Written by: Cedric Reese
Dzień dobry everyone! This week has gone by so fast; it feels like I just wrote my blog on Prague! This week was a busy one, so I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible. Thursday was the first big event, with there being a Hans Zimmer concert in town. For those of you how don’t know, Hans Zimmer is the composer for the scores of many famous movies, such as Lion King, Gladiator, Mission Impossible and more. It was performed by a live orchestra; however, Hans Zimmer was not there in person, it was only prerecorded message. One of the songs played was from the movie Spirit, which is an old animated movie about an American mustang that I liked a lot as a kid but kind of forgot about until now. I got a little homesick because throughout the song, they showed scenes from the American West and it reminded me of home. Overall it was a great concert and I’m glad I found out about it because I almost didn’t realize it was happening!
Friday for my Polish history class, instead of having a normal lecture, we went on a field trip to Krakow’s old town. There, we walked around for about twenty minutes while our professor would point out landmarks and give a little historical background on them. While I had already seen everything, he pointed out on the tour, it was still nice to get some background on all the landmarks. After our short little tour, we stopped at a museum that was tucked away in a little alley that I had never seen before. This was part of the city’s national museum, and this building housed mainly religious art. We spent about an hour or so in the museum with our professor pointing out the most culturally significant works. It was a nice change of pace seeing the art in person instead of just a slide show during a normal lecture. Sadly, this museum closed early so we had to cut our visit short. It is apparently free to go on Tuesdays, so I’m going to have to make my way back there some time as they have a collection of Orthodox icons, and I find Orthodox Christianity really fascinating. Afterwards, we went back to the main square and to the museum under the cloth hall. It’s a museum I had already visited before, but It did have some really neat archaeological exhibits that I was excited to see again. Speaking of archaeology, apparently this second museum was created in 2005 when Poland set aside millions of dollars to have an archaeological dig done on the town’s main square. Apparently, projects like this are very expensive, so they aren’t done often. Anyway, they managed to uncover a lot of stuff on Krakow’s history, and they turned the actually dig site into the museum! To be honest, as cool everything was, I was also glad to be out and moving around instead of being stuck in a chair for three and a half hours!
Finally, for the weekend I took a trip to the Polish city of Poznan. Its about five hours away from Krakow by train, so I left bright and early on Saturday morning. This was a spontaneous trip I had come up with the week prior, and as such, I went alone. The city itself was beautiful, like Prague, it had many brightly colored buildings. My first day and a half there I visited the many churches that dot the city, and my goodness they were gorgeous. The churches here are all brightly colored, with pinks, oranges, and yellows all being very common. Marble columns were also something that many churches had an abundance of. It’s crazy just how different eastern cathedrals are compared to the ones in Western Europe. My other day in Poznan was spent visiting a couple of museums around the city. I didn’t spend very much time in any one museum as unlike Krakow or Warsaw, Poznan wasn’t a very English friendly city, so there were hardly any exhibits in English. Instead I just kinda blazed through a couple of history museums with a student pass I could get for really cheap. My favorite museum was the Armament Museum. It had various rifles, uniforms, and even tanks from Polish history. It was really cool to see, and I felt like a kid in a candy shop with all the different pieces of military hardware you could look at. Poznan also has a German Palace from when it was a part of Prussia/Germany. I thought the place was also a museum, but it turns out it was instead just a cultural center with various little things put in it. I realized this when I was waiting in the ticket line and read the sign looking for museum prices. Instead I saw completely random Polish words with no numbers, that’s when I realized I had been waiting in line to buy movie tickets! I looked around, and there was a museum for the uprising against communism that occurred there in the 1950’s (something we learned about in my communism class). However, it was closed for “modernization”. I was very disappointed but on the bright side it gave me time to go some other museums on general Polish history.
One final part of my trip was the food. I ate some pretty standard stuff on the days I arrived and left, basically pierogi and kebabs as they are both tasty, cheap, and fast to eat. However, I did manage to eat at a few notable places. The first was a Czech restaurant I kind of just wandered into. I was happy to once again have Czech food, and the sauerkraut that came with the chicken I had ordered was some of the sweetest I had ever tasted, so that was interesting! I also ate at a Georgian café where I had a sort of pie filled with meat. It had a lot of spices to it, which was good as my allergies had been acting up and my nose was clogged. I don’t know what compelled me to eat at a Georgian place, but I decided since it’s not really something we can really get in America, I decided why not. Finally, my last notable meal was fried chicken liver, which is supposedly a specialty from the region. To be honest, even a year ago I never would have eaten chicken liver, but this weekend I was in an adventurous sort of mood, I guess. The liver was alright, nothing to fantastic, but I’m still glad I tried it.
Before I close for this week, I have one little story for you. You see, when I travel, I collect souvenir spoons of the places I visit. I don’t really remember how I started this tradition, but its something I take very seriously. So seriously, that on Monday morning before my train left, I literally wandered in circles in the square waiting for the souvenir shop to open so I could buy my spoon! I don’t know why I hadn’t done it the day before, but I was getting antsy as I didn’t want to miss my train and the station was a twenty-five-minute walk from where I was. Finally, I found a very beautifully made spoon and I was ecstatic! After that I made it to the station with plenty of time to spare. Next week, we’re having our first field trip to a Polish salt mine, so, until then, take care!
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