I changed plans at the last minute, canned my night in Katowice and headed for the nearby city of Krakow. I was in the area primarily to visit the Auschwitz camps, but Lonely Planet convinced me that Krakow was going to shit all over Katowice in terms of being a nice place to visit. Well, turns out it was pretty damn good, what I remember of it!
And so, arriving in town, I was once again tasked with trying to find another hostel that didn’t believe in sign-posting. The “Lenin’s Gone – Let’s Rock” hostel was situated right in the heart of the old town. Though I preferred the old town of some other cities I’d been to (notably Gent, and even Warsaw) Krakow boasted the biggest old town square of any town in Europe, something like 200m square. There was a pretty good jazz concert going on when I arrived which was good listening as I roamed town with a bottle of the local brew, Tyskie, which I’d grown to like. Meeting a few Aussies, Brazilians and Germans in the hostel, it wasn’t long before I’d fallen into a group that was heading out into town a bit later on, and Poland being extremely cheap, I figured I’d join them.
The hostel didn’t sell beers, or have a bar (for some weird reason) but unfazed, I headed to the minimart down the road and stocked up. When I returned, it was like the eyes of everyone at the hostel had been opened to the world for the first time. “Man, where’d you get that beer? Oh down the road, and cheap? Wicked, alright see you back here in 10 minutes, we’ll have a drink”. Weird, I would have thought backpackers in general were more resourceful than that. Nonetheless, it was a very good crowd that got going back in the common room, and before long, it was 11pm and everyone who wanted to go out for the night fell into a large group. Two Brazilian fellas who had been staying at the hostel for a couple of nights led the way, and we ended up in the Old Town at a not-too-expensive bar/club.
Not long after, I had the entire group drinking Polish Zubrovska vodka, to which they all agreed was one of the most drinkable vodkas that they’d ever tasted. Living in West Ealing in London – with all the Polish immigrants – had its advantages! The night accelerated and we moved on to a second nightclub, a little bit further out of town, which had no tourists (except us) and had a much more local vibe to it. I swear, walking in here was mindblowing, and I definitely felt like I was in an Eastern European nightclub, having walked into basically what appeared to be a vacant office tower, walking up to the 5th floor and finding a heaving dance floor and a cheap bar. The place was full of Polish people dancing and guzzling spirits, and it was very cool. But too many vodkas and a final beer chug with my new friends took its toll and I was out of there by around 2:30am, heading home via the kebab shop to pass out in bed.
I was woken up around 6am with a bit of a clatter, and the Brazilian boys stumbled in and started having a full on conversation in the dorm room. With only a few hours sleep at best before heading out to Auschwitz the next day, I said something quite stern to shut them up, which they did, and went back to sleep. It turned out later however that there was a bit of a story behind the disruption. At breakfast I found out that after I’d left the nightclub, my Aussie mate who I’d met had then left about ½ hour later, also returning via the kebab store, and finally the Brazilian fellas, who also followed a similar routine. They were in the kebab shop around 5am when a fight broke out in the street. They stayed inside the shop until it looked like it had dispersed, then headed for the hostel. They were just 10m from the hostel door, when they were surrounded by a group of locals who – without provocation or a word of warning – opened up with kicks and punches, before stealing both their ID’s.
The boys were a sorry state in the morning, with bruises and cuts all over their faces. We asked what happened, and over the course of the day, the pieces of the story were put together. From what we can gather, some kind of altercation had happened at the Prozac nightclub in the wee hours (long after I’d hit the sack) and the local Polish guys were going around town searching for foreigners. The Brazilians picked their interest – possibly they even had something to do with it but didn’t admit to it – and had their ID’s stolen to assist in identifying people back at the nightclub. The police even told them that there was a good chance they could recover their ID’s at the club the next night. They didn’t steal any money or other belongings, so it was an interesting encounter, and it rammed home the fact that many of us need to be more careful, as most of us at some point had stumbled home drunk by ourselves.
Anyway, not suffering too badly but definitely feeling the lack of sleep, I dragged myself out of bed to head out to the Auschwitz tour that I’d booked. It turns out that there are so many people that want to tour the camps, that you need to do it as a part of a guided tour, if you want to make it easy for yourself. So I left my bike and bags back in the hostel, and jumped on a minibus for the 1 ½ hour ride out to the camps. I’ll write a bit more about Auschwitz later, I’m pretty buggered.
