Polish Food, Snacks, and Drinks

We are now in Warsaw, arriving yesterday to our final Polish location. It’s Sunday and the first day of the trip with enough rain to keep us in our hotel room. We had drizzle and sprinkles of rain, never even enough to use our umbrellas. Today, however, it’s raining enough to create deep puddles on the cobblestone sidewalks. So, time to talk about food and drink! Pierogis aren’t the only good food we’ve found in Poland, although the pierogis have been delicious.

At our Poznan hotel’s breakfast, one of the items available was stuffed pickled peppers. We were walking thru a local market later and found them for sale. I bought 200 ml (about 7 ounces) and ate them for my lunch that day. Absolutely delicious and the best I’ve eaten, preserved sweet peppers, with a slight heat, filled with a cross between cream cheese and feta cheese, in an herbed oil.

Although potatoes are native to Peru, they have been welcomed for centuries in Poland. We had delicious individual potato casseroles, with layers of cheeses and mushrooms. (Poland is the world’s largest exporter of mushrooms.)

I tried the Polish cabbage rolls. They were good, but I prefer the sarmale cabbage rolls of Slovakia which are more seasoned.

Poles love to serve soup and stews in bread bowls. I had goulash in a bread bowl one evening. Phillip had a pork cutlet which was just like a German schnitzel at that meal, so I didn’t get a picture of it. My goulash had tender meat and lots of mushrooms. I could only eat the top of my bread bowl with the goulash as serving sizes are quite substantial.

Since it has been cool here, high temperatures usually in the 50s, we’ve eaten hot soup several times. Phillip’s go-to soup is mushroom, which he says is very mushroom-y and usually served with noodles in it. Early in the trip, I tried zurek, the Polish sour rye soup. It is a flavor that Phillip would not like, as it is slightly sour, but I found it delicious and have eaten it at least four times. I plan to try the zurek in Warsaw to see if there’s any regional difference.

I’ve written more about my favorite foods, but here’s one that Phillip really liked, sauteed chicken livers. He said they were the best chicken livers he’s had, cooked with onions and mushrooms, tender and savory.

Zabka is a convenience store chain with a store on every block. They advertise a hot dog with condiments in a tube of bread. We decided to try it for lunch one day. The Zabka we stopped at had sold out of the 6 zl (about $1.50) hot dogs, so we got the kielbasa ones (about $2). The kielbasa was already on a roller grill (just like our QT and Racetrac hot dogs). The clerk put the bread tube on a grill to heat it and add grill marks. Then, she squirted the condiments in the bread tube and dropped the sausage in. It was quite tasty and the mustard coated the enclosed sausage all the way to the final bite, but it wasn’t messy because the tube of bread had a bottom.

This is our very favorite snack in Poland. Bacon-flavored. Not just flavored, but thoroughly flavored, as in they taste like eating crunchy bacon strips even though they are some type of corn/wheat snack chip. We go thru almost a bag a day of these. They were 3.5 zl (about 80 cents) in Wroclaw and Krakow, 4 zl here. Notice the bag size, they’d be at least $3-4 in the US. 

Phillip has ordered chocolate milk shakes. In Poland, a chocolate milk shake is blended cold milk and chocolate. No ice cream or the thickness he was expecting. As he said, it is what they say it is, shaken flavored milk. Still tasty to him, he just no longer expects an American milk shake!

Cherry is a popular flavor in Poland. We tried these tea bags this morning after breakfast. I’ve seen them at our previous hotels, but usually we just have coffee and water. We’ve been missing out as the “tea” from this bag doesn’t taste like tea but rather concentrated cherry juice. We will be drinking more of it this week.

