Slovakia and Poland: Food comas and shopping frenzy!

Kosice, Slovakia
Our departure from Romania started off great – Jane the GPS knew the way, and we had an early start. Since we were also going back an hour with the European time change, we were pretty excited to get to Kosice with an early lunchtime arrival. HAHAHAHA, it was not meant to be. We pulled up to the Oradea border crossing and we sat…. in line… for almost an hour and a half. The massive glut of cars was indescribable, and we wished we would have gone up to the more rural crossing we had used before. What a waste of time. Luckily, the skies brightened up once we crossed the border, and we sped the rest of the way across Hungary to Kosice, making it by lunchtime.

So, what is Kosice (ko-seech-ey) famous for? Apparently, the city has the oldest European marathon, and is the second largest city in Slovakia. Who knew?!?! Andy Warhol’s parents were from near there, and there was a small exhibition of his works while we were in town. Kosice is really small and compact, especially the old medieval core, which is about 6 blocks by 3 three blocks long and is mostly a pedestrian mall. We saw the main sights of St. Elizabeth’s cathedral, which is the oldest Gothic church in Eastern Europe, the Franciscan Church, the Street of Handicrafts (lame in comparision to Veliko Turnovo!), the Immaculata statue, and Urban’s Tower which now holds the wax museum of famous Slovakian people. We skipped the wax museum for obvious reasons. The city was quite pleasant and had gorgeous small cafes and restaurants lining through the streets, and an upmarket feeling. We were really excited to be there! Part of the specialness of the city was just being able to stroll the streets. Our second day there we walked town and watched a few weddings at the cathedral. At the first ceremony we saw, the ceremony had just let out of church, and there was a gathering in the yard… we had fun listening to the live trio playing and people watching. Apparently they send off the bride and groom on a bicycle which has the aluminum cans attached. Kosice was a lovely two night stop, and we wished we would have had more time to explore the gorgeous rolling countryside we drove through.

Zakopane, Poland
Our route took us across forests and hills, along a pretty one lane road in each direction. As it was a Sunday, there was really no one on the road. It was gorgeous! As we climbed in altitude, we noticed that the temperature kept getting colder --- we were wearing shorts and long sleeves and sandals and were not thrilled! As we kept driving, the weather began looking worse, with huge grey clouds rolling across the horizon, and covering the tops of the hills. Pretty soon the temperature was 6C, and we saw snow covered mountains every so often poking out of the clouds. The weather was not looking up for us as we headed into Zakopane!

Zakopane was a small village until the 1870’s when artists and musicians moved to the mountains in search of inspiration. This is apparently how the Zakopane school of architecture was born, which features homes with a heavy timber look and sloped roofs. The village grew after after World War II, and a funicular up the side of the mountain was built, assuring it a spot as a tourist destination. The walk downtown from our cute pension took us about 30 minutes in the cool weather, but it seemed like everyone else was out and walking around. We noticed the architecture, lots of beautiful wooden homes with pitched roofs. Amazingly, many of the yards still had colorful blooming flowers, and the lawns were still manicured and really green! We figured it was still “summer.” Town was really nice, as it was not terribly built up with condo buildings, mainly one story timber buildings and chalets. Downtown had a lot of small restaurants, all of which were opening for lunch, and were lit dimly with candles flickering on all the tables – tres romantic! The shops were pretty good – a lot of sporting stores, amber jewelry, and the usual tourist schlock with Polska gifts everywhere. Once we were about halfway up the pedestrian street we found a statue of a man reading a Zakopane-Chicago newspaper, with one of the pages missing. As we later found out, many people from that area emigrated to Chicago, and the actual newspaper was published in Chicago three times weekly! We quickly found out one of the great things about Zakopane were the cheese shops and kiosks that were everywhere – you could sample the different types of cheese – there were all types of sizes, patterns and colors. They apparently did not need refrigeration – although it was cool enough anyways out of doors! We tried one cheese – it was pure heaven and we struggled to not buy another one. Once we had been up and down the pedestrian street a few times, we decided to head towards the funicular. Once we did that a whole new world opened up – there were towns of small tourist kiosk shops and stalls set up. By then it was after 1:15pm, and we were getting hungry, so we stopped and picked up another specialty – grilled pieces of farmer cheese – a crunchy outside with melted cheese inside. Wow. We found lunch and had a plate of pierogis each at a local “fast food” place – and learned that some of the pierogi there are steamed and not fried! After we had eaten lunch, we forged ahead for some serious shopping. We picked up a few gifts and wool slippers for Christy. That evening, after the included dinner in our pension, we spent the night eating cake and watching the dancing in the cafe! What a nice way to pass time in the mountains.

