Not a Good Day (updated with photos that can actually be viewed)

Today was a pretty crappy day, one of the worst of the trip.

It started out ok; I managed to sleep over 7 hours.  I packed before a leisurely breakfast and went down to check out just before 9 pm.  That's when my troubles started.  I thought they started when the receptionist didn't show up for 15 minutes, but in fact, they started when I left my room.  While I thought I did a comprehensive sweep of all drawers and cabinets, in fact, I had forgotten to check the bedside table where I had left my camera.

I haven't really used my camera that much on this trip, relying instead on my iPhone.  As a result, I pack it away rather than always have it hanging off my belt. As a result I didn't realize I had forgotten to pack it.

The rain held off until just as I reached the bus station.  I had no trouble getting a ticket or putting my stuff on the bus and off we were to Krakow.  Around 1.5 hours into the bus trip, I realized I had forgotten to pack my camera.  I had checked the armoire, the chest of drawers, and the table tops, but i forgot the night stand had a small drawer.  I had taken almost everything out the night before, but not the camera.

As soon as I checked into the hostel, I emailed the hotel.  Luckily, they had already emailed me to tell me they had found it.  I wrote them telling I would come back tomorrow to pick it up.

In the meantime, though, I was discovering what a crappy place I picked to stay these next two nights.  Called "Good Bye Lenin - Revolution," I hadn't realized this wasn't the same as the well-reviewed "Good Bye Lenin" hostel.  It's part of the same family, but they seem to have taken the war on bourgeois values too literally.

See if you can find all the things missing in my room (the sheets and pillow are on the bed):

I'll post the answers in a subsequent entry.  You have until then to identify at least three of the things missing from the room that one would usually expect to find (though, luckily, the front desk just gave me one of them).

Because the internet is so crappy in the hostel (it's the fourth thing missing, but you can't see WiFi), I won't be posting any more pictures for the time being.

I went to the milk bar across the street and grabbed a plate of russian pierogies (potatoe, cheese, and onion filling) and then made my way to the city in the hope of finding an English-langauge newspaper.  No such luck.  Stopped for some cake and coffee in order to get out of the rain, again.

This is the third day it's rained.  I just tried to check the weather for tomorrow, but the page won't load because the internet is so CRAPPY here.

With most museums already closed for the day, I figured my best option on such a grey and dreary day would be to head to Nowa Huta, the Communist-era development that became one of Poland's largest steelworks.  Block after generic block of Socialist realist architecture.  It reminded me, in a way, of the development towns I've seen in Israel.  Perhaps there's an institutional architectural school that churns out this kind of soulless construction styles.

The idea behind Plac Nowy (see below) was to counter the aristocratic and bourgeois nature of old Krakow.

People were house in large housing complexes, all with generic numbering.  When you enter one of the complexes off the main avenue, this is what you see.

People of course, still live here, but it sometimes feels like a throw back to the communist days.

Eventually, i reached the steelworks that give this neighborhood their name.

The trams that run through here are the really old-fashioned kind, too.

Anyway, I'm just to frustrated by the internet to write any more.  Perhaps I can find a cafe tomorrow after I get back.

Mt. Jaworzyna

I woke to mostly cloudy skies, but with the occasional glimpse of blue sky, so I decided to take advantage of the good weather and head out to Mt. Jaworzyna.  After breakfast in the hotel restaurant

I started walking down through the town.  There is a "gondola" ride that takes one to the top of the mountain, but it's not in town.  I walked a mile through the town and found the turn off.

I didn't want to walk all the way as 1) I wasn't sure how long that would take; and 2) I wasn't sure how long before the rain came, but thankfully, there was a bus after all.

The bus dropped off at the base of the gondola.  These are much smaller than the one I took in Zakopane.

It took about 7 minutes to go the 2 kilometer distance to the top of the mountain.  In fact, at first you can't even see the top.

After about 4 minutes, the summit finally came in view.

From the top, there are fantastic panorama views of the whole Beskid mountain ranges. [Blogger won't post that video; I think it's too big for them, so here are the regular photos]:

This is looking north and east, towards the lower Beskid mountain range.

This is looking south and east, towards the higher Beskid mountains.  On the far left, you can just make out the outskirts of Krynica.

This is looking due south, towards the High Tatras and Slovakia.

After walking around, I decided to get a cafe latte and enjoy the view (and the gorale music).  The entire set up reminded me a lot of Tennessee.

Soon after I shot this it started raining, so I decided to stay for lunch.

After lunch I walked around again for one last look and then took the gondola back down and quickly caught a bus back to town.

I decided I really should finally submit my article.  I went through the final comments from a colleague in Israel, made the necessary edits, and then submitted it for publication.  I worked on it in the hotel cafe and at one point I heard yelling, turned and looked out the window, and saw it was suddenly pouring rain.  The cafe quickly filled up with damp Polish tourists.

Eventually I finished and sent off my article.  In celebration, I stopped off at the cafe around the corner.  I hoped for the kremowka cake, but they were out so I was forced to order the chocolate ice cream sundae.

