Rynek Glowny

Krakow’s main square, Rynek Glowny, is one of the largest of the European cities. It is filled with people, vendors, Polish food, pigeons, beautiful buildings, and churches. We spent lots of time just walking through the square.

Unfortunately, it is also filled with people trying to sell you tours around the city and the sites close by. Some days we could not walk two steps without someone new asking us to take a tour. Mostly because of this, Krakow felt more touristy than the other cities we visited in Europe.  Despite this slight annoyance, we think Krakow is a great city to spend some time in.

Visiting Auschwitz and Dachau

When we were in Munich visiting Abbie, we visited Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial, which was the site of the first concentration camp in Germany.

We also went to Auschwitz while we were in Krakow. Auschwitz was designated by the Nazis as the place where the “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe” would take place. As if there were any questions to answer other than how people could act so cruel, depraved, and sadistic towards their fellow human beings.

I don’t have much to say about our experiences at Dachau and Auschwitz, other than I think it is important for everyone to visit a Holocaust memorial somewhere at some point in their life. To pay respect to those who suffered and died. To learn more, to ensure that history never repeats itself in this way. The experience at the memorials is sobering. Particularly at Auschwitz, where each pair of shoes, laying in piles and piles, in all shapes and sizes – including children’s shoes – really makes it hit home, the shear enormity of the number of individuals who died there at the hands of others.

We also visited the recently opened Schindler Museum at the site of Oskar Schindler’s former factory in the Podgroze neighborhood of Krakow. It is designed to demonstrate what life was like for Poles and Jews during the time of Nazi occupation of Krakow.  Having visited Auschwitz the day before, the musuem’s exhibits were all the more poignant.

Hall of Choices, showing people’s ethical dilemmas:

Quote about the lives Oskar Schindler saved:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I’ve never been fond of pigeons.  They congregate around you when you are trying to enjoy a nice meal outside.  They crowd you.  They stare at you, and try to coerce you to feed them.  They have beady eyes.  They poop.  Everywhere.  (Particularly up and down the side of your house when they live in your neighbor’s roof.  Not that we ever lived next door to a house like that or anything). And they make annoying, persistent, cloying gurgling noises.

As a long-time reader of Ginny Montanez’s blog That’s Church and previously, the Burgh Blog, my distain of pigeons has been taken to a new level, incited by Ginny’s boundless hatred of pigeons.  So I am posting this to warn her, and others who truly, deeply hate pigeons, that Krakow is best to be avoided. Apparently, pigeons in Krakow are legendary and respected.  The horror.

They are EVERYWHERE in Krakow, especially in Rynek Glowny, Krakow’s main square.  And they are ready to attack. One morning, I was taking pictures of the square, when I spotted a congregation of pigeons. Suddenly, they took flight and aimed themselves directly at the people like missiles. It was like a scene out of that horror movie The Birds.

Pigeons surrounding, getting ready:

Pigeons on attack:

Shudder.