Lipnica/Jablonka/Wadowice/Wieliczka
The next morning, we were up early and out the door for our next adventure – looking up Christy’s relatives. Her grandmother had given some information to her, and we sought off to two towns to the west, near Slovakia. We then drove to Lipnica, which is a smaller town located about 15 minutes away from Jablonka, along a small pretty road that overlooks a lake and mountains in the distance. We pulled into town and it was a cold morning – we were not prepared for the 5C temperature! We parked the car and decided to go poking around, and looked around for the St. Lukasz Church, where Christy’s great-great-great grandmother was baptized. It was pretty hard to not miss the massive spire of church, and we were delighted to find that it was indeed the same church, which had been built in the 1700’s! We were also able to look through the graveyard, where we saw a lot of common surnames of people we knew in Chicago. After speaking with some locals, we understood that many people left for Chicago in 1900. We eventually had to carry on, and decided to make Wadowice our next stop, due to the fame that the town held – it was the birthplace of Pope John Paul II. We finally reached town, which was fairly small and easy to get around, and we parked near the town square (for a fee, grrr…) and went in search of food. Town was a little light on restaurants, but heavy on their claim to fame – the cream pastry. There were tons of small cafes and bakeries advertising the cake! We ended up eating lunch on the town square and had a meal of meat and sauerkraut/mushroom pierogi, and then decided that we could not eat anymore! No pastries for us. We did enjoy the small town and the lovely cathedral in town. Legend has it that Pope John Paul’s statue outside of church actually points to his favorite pastry bakery! That night we stayed at a small pleasant hotel – the Hotel Solny - in Wielicza, which was right outside of Cracow. We arrived there near dinnertime, and were pooped from the ride, and planned on eating in the cute restaurant in the hotel. It seems that the pension/hotel food we have been getting in the smaller hotels has always been really good --- so why ruin a good trend? Sure enough, the food was amazing – we had more meat pierogi, a Hungarian pancake and boiled potatoes. The next morning, we were meant to go to the Salt Mine in town, but we read the tourist brochure, and found out it was a three hour tour that would cost about $20 USD per person…. And we were itching to get downtown to see Cracow, so in the end, we forewent it!

Cracow, Poland
Cracow is over 750 years old, and was the royal capitol for over 500 years. Amazingly, it escaped much damage from World War II, so it still has many Gothic and Renaissance masterpieces. However, it was not without some losses – 65,000 of the city’s 260,000 inhabitants were Jewish, and they were herded into ghettoes or sent to concentration camps. The city was also looted by the Nazis, but never saw much combat or bombings. After the war, the main city grew, expanding its suburban areas, and became the third largest city in Poland. We started off our first day in town with a walk into Old Town, and loved it. There were a ton of restaurants all around town, including the one we never made it to – the Wegetarian Bar! Old Town was located between the old walls, and had the full cobblestoned streets, shops, restaurants and shops galore. There were also the tour hawkers – and in Cracow’s case their specialty were Old Town tours in golf carts, some of which would peel around the streets and high speeds, blasting punk music. The town plaza called the Rynek Glowny was also gorgeous, and once it started warming up throughout the day, we loved it even more! We liked walking on the streets that were off the main streets – there was a surprise around every corner. Marcus remembered that there was a brewpub in town and off we went to the CK Browar bar, which was outside the city walls. Their specialty were three and five liter “tubes” of beer which could be brought to your table and tapped right there. It was a pretty great gimmick! Their food prices were also really good (in addition to the dark beer), and we had an amazing meal of schnitzel and wild boar, accompanied by the most amazing roasted potatoes. Food comas... again. The next day - we shopped. we ended up buying Christy an amber pendant and picked up some Polish crystal glasses. Christy was a happy camper! We also had more food coma Polish food – Christy had cabbage rolls with fresh mushroom sauce and Marcus had a “wheat pocket” which was more like a pizza calzone! Incidentally, the way the Poles spell cabbage rolls is completely different than how it is pronounced. Confusing for us English speakers that read Polish phonetically.

Legnica, Poland
Legnica turned out to be a nice stop for one night, despite the somewhat crappy review Lonely Planet gave it one of their books. We stayed at a cute small hotel situated on the outskirts of town. Town was meant to have been knocked down completely during World War II, and had been rebuilt in the years afterward, but you would have thought the cathedral had been there for years. We wish we would have had our camera for our walk! The only bad thing was that town seemed to have been invaded by huge mosquitoes. Our hotel had the windows open in the hallway, and you could see them all attacking the glass in our room. We had not seen anything like that for some time. That night, we did not eat in our hotel restaurant, which looked good, but which – unfortunately – did not serve any Polish food. Who could deny a food coma for the last meal we would have in Poland? So we checked out the hotel restaurant across the road. We ordered red wine for Christy and a beer for Marcus. The waiter brought out white wine and tried to explain there was no red. Great (did not help he later charged us more for it)... We should have just left after that … everything we ordered turned out to be different. Instead of one meat and one sauerkraut/mushroom pierogi, and one order of potato wedges and one sauerkraut, we got two orders of the same pierogi and potato balls. Oh well - still good!

We really liked Poland, and we wished we would not have saved it to the last of the trip as we are a little tired. We were also looking forwards to hiking, so with the weather, we were dealt a little disappointment. However, we found the food to be amazing, although we would have had to restrain ourselves sooner or later – the food is simply too much! Someone would have needed to roll us over the border eventually… We also enjoyed the brief time in Slovakia, and could have spent more time in the hills and mountains – it looked charming!

Next Up: Our quick tour of Germany