One of my favorite cookbooks, Kaffeehaus by Rick Rodgers, talks about the "Schlagobers" diet. This is where you just order everything "mit Schlag," that is "with whipped cream."  For some reaons, I'm not losing a lot of weight on this diet.

By 4 pm, it was still sunny, so I decided to take advantage of the current good weather and head back up the funicular.  Only this time I would hike back down.

The views at the top were still gorgeous.  The mountains in the far distance at the horizon are the Tatras.

And there were pretty forests on the way down (though no panoramas of Krynica).

At the bottom, though, it got kind of confusing as all the reconstruction work had closed off several trails (which I only found out after I turned and reached a dead end).  Eventually, I made my way back to the town, where it was still sunny

and the square was filled by the local Porsche fan club.

Back at the hotel, I called my mother to wish her happy birthday and then went to dinner in the hotel restaurant.  The only other people there were a mother and her young daughter, though I thought I heard her speaking English.  At one point, while I was waiting for my food we started to talk.  It turns out she's the owner of the hotel!

She had come to Poland in the 1990s on assignment for the World Bank and ended up buying a farm near Krynica.  Eventually, she bought the hotel from some Israelis who had put rooms on the ground floor.  She told me that when they bought it, the hotel had 80 rooms; now it has 20.  I asked her if the town could support a hotel with 80 rooms and she said there are some places with 500 rooms, shaking her head.

Poland has changed dramatically since the 1990s, she told me, and not always for the better.  The same forces that destroyed train service in the U.S., she said, were trying to do the same here, and force the Poles to buy my cars.  We talked for a while about Polish cities and she told me that she loves southern Poland and misses it every time she goes north.  She was surprised that I had come to Krynica, as they get so few Americans.

I saw that they had naleśniki z jabłkam, which are basically crepes filled with roasted apples and cream sauce, so I ordered it.  The owner left with daughter and I thanked her for letting me stay in her hotel.

Meanwhile, the live entertainment is back in the lobby (I wonder if they have it every night).  I think it's the same group who mangled the English lyrics last night, but tonight they been playing almost entirely Polish songs, with only one in English.

Tomorrow I leave for Krakow.  I'm going to miss the high speed internet, but not the mattress in my room.

A Rainy Day in Krynica

Despite forecasts of virtually nation-wide thunder storms yesterday, the day passed quietly.   The only dark cloud on the horizon was the complete failure of wifi in my hotel forcing me to visit the wifi-equipped cafe next door, not just once (for their joghurt torte and cappuccino),

but twice (for their ice cream sundae with its bizarre combination of blueberry, coffee, and chocolate chip ice cream, along with whipped cream, strawberry syrup, and fresh red currants and blueberries).

I had hoped that a good night's sleep might fix their wifi, but no, it was still out this morning.  No rain during the night, though at 2:00 am, the temperature approached the dew point and I woke up in sweat.  This morning, however, the sky was distinctly overcast and it looked like rain was in the offing.

In order to avoid getting rained on, I took an early bus to Krynica.  The storm clouds were gathering when we reached the town, and the question was whether I would find the hotel before the rains started.  Luckily I won that race (by about 5 minutes).  Here's the view from my hotel balcony this morning:

In fact, the rain kept up most of the day.  Here's the view from my hotel balcony this afternoon:

In the meantime, I did some laundry and went to lunch in the hotel restaurant, where I ordered the mushroom soup (excellent) and the fried sole (slightly fishy, but still very tasty).

I'm staying at the Hotel Małopolanka, which is described in my guide book as "an old-fashioned, 20-room pension and spa dating from the 1930s that could almost be the setting for an Agatha Christie mystery."

The hotel has a rather stolid look to it, in contrast to the nineteenth-century alpine-style villas surrounding it (like this one).

On the ground floor, there is a cafe and lobby.  I sat in the cafe this afternoon, drinking coffee and reading my novel.  This evening they have a live Polish band that's just butchering the English lyrics to famous songs by The Doors, Cat Stevens, and John Lennon.

This ceramic stove is almost an antique.

This section is opposite the cafe, but they come by every now and then and serve drinks and treats.

Krynica is Poland's largest and most famous spa town.  It has mineral water springs that people come to drink since the middle of the nineteenth century.  It has a little of the feel of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), though it is much smaller.  This is the original pumping station:

It has some lovely architectural details:

As in any European spa, the most important thing, after the treatments, is to take a stroll through the town (rain or shine):

With not much to do outside, due to the rain, I decided to juggle my plans for the remainder of the trip by cutting out the town of Sanok (5 to 6 hours away by bus just to sit inside in rain was too much) and heading back to Krakow two days early.  I also signed up for a set of spa treatments in the hotel spa.

After finding an English-language list of treatments, I chose the Dead Sea mineral bath with lavender and "chromotherapy" (I had to look that up), followed by the hour-long full-body massage.  This is only the fourth time I've ever had a massage (the two previous times were in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic), so I was both curious and apprehensive about a Polish version.  I practiced pantomiming my ticklishness in my knees, but thankfully, the masseur spoke English.

