Sunday, July 07, 2024

Day 11 - Krakow

minor miracles, is all I hope for
minor miracles, and I won't need more
Minor Miracles - Papooz

A miracle was really what I asked, but I didn't get it. Maybe it's because what I asked wasn't minor. Day 11 was supposedly the last day of my trip. I went to sleep the night before and woke up in the morning with prayers asking God to help me so that the day could go smoothly. It started lovely enough but the ending was shocking. Anyways, let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's just begin with how the day went first. I started the day feeling positive. For the supposedly last breakfast, I had one of those avocado toast with poached egg. The hotel check out time was generous at 12 pm, so after breakfast I spent the morning in my room watching the latest episode of Survivor and managed to also squeezed in the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy. Usually when I go on trips I come back with a backlog of things to watch, but in this trip I managed to stay up to date. Closer to 12, I went to check out, left my luggage at the hotel and off I went to explore the old town.

On the way, I found that the Pączki shop had the pistachio one and I'd been curious about it for days and they were often not there, so I quickly got one and then I went to sit at the town square eating it. Sadly, I could not really taste the pistachio. I'm not sure if it's me, whenever it's pistachio cream or paste or ice cream, I have difficulty tasting it. I really don't know if it's me or the ones I tasted just weren't that good? Still love Pączki though. I can't remember if I had it everyday when I was in Poland. If not everyday, definitely close to everyday :D After I finished the Pączki, I explored the square a bit. There's the Kraków Cloth Hall with shops that sell trinket and souvenirs.

Nearby, there's this head sculpture, Eros Bendato, by Igor Mitoraj. Little kids were getting inside it. There's quite a number of tourists in Krakow. Somehow I didn't really expect this.

From the square, I made my way to Wawel castle, stopping to enter Saints Peter and Paul Church which was on the way. The main gate of the church has many saints statues on them; they're quite striking. Inside, it has a crypt that houses many famous Polish people. Like this one below is of Krzysztof Penderecki who Wikipedia told me was a composer and conductor.

In Wawel castle, I didn't actually plan to enter it because again I visited many castles and palaces in this trip. So I just walked around the compound a little bit.

I did need to use the toilet, but you need to pay to use the toilet, arrrgghh. I did try, but somehow my coins did not work. Then I thought should I ask the tourist I saw sitting nearby one toilet if I could use her ticket to enter the toilet, but then I thought how cheap would I be *sigh* So I contemplated a bit if I should just get a ticket to enter part of the castle so that I could use the toilet. In the ticket counter, I saw that a ticket for the garden was the cheapest at 8 Polish złoty, so I chose that and also because garden is nice to walk around in. The toilet fee is 5 Polish złoty by the way. The garden is not very big, but it happened to have some sculptures being exhibited, so that's kinda interesting.

After the toilet and the garden, I walked around the castle a bit more. Google told me the tower below is Sandomierska Tower. From the castle compound you can also see the Vistula river. The park around it looks nice.

Next in my walking route was visiting the Jewish quarter. Walked the area a bit. Found the Schindler's List Passage which is an alley that was used in the movie. Entered The Corpus Christi Basilica and it was unexpectedly quite nice in the inside. Though I had walked quite far by now, I decided to just really go further out and cross the river and see the Jewish Ghetto Memorial. It was a really really long walk. The memorial has a number of these chairs in a square.

Then it was back to crossing the Vistula river. The bridge is quite long and I thought gosh, I really walked a lot. The focus was really in seeing as much as I can, I didn't stop for lunch that day.

Back in the Jewish quarter, I walked the area a bit more. Saw some synagogues, like the one below is the outside of Remuh Synagogue. I didn't enter any of them because it's not free to enter.

The Jewish quarter was kinda quieter than the old town. There's some tourists, but definitely not as busy as the old town. It also feels bigger to me or maybe I was just already quite tired of walking.

Back in the old town, I took some last pictures, below is of the square. Got another Pączki because I hadn't eaten anything. Then I went back to the hotel to get my stuff. For more pictures of Krakow, go here. You know, I have been putting more photos as compared to years passed, but unfortunately many of them are actually not so good :( I do not improve at all. Anyways, I like Krakow. I know I didn't spend a lot of time in it, which is perhaps a shame. Really, I had quite a relaxing stay in Krakow. The nice suite in the hotel helped :D

So I got my luggage from the hotel, got my train ticket easy enough and off I went to the airport. Check-in was okay. I was hungry, that I had an overpriced corn soup at the airport restaurant. They assigned one of those waiter robot to deliver the soup to me. I don't know why when the rest of the customers were served by real human and I wasn't, but it's okay. I guess it's one experience I could tick off. I found out that my flight to Frankfurt would be delayed and this filled me with anxiety. When I bought the ticket, I knew I would only have around 1 hour transit time in Frankfurt. It felt really tight especially because I had to go through immigration, but I thought they wouldn't sell the ticket if they don't think it's possible. Also, back during my US trip I managed to do a 30-min connection time in Seattle when I had to take the airport shuttle train to a different terminal and in that same trip I also managed to do a 45-min connection time in Tokyo, though I didn't have to go through immigration, there was quite a security check in Narita. Bottomline, I was feeling that perhaps this could be done. I had also done all that I could like choosing a seat near the exit for my flight from Krakow to Frankfurt so that I could disembark quickly. When I saw my flight to Frankfurt was delayed, I thought okay that's not good, but they would never leave me, right. I mean I was flying to Singapore, that's a long distance flight, it's not like there's a flight every hour or so, they could wait. Planes are delayed all the time. I was filled with anxiety really. Krakow airport is not very big, but I managed to find a seat by my gate surrounded by many people. Then I googled the departure listing of the Frankfurt airport. I saw a weird thing that it seemed my Lufthansa flight was being combined with a Singapore Airline flight and it would be leaving 15 minutes earlier. So what the hell? What's happening? I knew nothing because I didn't receive any email about this change. All I could do was just wait and pray. I was surrounded by a group of Italian signore and signori (aunties and uncles) waiting for the same flight to Frankfurt and I wished I could just relax and enjoy the wait and practice Italian with them, but I couldn't. I could only listen to their conversations and in my anxiety prayed - please God I need a miracle.

