Europe 2012 Day 5, Poland (part 2) - Krakow

July 17:

My Polish supplier took us to Krakow to have a late lunch and walk around the city before we caught our flight back to Germany.  He was very impressed by Jewish part of the city.  He said it had character.  He explained at one point Krakow and the Jewish city were separate but over time with population growth the two cities merged to one.  He said most of Krakow was just an industrial city but the Jewish part was far more interesting. So we walked down a famous street (means alligator street in English - can't remember the Polish name) and had lunch here:

After lunch we were going to go to see a castle nearby but there were dark rain clouds and my German colleague was a little concerned about them...so we wandered around the Jewish quarters to see the sights there.  We were told how before WWII there were many Jewish people in this part of the city and they owned the buildings.  But after the war not many returned.  And, then the communist rule came.  So now that Poland is no longer communist they are trying to return the building to the original Jewish owners.  But in some cases the family line has come to an end. The Jewish community claiming it should be handed over to them and the Polish government refusing to do anything with the buildings (at all) if they can't give them to the original owners.  So, these buildings sit vacant..

Shown here is a building built during the communist period of Poland. I didn't really get a chance to capture the building in it's ugliness....just pure function.  Although the sign for the nightclub certainly brightens it up!  You can also see my Polish colleague walking along.

We were brought to a church built in 1405.  It is a huge glorious structure that I was unable to really capture from the outside:

Inside, my US coworker told me I couldn't take pictures.  So I spent the time looking in every area of the church staring at the wonder of the structure.  It was absolutely amazing. When we left, I noted the sign said flash photography so I ran inside to take a picture to capture the amazing detail that was throughout the church:

Next we went to a Synagogue that was built in the 1800s.  Again not all that impressive from the outside:

You actually had to pay to go inside of the synagogue.  Inside it wasn't half as impressive as the Byzantine Era Church:

  But the windows were beautiful:

After this, we had about 15 minutes left, so he took us to "the best ice cream shop" in Krakow.  He told us on the weekend there were long queues outside the shop.  I asked him if it reminded him of the Socialist time.  I asked the question about the queues because he had told us of the long lines for good beer but many places made their own beer that wasn't of high quality that you could get without lines.  He said, "no, because we didn't have ice cream then."  He did indicate that since then certain things such as meat are as good as they had been during the communist time.  He explained that now, people "shot up" the meat with water, salt, etc. and that for a kilo of meat you only really got 0.7 kilos of actual meat.   It was one of the first times I had ever spoken with someone who had lived under communist rule.  It was wonderful to get their impressions of before and after.  The ice cream was very good.  Of course I got vanilla but also tried the raspberry, too.