And, speaking of cherry, I mentioned the cherry vodka that our Krakow hotel presented us. It was so delicious that we went looking for it in Krakow to bring some home with us. Zabka and the souvenir stores sold some type of cherry alcohol, but we didn’t buy any of it. I found a liquor store just off the main market square in Krakow. True infused vodkas, cherry and many other flavors, three shelving units of these glass containers! We tasted quite a few of them. The shopkeeper sold bottles, so we bought several 200 ml bottles, and she siphoned our selections into the bottles. Then she wrapped the bottles securely in bubble wrap for travel. We did go back the next night to get more, including one that was not securely wrapped, to drink while here.

We still have five days of Polish eating, followed by a few days of eating in Spain, so maybe we’ll find more notable foods to share.

Krakow Dragon, underground museums, and a Jewish cemetery

We miss the Wroclow dwarf statues, but Krakow has its own “mascot,” the Krakow Dragon. Whereas the history of the dwarfs is only 40 years old, the Krakow Dragon is the stuff of legends. When we walked around Krakow’s castle, we saw signs for the “Dragon’s Lair,” but the upper entrance was closed for reconstruction. Dragon statues and stuffed dragons are sold in town. So, today, we went in search of the Krakow Dragon, and we found him!

The 13th century legend is that a dragon plagued the City of Krakow, demanding a weekly ration of three cows. If he didn’t get cows, he would eat people. One version of the legend says the king’s sons came up with the idea to kill the dragon, other versions say it was the king, and one version says it was a cobbler who came up with the idea. The scheme was to stuff a sheep skin with smoldering sulfur and give it to the dragon to eat. The dragon ate it and died breathing fire just before death. The dragon’s home was the cave below the castle next to the Vistula River. Although it wasn’t open, we did see the entrance of the Dragon’s Lair near the fire-breathing dragon. 

Our first underground tour was Wednesday to the Wielczka Salt Mines, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Steps, lots of steps, took us down the initial 90 meters underground into the first level of the mine. Walking thru the passages, we saw secondary salt on the passage walls where salt water seeped out, evaporated and left a bloom of salt.

The tour only went along 2 km of the 287 km of passages and down 135 meters with the mine’s final depth being 327 meters deep. Archeological records show that as early as 10,000 BC settlers were using salt springs in the area to get salt to preserve food. When the springs went dry, they began digging. The mines were first started in the 13th century. Today’s mines have dioramas built into the passageways, with figures made of salt.

Displays also showed how salt was mined over the centuries, with examples of the cylinders of salt that were removed by human and horse labor and mechanical means.

Huge chambers, once the salt was removed, were decorated over the years.

One method of removing salt was piping out the saline pools.

The passages were easy to walk and securely braced. Visitors have been coming into the mine since the 1700s. The mine stopped industrial production in 1996 because of falling salt prices and mine flooding problems. It is now preserved for tours and small commercial production.

Today, we went to our second underground museum, the Rynek Museum. It is under the Old Town market square. About 25 years ago, the city was reworking the area and dug a bit deeper than usual and came across ruins and artifacts of the ancient city. Archeologists and preservationists created the museum, just 4 meters underground, where the old walls from the 14th century can be seen.

Artifacts such as coins and tools were on display.

Prior to being the city site, this spot was a cemetery. Archeologists dug below the city walls and found graves from the 11th century.

This is a scene today directly above the Rynk museum. Plenty of pigeons on the Market Square!

Yesterday morning, we walked thru a nearby Jewish cemetery. During WWII, the Nazis uprooted the headstones and used them to make a road in a nearby concentration camp. After the war, the remaining Jews in Krakow brought the headstones back and used them for a memorial.

The cemetery itself was beautiful, with ivy overgrowing the headstones.

We leave Krakow tomorrow and we will miss the staff at our hotel, Hotel Wielopole. Karolina, one of the desk clerks, is an English major in college. Over the past five days, we’ve had delightful conversations with her. Another friendly clerk is Ana. Actually, they’ve all been friendly! Magdelina, the hotel manager, has done a great job hiring friendly staff, all college students. We gave Karolina a Texas key chain to remember us. When we came back from dinner, we found a Krakow dragon key chain with a thank you from Karolina and cherry vodka in our room!

