Having thoroughly acquainted ourselves with Old Town Krakow, Severin and I drifted further afield (but not by much) to Kazimierz, Krakow’s old Jewish Quarter. Our first mission was to locate breakfast, having pre-identified a New York-style bagel shop on the outer edge of Kazimierz. There is precisely one shop in Cyprus that sells bagels, and it is closed on Sundays (prime bagel-eating day), so we were prepared to take advantage of things we don’t get often at home.
After breakfast, we didn’t have any strict notions of what we planned to do. I had identified two shops that I wanted to visit, the Blazko Jewelry Store and a ceramics shop, and figured we’d otherwise just walk around and see what’s happening. When planning our trip, I was disappointed to learn that alas, the famous Boleslawiecz factories were nowhere near Krakow. The jewelry shop did not disappoint– they had some super cool stuff, but I ended up with a fairly tame pair of stud earrings because I wasn’t sure I could pull some of the snazzier stuff off. The ceramics shop was also quite nice, but because we were flying RyanAir we didn’t plan to check bags and therefore were limited to what we could fit in a carry-on. We bought a beautiful ceramic loaf pan (for making Sally’s Poppyseed Bread, one of Severin’s favorite Christmas traditions) and I bought a mug.
Our guidebook referred us to the Remuh cemetery, however upon attempting to enter we were diverted to the synagogue to pay a small donation. The synagogue had a beautiful ceiling (the picture below does not even begin to do it justice) but was totally overrun with several busloads of high schoolers.
Elsewhere on our journey, Severin was tsk-tsk’ed for wearing his hat in a church. However, in the synagogue and cemetery, he was able to keep his baseball hat on and all the other men were given yarmulkes. Since it’s almost always women having to cover up when entering religious places, I appreciated that it was the men who had to make themselves decent this time ’round. The Ramuh Cemetery was founded in the 16th century and stopped being used in 1800. The grounds were wild and overgrown, bursting with these flat clusters of white flowers everywhere. It was probably the most beautiful and peaceful cemetery I have ever seen.
The Nazis had ransacked the place and destroyed many of the headstones. They were recovered and while it would have been impossible to put them all in their rightful places, they were repurposed into this beautiful wall:
We set off to find the Schindler Factory museum, which isn’t actually all that close to Kazimierz. After walking around in circles because we couldn’t find the footpath to cut through to the factory, we stumbled upon it. The museum was definitely not what I expected– I expected it to be a big warehouse with some Schindler memorabilia. In fact, it was one of the best World War II museums I have ever been to. It started off with a description of life in Krakow before the German invasion. As you walked through the next few rooms, we were immersed in the chaos of the invasion– the museum had a small one-man tank, air raid sirens going off, and exhibits on the chaos and disorder. Then the exhibits abruptly transition to order– Nazi order– with Nazi flags hung all over the exhibit, tile swastikas on the floor, and notices about new restrictions on the residents posted everywhere. As you continued to progress through the museum, each exhibit was equally immersive and evocative, and really gave you a sense of the upheaval of Krakow and Poland at that time. There was only a small exhibit dedicated to Schindler.
Our feet thoroughly walked off, we cabbed back to Kazimierz in search of sustenance. We enjoyed two plates of very cheap, but amazingly delicious pierogi. The dumplings were packed with tender shredded beef. I think the other set was some version of chicken, but I don’t even remember because the beef ones were just that good. Then we walked back to Good Lood, where we had seen two people walking out with the most delicious looking ice cream cones, and had the best coconut and hazelnut ice cream I can remember having ever. Krakow is packed full of so many “lody” (ice cream) shops I’m not sure how they all stay in business, particularly in the winter.
Also seen in Kazimierz– best sign ever:
And a bar called “Singer” where all the tables consisted of old sewing machines:
