The first date or not so incredible adventures in Krakow

26 November 2014 Travel time: with 30 October 2014 on 03 November 2014
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I always wanted to see Krakow. One hundred pizzas I passed by, returning from Katowice, or several times from Warsaw on such a strange route. I even saw Wawel far away. But never. Although, as it turned out later, Krakow was not the only "enchanted city" (http:// blogs. Turpravda. Ua / duna61 / 99104.html).

The trip, as always, was spontaneous. A cartoon popped up, and both hands and feet itched badly to use what is called a "stick". And here, bam - occasion: it is possible and necessary to go as on the Figator, the amuser, the speaker, etc. Who will refuse? I'm going.

We left on Thursday 30.10. 2014 in the afternoon. We reached Lviv slowly. On the way, they forgot the card again in the store, where they bought local alcohol for presents (what karmic karma with these cards, man! ). Fortunately, the card and the money on it were not the last, and we found her missing in Rivne, in a cafe.


So everything was simple: call the bank to block the card, call a friend to jump to the store and pick up the card, call him that everything is OK…

They wandered around Lviv. They lived, as always, in Bryukhovychi. But the young lady in the tablet navigator, although she wanted to take us there by the shortest route, for some reason kept forcing us to turn onto some very deer trails, as a result of which a lot of time and nerves were lost.

The owner of a private hotel, which we have been visiting for many years, not only offered to help with booking accommodation in Krakow (although I went through the options, but did not have time to book), but also told us to use the new Grushev-Budomez crossing as an alternative to the previously planned . us Krakovets-Korchova. And this Hrushev-Budomezh overshadowed everyone! If it weren't for the road to it (or rather, its complete absence as such), everything would be just fine, because crossing both borders took 40 minutes (! ).

This is together with the waiting in the queue of 3 cars.

It is always nice to go to Poland. Quite high-quality road surface, narrow roads, neat houses, "combed" fields… Ehali (Budomeż -Rzeszó w-Tarnow-Bochnia-Krakó w) first desert Polish roads of district importance, after Rzeszó w on the new A4 motorway. While the free road is being completed (which runs almost in parallel), the passage is free. 95th petrol - 1.2 euros or about 5 zlotys. Stop for coffee at McDuck, and in the dark we drive to Krakow. "Tablet on the Figator's Miss", christened Agripina or simply Gruney by the end of the trip, this time showed loyalty and took us to our hostel, very, I must say, decent.

On Saturday morning, they once again discussed the fact that I would have to walk around Krakow all day alone.

The instructions for "Go straight to the Wawel" were received, but later I successfully ignored them, because not everything turned out as expected. Not because I'm harmful. It's just that the city is so beautiful that I wanted to take my time and just enjoy the splendor of the surroundings.


Well, as it usually happens to me, all sorts of funny stories took place. It started in a municipal bus. Of course, it was possible to take a taxi. But I still know in Lviv that a trip in ordinary public transport is a special pleasure (for me, at least, because that's how you can feel like a local for a moment). Arriving at the bus stop, reading the schedule and being horrified that the time of arrival is specified to the second, I looked around in search of a ticket office. And no. And no need, I'll buy on the bus, I thought.

And immediately drawing a summer conductor in a raspberry mohair beret, she began to mentally build a similarity of the Polish phrase about selling a ticket. The bus arrived second by second. With 10 zlotys in my fist, I entered the salon. I can't see anything mohair: (… However, people do some manipulations at a small automatics in the middle of the cabin and leave, happily crippled. I go to myself. A young couple just buys tickets in automatics. A polite Polish gentleman is delicately interested Yes, I say, he wants to, but he can't. Oh, now we will help, he answers, smiling. But seeing the money in my hand, he shakes his head and explains that you can only buy with a card, but not a bank. sold in basements (shops), and even then not in all and in special kiosks.

What to do - I do not understand.

But in a panic attack comes the saving thought of asking these young Poles to buy me a ticket with their card, and I will give the money in cash. Yes, the gentleman agrees, and then his wife enters the negotiation process. I wonder if I should go far. Learning that in the center, explains that it makes no sense to buy an expensive ticket for a trip lasting 60 minutes for 5 zlotys, and you can buy for 20 minutes. for 2.80 zlotys. While I am digesting this useful information, it turns out that the good lady has no surrender from my bill. Since the whole middle part of the cabin is still watching the epic of the treatment of a senseless foreign citizen, some passengers also take out their wallets in the hope of scraping 7.20 there. But, unfortunately, no one has them. The fact that you can just pay the newlyweds 10 zlotys for a ticket does not even come to my mind.


