Kevin Blake's Blog

After a slightly rocky start, I’m totally in love with Poland. There, I’ve said it. I want to marry it, have its children, move to a small cottage on the coast and watch the waves with it. Sure, the worlds largest medieval market square in Krakow is fantastic, and I’m the first to squeal with delight at the news that city is founded on a dragon legend. I am. The groups of families playing traditional folk music are certainly a sight (and sound) to behold, and the River Wisla is very peaceful to walk and read alongside, as are the many parks and green areas almost everywhere you turn. But none of these form the reason for my desires. It all happened as sunset hit the city of Krakow and I found the local Carrefour, where I stopped to buy some forgotten toothpaste. As I was pacing up and down cursing the entire country for the lack of exciting coffee pods, I decided it would be prudent to get a large bottle of water for tomorrows excursions rather than spend another small king’s fortune on various groups of exciting looking ice teaon various groups of exciting looking ice tea (that’s a small fortune, not a small king). Not only can I get my old Cyprus favourite, green tea – but the brand new shiny red tea as well!

I stopped and stared at the shelves for several seconds before scaring a number of nearby shoppers by leaping into the stack of Mountain Dew grabbing as many bottles as I could. “MINE!” I screamed at the closest 6 year old, “You can’t have any – it’s all mine”, I shouted as he buried his face into his mums legs, clearly disturbed. I blinked a few times to bring liquid back to my eyes and sanity back to my mind, before grabbing a 2 litre bottle and skipping away to the cashier.

Poland has Mountain Dew. The Coca-cola vs Pepsi war has been fought and there is a clear winner. If you hadn’t guessed, I couldn’t be happier.

But none of this really helps my cause in choosing this post to be about “Travel”, does it? In fact, so far for these two posts I’ve written – there’s not much been much travel involved at all. Perhaps it’s about time I wrote something different and more sane, rather than rambling on about how much I hate airport books or how much I love mountain dew. So if you’ve made it this far then you’re in for a treat – you lucky thing, you.

Let’s start at the beginning, or rather the beginning I choose – because it’s way cooler than that old “there’s traces of of human habitation from prehistoric times” rubbish. What good are traces and evidence when you don’t have a dragon? The version I’m going with is this… The mythical ruler Krak founded the city on Wawel Hill. The cave below at the time, was occupied by a fearsome and ravenous dragon, which Krak killed by feeding it animal skins stuffed with tar and sulpher (beats the 7 bird roast, eh?). Apparently dragons aren’t particularly partial to tar and sulpher, and it promptly died thus giving control over to Krak to found his city. Was he a genius? Just lucky? Maybe he thought he was just feeding the dragon. You decide.

Evidence of this legend being the one true reason for Krakow’s existence is still in abundance in the market stalls around the square selling countless soft toy dragons. I only bought seventeen, just to lend my support…

The Rynek Glowny, the largest square of medieval Europe is most definitely something you should see. After spending most of the afternoon walking fifteen thousand miles through the leafy suburb of wherever the hell my Hotel is, I was beginning to wonder where this exciting Krakow I’d heard all about had gone. All that changed when I walked through the park, the Old Town gateways and into the square. It being 200 metres square, it’s quite big. Lay out 400 metre-sticks in a square formation – and that’s how big it is. Yes, the comparison sucks, but I’m blogging without any external research tools available, okay? It’s alright for you with your Google tellling you hundreds of other things that are 200m square. But I’m on an iPAQ with 7 pounds a megabyte GPRS. Stop smirking and post a comment if you think you’ve got something better! How many smarties can you fit in The Rynek Glowny when laid side to side (in a smartie square – all in rows/columns like a chessboard, none of this circular cheating stuff – and absolutely no smartie-melting allowed). There, that’s your mission for the day. I look forward to impressing attractive women with it when I’m there tomorrow.

This was easily my favourite sight of the day. You know when you’re getting near it. Loud and boisterous British people yelling “Jesus Christ, look at the size of that sandwich! It’s enormous!” Whilst I don’t want to support this sort of behaviour, what with making our country look bad – the dude was eating a particularly large sandwich and I feel it’s justified on this occasion. Think Subway with a 6-inch girth as well. You’ll also notice an abundance of horse and carriages, a sudden rush of people, students, tour groups, and cafe’s suddenly full of people where there were only empty seats before.

The square itself was blissfully hot with very little shade, supposedly free wifi (though I didn’t get it working at the time), and lots of impressive photo-worthy architecture. The Cloth Hall fills the centre of the square, full of market stalls Covent Garden would be proud of, but also going that little step further with a crazy looking fortune teller. The 70 metre tall Town Hall Tower stands just off to the side, reconstructed after its demise in the 19th century. The rather tiny but important church of St Adalbert sits off in one corner. Maybe I’ll let you know why it’s important at a later date – apparently it’s a site of much architectural interest but I passed it by today

Finally, St Mary’s Church in the northwest corner is the impressive dual-spired gothic building where a watchman is said to have raised the alarm during an early Tatar raids. He took up his trumpet, but was cut short by an arrow through the throat. Every hour on the hour, a trumpeter plays the bugle call melody, and stops abruptly when the watchman was supposed to have been hit. Apparently the national radio station still broadcasts this event live at noon every day.

Even though Warsaw is now the capital of Poland, the hearts and minds of many rest upon the second of Poland’s great cities at Krakow. And whilst I’ll reserve the right for comparison for a later date when I’ve visited both – there’s clearly a massive amount of things to do and see in and around Krakow. So with that, I look forward to exploring Wawel tomorrow, where the dragon rests.

Now, where’s that Mountain Dew?