When I finally got on the plane, I was like let's get going. Upon landing, the pilot made an announcement to say sorry for the all the noise during the flight, it's because they're flying at maximum speed and it seemed we all could meet our connection time. I was like great. He also said we would have transports meeting us on the plane to get us to our terminal or gate. Great. I got on the bus, but it's not leaving immediately, so I began to worry again. It also took quite long for the bus to get us to whichever terminal it was getting us. At this point, I really had no information of where I was and where I was supposed to go. Got into the terminal, looked at the TV, couldn't find the flight to Singapore. I put my phone off flight mode and I had wifi back on and I started getting some messages. The first message was actually about me getting a voucher to book a hotel stay because my flight would be delayed a day. I was still in denial seeing it. The next one was the one that told me that yep, they left me and they booked me a flight for the next day. I was so in disbelief of what was happening. I needed to talk to actual people. I went looking for a Lufthansa counter, found one, it was closed, and it pointed to another counter that should be available. So I walked there only to find it was also closed. At this point, I just let out a big audible, what the fuck?!?! a few times. A guy who was standing by that closed counter said, yes, that is right. Oh my God!!! I couldn't believe what's happening. So what the hell was I supposed to do. I didn't even know where I was. I slowly accepted fate and booked that hotel stay. I didn't know which hotel to choose from the list, so I chose the one that's nearest to the airport. I didn't know where it was and how to get there. I was freaking out and though I think I deserved the freak out, it didn't help. I should have calmed my shit down and figured this out. It took me awhile to understand where I was then to get to the exit and then find the train station. In this freak out, the way I figured out things were in pieces, that when I got to the train station, I was like which station I had to go to that I missed the train that was already there and had to wait awhile - aarrrgghhh!!!

The station that I needed to get off to was Gateway Gardens. When I got off, I was confused on which direction I was supposed to go that when I found the correct exit and looked back behind me I realized I was the only one left from the train and as I was exiting out the station there's 2 guys coming in to the station with drinks and they were meeting their friends and were getting quite loud. I felt uneasy and at the street level it was dark, like really dark. My Google maps couldn't show me where I was and I just walked in a direction that I wasn't sure was correct. It was chosen randomly. I really didn't know where I was going and it's getting really scary. It was dark and there's no people. I studied and planned my whole entire trip to avoid being in situation like this and there I was, lost in the dark. I felt this was the moment where really bad things could happen to me. As I walked, I saw a few guys walking but I didn't feel like asking them - remember the bear or the man, it's real with me, I just couldn't bring myself asking them. I walked a bit more then there was a lady and I tried asking her, but she didn't stop to help, indicating that perhaps she didn't speak English. Then some paces behind her there were 3 ladies and praise be to God, the black lady in the group answered me. Now, I can only make assumptions on who these ladies were. I think they were janitors who just finished working for the day. The black lady was maybe German, but I think she could be immigrant (or maybe they all were immigrants) and originally came from a country where people speak some English. She said one of the other lady was actually going the same direction with me because her bus stop was near the hotel. That lady didn't seem to speak English though and she was slower than me so I just confirmed my direction and quickly walked there. I was so so appreciative of the black lady, truly truly. Google maps was finally working on my phone and finally I got confirmation that I was in the correct direction.

It was a relief to be arriving in the hotel. They found my name on the list and checked me in. I had the brain to ask if they had toothbrush and toothpaste which the receptionist gave me. Another thing that I wanted to ask was that if they also had sanitary pads because period came, it came earlier :( I didn't ask though because the receptionists were two men and again I couldn't bring myself to ask them this. I did have some pads with me but it wouldn't be enough now that I was delayed for more than 12 hours. I saw in the hotel lobby that they were selling snacks and drinks and I ventured to look at one side of the shelf and thank God they did have sanitary pads, so I bought that, paid using the machine. Got to my room. The room was spacious, but very basic. Finally I managed to sit down and absorbed what just happened. By this time it's like 11 pm. Sent message to mom that I failed to get back and would be delayed. I don't know what she thought when she saw the message but when I finally recounted the ordeal, she seemed to understand some real shit could have happened with me being lost in the dark and all. Of all my trips, I think it was perhaps on my first trip alone that I packed an extra set of clothes in my backpack. After that I have never done it because I don't expect things like this to happen and now it had happened. So I could only brush my teeth and go to sleep with what I had on. Ironically I like the firmness of this bed's mattress the most, but I guess it's adrenaline that it took me awhile to fall asleep. I was okay but it was really quite a day - good God.

:) eKa @ 8:21:00 PM •