Krakow- cold, crazy cats and Communist canteens.

Our Central/Eastern European adventure began not in Krakow but Paris. After a 4 hour Covoiturage (9 strangers in a big white van watching Jamie Foxx film 'Ray' (in French, of course) must have looked hilarious to other motorists), we arrived in the city of dreams. Luckily Jackie knew some CouchSurfing hosts in Paris so we dumped our bags at their flat and had a play with Dégage, their adorable if not slightly annoying kitten. Literal translation of 'Dégage'= clear off, go away. Very fitting! After a quick cuppa we headed to the Moulin Rouge, Montmartre and to the Café des 2 Moulins, made famous by Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie). Was a bit of a let down to be honest, lots of tourists (predictable) and high prices. Our afternoon/evening in Paris was a bit of a failure- headed to the Musée d'Orsay which had already closed, ditto the Louvre. Still, had time for some comedy pictures outside the world famous Louvre glass triangle.

I love how blasé I have become about going to Paris. It's a nice attitude to have. Still the favourite I think.

After wandering around rainy Paris all day, we got one of the last RER trains out to Charles de Gaulle airport, which shall forever be known as the airport where I had to spend a night sleeping on the floor. And when I say sleeping, I of course mean not sleeping. We had to kip in the airport because our flight to Krakow was so early that there was no public transport to get us there on time, plus we didn't want to fork out on a hostel in Paris for a mere few hours. Upon arrival around midnight, we settled down on the floor outside a cafe. It was really nice of the airport personnel to switch off the heating around 2am. It made for an even more pleasant night.

Can you tell I'm joking?

Anyway, the important thing is we made it to Krakow! After taking a train into the centre, then negotiating Krakow's extensive tram network we arrived in Nowa Huta, where our lovely CouchSurfing hosts lived. This was my first experience of CouchSurfing and it was a great introduction! Dominika and her boyfriend were 23 year old engineering students who had been together since they were 16. After giving us a while to settle in and have a shower (we were pretty disgusting after pulling a nuit blanche), we sat down to a traditional Polish meal of pork, potatoes, pickle and vegetables. Dominika had also kindly made Piszinger (pronounced pishinger)- a traditional dessert from Krakow made up of wafer and chocolate. Trop bien!

I should also mention the couple also had a cat- Roman, quite possibly the most mental/ fluffy cat I have ever encountered. He made for great entertainment, chasing bits of foil round the room and running after a red laser Dominika's boyfriend was shining all over the living room.

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Roman, I still miss him.

Instead of exploring Krakow that evening, we stayed in Nowa Huta getting to know our hosts who were seriously cool. They both spoke perfect English, spent an Erasmus year in Spain in 2009/10 and told us lots about Poland, Krakow and Nowa Huta- things we would never have known about had we stayed in a hostel. CouchSurfing really is a brilliant idea.

Nowa Huta

"Come visit historic Nowa Huta, where George Orwell's dark vision of a perfect industrial metropolis was executed with stunning precision. Until, that is, the workers rose up and overthrew Big Brother" - Brian Whitmore.

The couple's flat was situated in Nowa Huta, often classed as a separate city to Krakow as it is so large- home to around 200,000 people. We discovered that after 1945, when Poland became Communist, Nova Huta- a 'satellite industrial town' was created to correct the 'class imbalance', i.e. to attract people from lower class backgrounds to move closer to the city. We learned that Nowa Huta is full of old people who moved in after 1945 (there had only been one previous owner of the couple's flat) and that underneath the community's main square is an air raid shelter big enough for 3000 people. Why? The Communists were preparing for WW3.

Ironically today Nowa Huta is fiercely anti-Communist. The statues of Lenin and streets named after Stalin have long gone, but the buildings remain. History is still alive. It was a privilege to stay in an area where there were no tourists and no signs in English. The trip had got off to a very good start...

Krakow

Let me say that despite the freezing temperatures (it was around minus 7 every day), Krakow was lovely. Smaller than I imagined, most of the main sights can be seen in a day. We started off doing a free walking tour of the city- looking at churches, monuments, hearing anecdotes from our tour guide. What we didn't know is that we accidentally crashed an Erasmus tour- awkward moment when someone asked me to take a photo of the group with my camera and post it 'on the Facebook group'. Oops. Most major European cities offer these walking tours and I cannot recommend them enough. We walked round the main square and up to Wawel hill, whereupon lies Wawel Castle, saw Krakow's famous flaming dragon statue down by the river and saw the Pope! Well not really, we saw an image of John Paul 2nd waving out of a window. We also saw Oscar Schlinder's factory (made famously in the film Schlinder's List) and wandered around Kazimierz- Krakow's Jewish quarter. Hardly saw a soul- went into a synagogue before wandering over to a bar...

Don't let the sun fool you, it was bloody freezing!

Naturally, when in Poland you have to 'profiter bien' from all the food and drink that is available at such cheap prices! Out of the 5 countries we visited, Poland was definitely the cheapest food-wise. We had read about 'bar mleczny'-milk bars that had been established during the Communist era, selling cheap food and milk. The government subsidised the milk bars to ensure that even poor workers could afford to eat out. This meant that everything was, and still is super cheap. Naturally we ended up visiting twice. As the menu is solely in Polish, you either have to point to something that's on show or choose a random name off the menu and take your chances. It definitely made eating so much more exciting/ worrying not knowing what we had ordered! Anyway, I had a 2 course meal of soup and meat/potatoes/vegetables for around 2 euros. The milk bars may not be the most cheerful of places, but they're certainly cheap.

An Obwarzanki seller.

