A Kraking Time

I absolutely adore Olomouc.  Part of it was that after five mostly cloudy days in the Czech Republic it was brilliantly sunny when we arrived.  And part of it was that it's one of the loveliest cities in central Europe, with virtually no tourists in evidence.  And part of it was the couple of absolutely wonderful pubs that Steven and I found there.

We had a really lovely time wandering around the narrow cobbled streets and grand squares.  And though the Cloth House and the beautiful and imposing church of St. Moritz were both under renovation, Olomouc still has plenty of lovely architecture (mostly 17th and 18th century, after it was badly damaged during the Thirty Years War) to go around, and it's easy to see why it (along with probably half a dozen other places in central and eastern Europe!) is sometimes called Little Prague.

Perhaps the very best thing Olomouc, however, was the Svatovaclavsky Pivovar.  A little brewpub with a big dining room and garden that was tucked away inconspicuously just off the entrance to an (I think?) low rise office building.

The beer was good and inexpensive, perhaps because we'd departed Bohemia and entered Moravia, the brewers had room to experiment a bit more, and brewed a passable Hefeweizen, beers with the addition of freshly harvested cherries and peaches, as well as a larger than usual variety of more typical Czech lagers.

Plus we had an absolutely massive platter of meat (with the token addition of some pickles, fried peppers and lettuce garnish) that they called their brewer's platter.  We loved the place so much we returned for brunch the following day before taking long, meandering walk around the remains of the old city walls, which have now been largely turned into a park that rings about half of the central city.

We sat in the sun on another brewpub's patio, enjoying the weather and watching kids play with an absolutely adorable puppy.  We sat for long enough that we realized we might not have time to walk out to the bus station for our reserved trip. In a panic we sorted out how to get tram tickets, made it to the station with about ten minutes to spare and, shortly after arriving, we (inevitably) got a message saying that our bus would be delayed by about two and a half hours.

This meant that we crossed the border into Poland right around sunset and arrived in Krakow well after dark.  This was not a major problem, however, as the bus station is located in a huge, brightly lit shopping mall a short walk from the old town, and the old town itself (especially the central square) is absolutely beautiful any time of day.  Maybe even better at night!

Nighttime activities in Krakow were (shocker!) mostly beer related.  Mostly at the prosaically named, but wonderful House of Beer. The upstairs is bustling and welcoming in a vaguely Irish Pubby kind of way, while the old cellar is quieter with ancient looking vaulted stone ceilings.  And what a difference a few hundred kilometres can make! There was all sorts of variety and creativity in the Polish beers we tried, beginning with the Grodziskie (an oak-smoked, lowish alcohol wheat beer which [with the possible exception of Baltic Porter] is Poland's only native style, carrying on through Polish herb infused lagers and finishing with American-style IPAs.

On top of this we had pints at a genuine real ale brewery, and several more novel Polish brews at a bar with a cool arched masonry ceiling that was obviously a stop on just about every food and/or beer tour of Krakow.

We rarely ate much at our beer destinations, but this hardly meant we went hungry.  We had multiple meals at several different Milk Bars. These simple, cheap cafeteria style restaurants are a holdover from the communist era and are the places to eat traditional Polish food on a budget.  If you know what you're ordering, because they often don't have menus in any language other than Polish.  We ate classic barscz, flaki (tripe soup), Bigos (delicious cabbage and sausage stew), kiełbasa, and of course, pirogi (classic ruskie [potato and cheese], mushroom, sweet cottage cheese)... All this and more and more.

And of course we had daytime cultural activities as well.  We wandered round the old town a lot, took strolls along the banks of the Vistula River, and visited Krakow castle.  Almost inexplicably to me, even Krakow's tourist marketers bill Krakow Castle as the second most beautiful in Central Europe after Prague.  Which I think is selling themselves a bit short, as I liked it at least as well, and probably better than Prague Castle.

We're also took a bus ride out into the massive planned communist era suburbs to visit the wonderful Polish aviation museum.  They've got an amazing collection of eastern bloc aircraft, including thirteen MiG-21s, every variant used by the Polish air force of the most produced military jet in history.  And plenty of domestically produced aircraft (very successful agricultural planes, and several military aircraft that they were honest enough to say didn't work out all that well).

And perhaps my favourite of all, a priceless collection of aircraft from the earliest period of German aviation history, up until WW1.  The museum ended up with this collection because they were originally were part of Herman Goering's personal collection and were moved to Krakow to spare them from Allied bbing of Germany.  And as the war wound up, the Nazis were in such a hurry to retreat no one could even think of bringing Goering's airplanes so they got left behind. Various German museums have asked for them back over the years, but part of me can't help but think that it serves them right.

On our final morning together, Steven and I had brunch at a milk bar, another wander round the old city, and concluded with a quick visit to the national museum's main Krakow location.

I love free days at museums because they give you an opportunity to have a quick visit like this without worrying if you're making the most of your ticket. And even though we only spent just under an hour there, the 18th and 19th century decorative arts, the hall of Polish Judaica and especially the collection of Polish arms and armour (including helmets of the famous Polish Winged Hussars!) were all well worth the visit.  We did miss out on DaVinci's Lady With Ermine, but at least we got to see the replica outside where visitors were invited to take their selfies!

Steven headed to the airport, leaving me with the evening and morning of the following day in Krakow by myself.  Having spent so long travelling with Sarah or more latterly Steven, made being alone feel a bit weird. It's almost hard to believe that back in 2004-5 I spent almost an entire year travelling all over the world solo.

I opted to spend my remaining time revisiting the old city, spending plenty of time just sitting in the main square across from the cloth hall watching the world go by.  Locals zipping across on e-bikes, Polish tourist families posing for photos with the church, touts trying to drag groups of men to strip clubs, carriage drivers jawing away with one another in the queue to pick up passengers.  I enjoyed sitting on my own in silence just watching all of this world going by.

Seeing Steven off had given me a full preview of how to get to the airport, and my hostel very kindly printed my boarding pass for me, so had plenty of time for one more milk bar lunch before heading to Pope John Paul II airport (unsurprisingly, Poles love John Paul II, Krakowians to even more than most, as he actually hailed from there).

Again the solo airport experience felt a little odd (was I supposed to have an airport beer?  I eventually decided not to), but on the other end of my four hour flight, still more solitude awaited as I prepared to walk over 300km of Shvil Israel, Israel's national trail.

Thanks are, of course, due to Steven, who was a very fun travelling companion and who gave me a good mix of my usual sort of travels and things that I wouldn't normally do on my own.  A good dose of this is sometimes welcome, and time with good friends is always so.