The mineral bath was basically a large jacuzzi with colored lights (that's the "chromotherapy"); in my case, they prescribed turquoise blue.    It last 15 minutes and was very relaxing.  Now that I have my jacuzzi tub fixed at home, I think I'll pick up some Dead Sea bath salts for it.

The massage turned out to be the most comfortable and relaxing I've ever had.  My feet and calves benefited from the attention after all the strain I've been putting on them, and I think I nearly fell asleep three times before the session was over.  Altogether, with tip, it came to about 150 PLN, or $40.

When I got back to my room, I noticed it had stopped raining.  Anxious to maximize any break in the weather, I headed to the funicular at the north end of town.  This takes people up to the top of a tall mountain adjacent to Krynica.

While there are very lovely views from the top, they aren't of the town.  You can only see a small bit of it.

Instead, you can see the Beskid range, though they say on a clear day you can make out the Tatras in the distance.  Today wasn't clear, but the clouds made it nearly as dramatic

The funicular only runs until 7 pm, and I figured the trail back down would be muddy from the rain, so I made sure I left the top in time.  I went to a nearby restaurant recommended by my guide where I got my usual kotlet szabowy (aka schnitzel):

I decided to save dessert for the cafe in my hotel, so I came back to find the live band. I found an open seat in the lobby and ordered the Szarlotka with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream, along with a cappuccino and listened while they mangled the lyrics to song after song (I mean, how hard is it to learn the lyrics to John Lennon's Imagine?).

Tomorrow, if the weather clears or at least doesn't pour, I will try to take the cable car out of town and then hike back.  If not, it looks like another stress-filled day of coffee, cake, reading, and massages.

Hiking in the Pieniny Mountains (updated with video)

I slept very well last night and had a very nice breakfast in the hotel restaurant and caught the bus for Krościenko nad Dunajcem to start my hike through the Pieniny National Park.  I toyed with the idea of making for the raft put in place, but with the morning forecast for thunder storms throughout most of Poland, I decided to play it safe.

Fully stocked up with water, two chocolate croissants, and an apple, I set out on a set of trails that would wend their way through the park, taking me to several spectacular overlooks and then end at Szczawnica, where the rafts come out.

I had no trouble finding the trail, but I was surprised at how steep it was at the beginning.  

 

It seemed like it was just going straight up the mountain with the only variation being between woods and meadows.  

 I was so glad I brought the extra water, because I sweated out the first liter in thirty minutes.

Finally after climbing for nearly an hour, I had ascended over 1000 feet over a distance of 1.25 miles.  From here I had an amazing view of the Dunajec Gorge.  I could make out the small little rafts floating by, way below me.

Here's the video I shot of the panorama:

The weather continued to be good: sunny, few clouds, and not so humid, with the occasional cool breeze.  I decided to try for Mt. Sokolica.  At first, I thought I missed the turn to it as I had to climb down a steep stone staircase and switchbacks.  After descending over 400 feet, I then had to reascend 325 more feet to the top of the mountain. 

In Polish national parks they don’t tell you how far anything is, but rather how long it will take to get there.   

The last 10 minutes were straight up a stone staircase with a metal railing for support.   

The ledge overlook was steep and narrow, with almost no comfortable places to sit or stand.  Still the view was amazing.

Here you can see on the rock outcrop on the right in the distance where I was standing when I enjoyed the first overlook.

After enjoying the view and eating my apple and last croissant (and drinking another half liter of water), I began to make my way Szczawnica.  It was even steeper descending than it had been on the path I took up.  This time, though, they needed to add switchbacks and stairs.     

After about a half hour I could see Szczawnica in the distance.  

Finally I reached the river where the trail came to an end.  To continue I had to take the ferry across, so I sort of got a raft ride, though it was much shorter.   

Even though the weather continued to be good through the afternoon, I don’t regret my choices.  Had I taken the path to the raft put in site I never would have seen the vistas I had on this trail.  I’ve been on the river but had never seen the Gorge from above.

My guidebook mentioned there’s a nice restaurant in Stary Sąnz:  Restauracja Marysieńka.  Located above the rynek, the book praised its friendly service and good food.  I ordered the żurek, a sour rye soup, and their special pierogi, made with forest mushrooms and served in a cream based mushroom sauce.  Although the combination resulted in a rather beige meal.

I really liked the pierogi (the żurek, on the other hand, was just ok).  My only problem with the restaurant was getting my waitress’ attention to pay.  On the plus side, it had a very nice view of the rynek.

Afterwards, I walked over to the cloister and convent established by the local saint in the 13^th century, but they were having mass so I walked back.  I tried to buy a new SIM card for my phone, but the girl at the store selling them couldn’t figure out which card, if any, would work, so I left and caught the bus back to Nowy Sąnz.  Now for some coffee and dessert as a treat for all the hard work.