At this time, at the next stop, a strict boy with glasses enters the bus and immediately asks from the doorstep what's going on. I am neither alive nor dead, I understand that, apparently, this is the Polish controller, and the hour of reckoning in the full sense of the word has passed. The brain is pierced by the information read the day before that the fine for ticketless travel is as much as 280 zlotys and even the lack of the required amount does not exempt you from paying it, as well as pathetic babble such as: we do not speak in tongues ”. Everything is simple. If a ticketless person is found and refuses to pay the fine, the driver blocks the door and calls the police. The violator is taken to the police station, and already there he will have to pay 500 zlotys (a fine for ticketless travel, a fine for disrupting the schedule plus the departure services of the "brigade"). In short, the future is beginning to look very bleak to me.

But here the passengers in the race, including young children and the elderly, begin to tell the imaginary controller about what is happening on the bus during the previous 4 stops. The boy with the glasses, who looks a lot like the Rabbit from the Soviet cartoon about Winnie the Pooh, takes my hand and makes his way forward, explaining on the go that you can buy tickets from the driver. Getting to the front platform, he explains to the driver that, say, madam, she has no card or money, she needs to go, but she can not buy a ticket. In response to this, the driver almost missed the wheel and angrily replied something like that once the lady has nothing, then what kind of old man she rides in buses, and in general, what is he here, etc. , etc. Oh no, it's a mistake, says "Rabbit", the lady doesn't have a card, but she has cash, so won't the gentleman sell the ticket for the lady?

The driver, without saying a word in response, gets an obstetric suitcase from somewhere below, pulls out a wallet from its bowels, a notebook from the wallet, a thin pack of tickets from the notebook, tears off 2 (and these are tickets for 60 minutes for 5 gold), puts goes to the window and takes my money. Instead of bowing and giving and crawling, sobbing happily, for some reason I try to explain to him that I do not need 2 tickets (that for some reason I will have to return by bus, at this moment for some reason I do not even think). In response, he silently takes my tickets, returns my money and slams the window. I'm going to cry. "Rabbit" finally understands that I am an impassable idiot, silently takes a note from my hand, knocks on the window, hands it to the crimson driver in indignation and says something quietly in Polish. The driver starts smiling, the operation with the suitcase is repeated, and miraculously - in my hand again! 2! ! ! ticket! ! ! !!

The boy, seeing that I am close to happiness and madness, smiles sympathetically and explains with signs that the story is not over, the ticket must be composted. He leads me to the composter, puts in my hand a ticket with an arrow drawn on it and puts it in the hole of the composter ...Needless to say, all the rest of the way, the passengers happily formed me, and I answered them : ).


I go out near the train station, unfolding the map, I understand where I am. Well, so that it doesn't happen right away, as in that anecdote about "Look, Grandma, the military has arrived! They got the card. Now they will ask for directions, ”I decide to just go where my eyes are looking. And how great to wander through an unfamiliar city! To examine the facades of houses, and the cobblestones underfoot, and the faces of passers-by ...And to find among them fellow travelers ...

When I drove to the Small Market, there was no one on it except me and three other elderly ladies. Nobody. Even pigeons. That is.

Huge medieval square and us. One of the women is taking photos of the other two. And after taking a few pictures, he begins to look uncertainly in all directions. Interpreting her view as a call to action, I take a firm step towards her and ask in the purest foreign Russian language: “Take a picture of the three of you? ». In response, she immediately shouts to her comrades a phrase from which I understand only that she speaks Italian. They nod happily, pull on their berets, start combing their hair and coloring their lips. And when "mine", handing me the phone, is already going to my friends to be depicted with them forever, I shout to her: "And what to click here? ». She smiles and turns to me and asks if I speak Italian, English, French or German.

Since the answer to all the questions is vigorously shaking my head from side to side, the next question is whether I am Polish. Answer: no (in Russian, we are driving).

Then a conjecture and a new question appear in her eyes: Russian? No, I answer, Ukrainian. She makes such an indefinite gesture, saying that one thing is clear - she is not Italian and goes to her family. We take photos. Several times. In different ways (and women are completely free, take different funny collective poses, laugh, explain something to me in Italian, I laughing, something in response to them blabbering in Russian). We part almost with friends, with a collective nose and kisses on the cheek.

Since, as I said, the trip was spontaneous, and everything was no more than 2 days (not even days, but evenings), the route of an independent tour of the city seemed to me like this: Zvezhynets (where we lived) - Planty - Small Market - main Market - all the surrounding churches - Wawel - Kazimierz - Planty.


The only thing I still regret now is that I didn't get to the Wawel Castle itself (and we never met the "Lady with the Ermine"), and many more are not…, but about them below.

