’t make much of Michael Bolin’s library. So I did what any self-respecting web developer would do, and hacked the two together in the dirtiest quickest way possible. So if you’ve got a Wii – try it out… Go to blog.puzzlebox.co.uk in Opera and see the layout especially designed for you. Click on an article to read it, and while you’re there, hit the Left and Right buttons of the d-pad, and you’ll skip between the articles as well.

Now then, about that Wii keyboard …

We seek them here, we seek them there

I’ve recently signed up to yet another social networking site. Not only are “they” following me through my Tesco’s clubcard, tracking my progress across Europe with RFID euros, and circumventing all my efforts with this tin-foil-hat through the magic of VISA – I am now wilfully sending them messages every time I change my status to something like “walking to the other room””, or “sleeping”. And as I was adding my web site addresses to my profile, I realised there was a number of ways to find me on the Internet…

I run a really useful statistics program on my blog’s web logs, because I like looking at things like that when it produces coloured graphs. It also tells me what people have searched for, in order to find me. More often than not – it’s people searching for “words that rhyme with…” something. And this month is no different, so I want to share some of them because they make you think “why do you want a word that rhymes with that?” …

  • what are some words that rhyme with biscuit
  • words that rhyme with innocent
  • words that rhyme with kevin
  • words that rhyme with vicky
  • words that rhyme with festival
  • words that rhyme with subway
  • things that rhyme with blog
  • words that rhyme with homo
  • words that dont rhyme with anything
  • words that rhyme with marmite
  • words that rhyme with 2007

It amazes me, and interests me that there may well be poets out there, looking for these rhyming words to finish their masterpiece. So if you can help, please leave a comment.