Another local delicacy which went down very well was the Obwarzanki- bread rings that vendors sell on just about every street corner of Krakow. These bread rings come in various flavours- sesame seed, normal cheesy and cost 1 zloty 50- around 40 euro cents. The perfect breakfast. We also discovered a little bakery where we had a huge slab of cake and a coffee for just over 2 euros and a pierogi restaurant that served only pierogi. Pierogi are fried dumplings filled with various things- usually cheese, cheap meat, cabbage or a mixture of the three. I opted for the Ruskie- pierogi with cheese. Needless to say this was another cheap eat!

On the drinks front, it would have been rude to go to Poland and not try its vodka. During a jazz evening we went to with our CouchSurfing hosts we tried Bols vodka- pretty standard really. The day after we went to a bar and after I managed to spill my pint of beer all over myself (clumsy as), we tried some vodka shots. I had a lemon vodka shot which wasn't as nice as it sounds, as the rim of the glass was lined with garlic. Perhaps a cultural taste I just will never understand...

Auschwitz

One of the reasons why we went to Krakow was because all of us wanted to visit Auschwitz, probably the most notorious concentration camp where over one and a half million people, mainly Jews, were put to death between 1940 and 1945. Obviously this is not the kind of thing one can take lightly- we felt numb the entire time we were there. We had a guided tour, something I'm glad we did as we heard a lot of personal stories and learned a lot about the camp. After a tour of Auschwitz 1 where we saw torture chambers and the like, we took a shuttle bus to Auschwitz 2-Birkenau where we saw where the prisoners lived and later died. It was horrific. Looking back I'm amazed we all managed to survive the day without bursting into tears. It felt surreal whilst we were there though. Although I took a few photographs, somehow it doesn't feel right uploading them all onto the internet in the name of tourism. One definitely suffices.

If you ever get a chance to go then go. It's without a doubt one of the most important places you can ever visit.

That concludes the Krakow diaries. It's a great little city, I learned a lot and more importantly, I was very well fed. Next stop Budapest!

The City of Lights

There's just something about Paris isn't there? My fourth visit to Paris and still I get excited about seeing the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre despite all the tourists, pigeon shit and annoying street vendors. I was meeting up with ‘the girls’, two of whom are living in Paris this year (one in Montparnasse and the other close to Opéra) - perfect excuse to keep visiting if ever I needed one!

Perhaps I still get excited about Paris because all four of my visits have been different. I first visited the City of Lights aged 12 with my family, wide-eyed about Parc Astérix and seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time (definitely worth the wait). My second trip was more of a mistake than a well thought out plan- on a school French exchange in 2007 we got on the wrong TGV and ended up in Paris Gare de Lyon, as opposed to actual Lyon. This resulted in six crazy hours, trying to see as many of the sights as possible- I remember pigeons walking all over our feet as we ate baguettes under the Eiffel Tower. Best mistake my teacher ever made! My third visit was rather spontaneous also- I was working in a youth hostel in Brittany and was given four days off ‘pour voyager’. Hence my first thought ‘Sod it, I’m going to Paris’. I spent three (and a bit) days wandering round Parisian streets, and doing as many of the tourist spots as possible. I had completely forgotten just how large a city Paris is and stupidly kept walking between sights, thus ‘knackering myself out’ a treat. So that was an experience, albeit a little lonely at times.

So trip number four was (yet again) rather different to the first three, namely because I went ‘out out’ for the first time in Paris. We all met in a cosy bar near Belleville, a working class district of Paris that is ‘up and coming’ if any of the slightly pretentious magazines and newspapers are to believe. Moved on to Bastille just before the last metro and raved in a bar/club before a quick visit to the Irish bar next door (would have been rude not to really). Other night-time escapades in Paris included a lovely meal near the Moulin Rouge, sitting on the steps with crepes outside the Sacré-Cœur and sipping 11 euro cocktails in Montparnasse. I only had one- you can take the girl out of the North of England, etc, etc.

During the day wandering was high on the agenda- we wandered over to Trocadéro and walked down past the Musée de l’Armée before heading up the Champs-Elysées. Highlight of one afternoon was helping some students do a challenge for charity by leap-frogging up the Champs-Elysées before climbing the Arch de Triomphe just as the sun was setting. Parfait.

Notre-Dame was full of tourists, but I still decided to go in (fourth visit), we went to a gorgeous English bookshop just across the river from Notre-Dame (Shakespeare and Company- check it out if you’re ever in Paris). The top floor of the bookshop has beds, comfy chairs, typewriters to mess around with and even a piano! Books aren’t even for sale on this floor- instead browsers are encouraged to sit down and read (and we did exactly this).

The final day in Paris was spent visiting le Cimetière du Montparnasse- where we stumbled upon the graves of Serge Gainsbourg, John Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (we didn’t exactly stumble, it was all intentional…) before wandering round the streets of the Marais district around the Latin Quarter. CULTURE!

So after four visits, Paris is still my favourite city in the world (apart from Newcastle, obviously). Clichéd I know, but there really is just something about the City of Lights. Maybe the media has something to do with that- the scenes at the end of Amélie in Montmartre, the Sex and the City finale, the views of the Eiffel Tower at the start of Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups, even the bloody Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s not just the media though- there’s something special about watching people as they sit reading/eating/etc along the Seine (in a strictly non-creepy way, I hasten to add) and listening to buskers as they do their best Piaf impressions on the metro. Yes, Paris is expensive, full of tourists, litter and ugly souvenir shops, but it’s also got taste, charm- a certain ‘Je ne sais quoi’ if you will (ha ha ha).

Ever since starting university, my course friends and I had talked about meeting up for a Parisian weekend, dreaming about hot chocolates in cosy cafés and tourist pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower. Well the dream came true. Now what??