We went out another time and upon our return, Karolina presented us with two slices of Krakow poppy seed cake!

We will miss this hotel; it has been one of our favorites during our travels.

Krakow & Auschwitz/Birkenau

We were sad to leave Wroclaw as we had found only about 1/3 of the city’s dwarf statues. Big smiles when I spotted this guy at the train station, pulling his suitcase as he hurries for his train!

Our Sunday train to Krakow was the most crowded train we’ve taken on this trip. We had middle seats in a first-class compartment, but it was comfortable, and we had enough room. We arrived at our hotel with time to walk a bit in the Old Town. Our hotel is just a few hundred feet from this UNESCO World Heritage site. St. Martin’s Basilica stands on one corner of the Market Square in Old Town.

On Monday, we went on a full day tour to Auschwitz/Birkenau. The entrance had the same Nazi sign we’d seen at Terezin in the Czech Republic and Dachau in Germany, “Arbeit macht frei,” which means "work makes one free." 

The opposite was true. If not selected for immediate death, prisoners were used for labor, in the camps and outside on construction and road projects. Many concentration camp prisoners were also used in factories that produced weapons and other items that supported the German war effort. Prisoners, poorly fed with rampant malnutrition and disease, died from the overwork and starvation.

Auschwitz, a former Polish Army barracks, was not established until 1940, after some of the concentration camps in Germany. However, it became the deadliest because it was where the Nazis perfected their Final Solution, the gas chambers and crematoriums. This is also where Mengele and other Nazis carried out their horrific medical experimentation on Jews, Roma, and others.

This mound housed the Auschwitz crematorium from 1940 to 1943. During 1941 and 1942, a gas chamber was added and used. In 1943, all crematory activity was moved to Birkenau as its multiple larger crematories had been constructed there. 

Birkenau, about 2 km away, is more properly called Auschwitz II. It was the second phase of Auschwitz, opened for prisoners in 1941, and the numbers of people killed at Auschwitz, 1.1 million (90% Jews), include those killed at its Birkenau location. Trains were used to ferry people here from all over Europe. The tracks lead past barracks and directly to the gas chambers.

At the end of WWII, with the Soviet Army close to Auschwitz, the Nazi SS leaders burned and blew up the gas chambers/crematoriums. Five facilities: two at which Nazis could kill and cremate 1500 people a day, three smaller ones where Nazis killed 800 a day. Ruins are all that the Nazis left of these five buildings in hopes of hiding the activity that went on here.

The tour also took us by the barracks, housing 600 prisoners each on wooden platforms with practically no sanitary facilities. The laborers stayed here until they died or were executed when they could no longer work.

Since Auschwitz is about an hour and a half from Krakow, we didn’t return until late afternoon on Monday. Tuesday, we had no scheduled tours, so I took Phillip on a walk. An over 6-mile walk, to Krakow Castle and around Old Town. 

From the Krakow Castle rampart, we had a view of the Vistula River.

We did not go into this main part of the castle, but it had a nicely landscaped area.

Upon exiting the castle on the north side, we walked thru the entrance with the drop-down gate.

After the castle walk, we walked the entire circumference of Old Town via the Planty Gardens. The gardens were put in place where the city walls, dating from the 13th century, had been. These city walls formed a complex network of fortifications, towers, and gates, surrounded by a deep moat on the outer side. However, during the 1800s, the medieval city walls fell into disuse. During that time, Krakow was under Austrian influence and Emperor Franz I of Austria-Hungary ordered the dismantling of the old fortifications, filling the moat with soil and creating a garden in its place. Now, a pleasant park in which to walk. Oh yes, I verified from several sources that the circumference, not diameter, was 4 km. I’m not making the same mistake that I made in Busan. 

We saw these blue and white carts in many locations around Old Town. They are specific to Krakow and sell Obwarzanek Krakowski.

