"Industrial and Cultural?" a Krakow Travel Page by johngayton

So here I am, arrived Weds evening, didn't sleep the night before as I was closer to Stansted than I was to anywhere else and managed to get a train ticket for 12 quid from Westbury, arriving Stansted just before midnight for a flight the following afternoon - if I had left in the morning the same ticket would have cost about 50, doing this on a budget .

18 quid worth of espressos, a 6 and a half quid breakfast, 4 pints of 3 quid Guinness, not to mention the 5 pints of Bass at The Railway in Westbury, nor the couple of Discoveries at Paddington, (no time at Liverpool St for even a quick one - Kings Cross for that ;( ) and I have now saved 2 quid - Ha!

First impressions of Krakow:

Very small airport; bus across the tarmac, luggage pick up, through passport control and whoosh, the sliding doors open and there you are - welcome to Poland! At 7pm on a December evening on a moonless night, not having slept for 36 hrs, immediate impression is - Industrial Wasteland, Hmmm, but not as cold as expected, *** it's warmer here than Devon!!

Not sure exactly where hotel is in relation to airport and so have 2 options to get into the city, well 3 if you include a taxi - but seeing as I'm on a budget......

Option 1 is the bus, the second option is the train - I don't recall anyone here mentioning the train service into the city, but it exists and even has a freebie shuttle bus to ferry you the 200 metres. Train it is then, but no need for the shuttle bus as I'm travelling light.

Train is a classic piece of post-modern retro - a timeless piece of functionality, ageless - it's only the fact that the station platform is elevated which does away with the need for a stepladder to ascend. The conductor collects my 4 Zloty and issues me with the handwritten ticket, and into the city we go, 15 minutes exactly!

Krakow Station continues the theme started by the train, emphasised by the industrial semi-wasteland passed on the journey, by presenting itself as a bleak chunk of concrete, gouged by the tracks and overhung by yet more grey. At just after 7 pm the platforms are virtually deserted, bit of a contrast to the London stations.

Seeing as I am not sure exactly where hotel is, except that it is out of town heading towards the motorway, I opt for a taxi from the station - bit disconcerting when the driver has to consult his A to Z! "English?" asks the driver, "Nie Scotska." I reply, which seems to exhaust both of our respective vocabularies in each others language. The railway station may have been deserted but the roads certainly aren't, the 7 Km journey takes about 25 minutes in the nose-to-tail mishmash of cars, vans and trucks of varying ages passing through yet more semi-industrial wastelands punctuated by clumps of concrete apartment blocks.

The hotel turns out to be yet more concrete, but modern concrete, black and orange rather than grey, the shade of orange being that bright fluorescent one used by Heineken in its sponsorship of the Dutch football team. It sounds worse than it looks. Check-in no problems, friendly and efficient, room OK, basic but clean and modern. Advertised WiFi turns out to be only in lobby and restaurant areas but that's not necessarily a problem. Hotel restaurant is a pizza joint and so first Polish meal is Pizza, and of course Piwo!! Beer cheap :) Have been awake now for about 40 hours and so it is an early night, head meets pillow and the next thing it knows it's morning!!

Industrial semi-wasteland, along with concrete apartment blocks, provides me with my first daylight view of Krakow - I know this is post-communist Eastern Europe but it's taking the stereotype a bit too far!!

Hotel breakfast OK, good coffee, the usual cold meats, cheese and bread. Reception directs me to the bus stop into town and off I go, first crossing the six lanes of traffic, - hey, guess what we pass all the way into the city? Ha! You guessed, well done!! Still a bit peeved by the fact that the temperature is in double digits, no wind to speak of and the winter sun is actually quite warm - what with me having packed my long johns etc.

One minor little hiccup is that the bus doesn't actually go into the city but rather skirts the western bank of the river before continuing out to the suburban estate of Biezanow Nowy, passing............

Biezanow Nowy does have an interesting looking church, something which may become a minor project whilst I'm here - there are certainly a lot of churches, ranging from the expected cathedral-types to some rather unexpected pieces of architecture - see 1st travelogue. But churches aren't really my thing - where are the bars?