What to say about Krakow ...The one who was in it knows everything himself. For those who were not, just envy, because the city is really beautiful. And it's so beautiful that somehow you don't immediately feel like a stranger in it, everything in it is nice to you at once, and expensive, and interesting, and… Ah, what can I say. Krakow must be seen, listened to, heard, felt and sniffed.

Well, then… At the next turn on Dominican Street, similar to the carriageway from the sidewalk, suddenly someone's exclamation hits me in the back: “KARA, KARA! ». Thinking that this is a warning to me that a forklift is moving down the street, I turn around and see Italians waving. Well, I think my aunts got lost. I'm coming.

The three of them start saying something to me, and the only word I don't even understand is that I intuitively catch the word coffee. However, somehow it occurs to me that they invite me to drink coffee together. Ha, well, I'm a "coffee pot", si-si, nod, I agree! Bought a paper cup, sat down on a bench

. And - no language barriers, despite the fact that I am exclusively Russian, and the three of them are only Italian. But at the same time the owner of the smartphone on which I photographed them, acts as a translator : ). The main thing is that everyone understands everything. And about bambini, and about amore, and about laurel, and about pension, and about traveling, ah, no, not from Rome, oh, from Naples! . . It's a pity I didn't have time to take pictures of them.

Then there was the Wawel Hill and the first beast in life in the cult restaurant "Under the Wawel" (for some reason ashamed to take it in bread, and ate from an ordinary plate).


Then I decided to go to Kazimierz, for the simple reason that the museums are open late, and I wanted to see Kazimierz not in the dark (firstly, I am from Berdychiv, and our city has always been considered an unspoken Jewish capital. Secondly, out of ignorance, I thought that the monument to the Krakow ghetto - 74 bronze chairs - is also here.

However, even when someone else thinks all the way for you, you still need to plan and "direct" some things in advance.

But this was only the first date. So, there will still be: and ice cream, and movies, and a kiss in the front (in the sense of Kosciuszko Hill, which offers an amazing panorama of Krakow; and the trumpeter, whom I heard but never saw; and Jagiellonian University; and the dragon, to whom she neither wished nor threw a coin so that he would die in the flames, and again Planty, where sitting on a bench, you still pretend to be local, feeding the seeds to pigeons, and… Eh! ).

Translated automatically from Ukrainian. View original
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Кусочек краковского Львова или львовского Кракова :)
Костел Св.Троицы (еще его называют  Доминиканскии костелом)
Встреча веков :)
Краковские Планты - это парковое кольцо, окружающее Старый город. Считается, что длина паркового кольца Плант составляет более 4 км, а общая площадь около 20 га
Краковянин (думала сначала, что житель Кракова=краковяк :)). Увиделись мы с ним в Казимеже. Вообще, у краковян какой-то культ собак. Псы абсолютно органично чувствуют себя в городе, очень воспитанны и галантны
Чаплин в Казимеже
Вавельский холм. Сенаторская башня Вавельского замка
На большом воздушном шаре... (с)
Витрина в Суконных рядах
В Мариацком костеле
Суконные ряды.
 Пл.Рынок. Образец современного искусства -
Двери Мариацкого костела
Двери Мариацкого костела
Наверное, такое фото есть у ВСЕХ, кто хоть раз был в Кракове. Мариацкий костел.
Костел Св.Адальберта (еще его называют костелом Св.Войтеха) - считается одним из старейших не только в Кракове, но и во всей Польше.
Театр Словацкего
Малый Рынок
Бронзовая фигура мальчика - копия одной из фигур Мариацкого алтаря. Это дар краковских ремесленников городу.
Солнечные часы на внешней стороне часовни Св.Яна Непомуцкого
Мариацкая площадь
Такое себе напоминание о бренности всего сущего :)
Возле каждого исторически значимого объекта - его макет и краткое описание на нескольких языках и шрифтом Брайля
 Башня Ратуши
Памятник Адаму Мицкевичу. Высота 10 м. Внизу постамента четыре аллегории, обозначающие родину, доблесть, науку и поэзию. На пьедестале надпись на польском языке
Башня кафедрального собора Св.Станислава и Вацлава. Это коронационный собор и усыпальница польских королей. В башне помещается самый большой в Польше колокол - Сигизмунд (Зигмунд)
Бывшая резиденция деканов капитула. А еще здесь какое-то время жил Кароль Войтыла, более известный как Папа Иоанн Павел II.
Бернардинский монастырь (костел Бернардинцев)
Бернардинский монастырь
В Казимеже
Ну чем не львовская Латинская Катедра?! Костел Францисканцев
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