This is Obwarzanek Krakowski, basically a cross between a bagel and a pretzel. This food is protected and on the EU traditional food list, meaning it can only be produced and sold here. A tasty, albeit chewy, treat for 3zl (about 75 cents US). 

On the north end of Planty Gardens we found St. Florian’s Gate and a guard tower with a grass-filled moat.

To get back into Old Town, we walked thru St. Florian’s Gate.

This evening, we went back out to walk around, actually, to find ice cream for Phillip. It was dusk, and we got a nice picture of the Town Hall Tower, the only original remnant of the 15th century town hall. It's chilly here, the high today was about 45 degrees. The lights on the lower left are heaters in the restaurant patio areas. 

Tomorrow: another tour, to the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Wieliszka Salt Mines.

Wroclaw Dwarfs & Segway Tour

Wroclaw, Poland is a delightful city! We came for its history, but also for the dwarf statues. Over 350 of them have been installed around the city, mainly in the tourist areas. In the early 1980s, a university student, protesting the communist government, painted dwarfs on a wall from which the government had removed graffiti, drawing attention to what had previously been there. This started an underground movement, called the Orange Alternative, whose adherents wore comical orange pointed hats to make fun of the communists. By the late 80s, marches began in support of dwarfs. The original Wroclaw statues were a tribute to the Orange Alternative, now they are a city marketing tool. Whatever the reason for their explosion from 36 to 350 in number, it is great fun for both of us to walk around and find them. The dwarfs are about twelve inches tall and made of brass. Here is just a sample of the pictures I took as we found the dwarfs.

We've actually done more here than just look in doorways and around statues for the dwarfs. Wroclaw has a large central market square that is NOT under construction. 

Fountains and statues abound in this area.

Many buildings were bombed during WWII and have been rebuilt in the same style they were in originally. This is a university building and although it had damage from bombing, we could not tell the reconstructed part from the original parts of the building.

Phillip and I have not just been walking the town for the past few days. Yesterday, we did one of my bucket list items: a segway tour. The handle in the above picture is from my segway. The segway tour was so much fun! We will do others in the future. I will say that I was not coordinated enough to use my camera and ride at the same time. The pictures of us on the segways are on my cell phone and they aren't transferring over for me to use in the blog. But, here's a picture of Phillip and his segway at one of our stops. The red brick on the ground is where the original fortifications of Wroclaw were (Napolean was actually the one who tore them down on his way east thru Poland toward Russia.)

Our guide, Martin, was a talkative fellow who knew his history and architecture. A geography lesson for you: Hamburg, Germany is the European city with the most bridges, followed by Amsterdam then Venice. Fourth in Europe for the most bridges in the city is Wroclaw. The Oder River branches, twists, and turns enough that Wroclaw has over 150 bridges. During our tour, we went over several of them, like this one to Cathedral Island. Wroclaw as a city began on this island, because the island settlement could be defended and used for river trade, during the 1200s. 

We rode past many buildings, some never damaged, that were built in the 1700s and 1800s, like this museum building covered in ivy. 

Martin took us on a longer tour than we had booked as we were the only people on the tour! Love those private tours that just happen that way. Instead of a 90-minute Segway tour, he could tell we were interested and having fun, so our tour was over 3 hours. We didn't stop for every dwarf we saw, but if we had stopped and a dwarf was nearby, I dismounted from the segway and snapped a quick picture.

We stayed out until after dark last night, so we were able to see the astronomical clock on one of the five-hundred-year-old buildings as it was lit by streetlamps.

Today, we walked along the Oder River. The entire four-mile walk, except when we diverted to a shopping mall to use a restroom, was in a park setting. 

Outside the Natural History Museum, they had a statue to be used as a chair.

And, we are eating well here. Phillip did not expect his meal yesterday to be quite so much food! 

Tomorrow, we take another train for a three-hour ride to Krakow. I still have more dwarf pictures formatted for this blog, so here you go: