"Winter has come to Magic Town!"

I'll have to backtrack a ways in order to explain why I feel like I've lived an entire lifetime in the past seven days. Although I really was terribly unhappy in Krakow, I feel that I may have been a bit unfair to Poland in my previous post.

Arriving in Krakow was like walking into some sort of bizarre and disturbing dream. The airport is small, and purely functional, and from the moment I looked out on the runway I felt like something was horribly wrong. It's still the dead of winter in Poland, which was a jarring change from the bright, grassy spring of Ireland, and all I could see from my window was brown and grey trees, and an endless skyscape of bleak, gray clouds. Taking the train into the city, it only got worse -- dilapidated concrete buildings, old, dirty snow, and everything seemed to be bordered by barbed wire, giving the impression of arriving in a recently deserted battlefield. As I stood waiting for the bus to take me to my hostel, it started to sleet, cold, hard pellets of freezing rain that mimicked everything I was feeling. The city was deathly quiet. Polish people, I think, are naturally very quiet (or at least, seemed like right introverts compared to those fun-loving, crazy Irish), and it was extremely unsettling. I had already begun to wonder if I would find any enjoyment in being there.

The slow, run-down tram rattled into the city center, but I had yet to come to my stop, and then it gradually moved on past the main, developed areas and into what appeared to be residential neighborhoods. There it stopped, and I got off where my instructions told me, in the middle of a Krakow suburb. Definitely not ideal when you're wanting to visit a city and have fun.

I found the hostel that I had booked months ago -- hilariously called "Elephant on the Moon" -- but when I got there, though the sign out front told me it was the right place, I couldn't see any way to enter. The driveway was blocked by a rusty, brown gate with a giant padlock strapping it closed. There was no other entry. I tried for a few minutes to rattle the gate loudly, hoping that I would catch the attention of someone inside the small, suburban house twenty feet up the driveway, but no luck. After the last depressing hour, I found this truly exasperating. I waited a few minutes to see if anyone came out to greet me, then looked around the street, to make sure no one was watching, and hurled my backpack over the gate, hoping that maybe the disturbance would bring someone out. Nothing. I looked around again, convinced myself no one was around to see me, and started to scale the gate. This proved to be much more difficult than it looked, as there were no natural footholds in the fence, and I had to heavily leverage the top half of my body in order to balance on the top of the gate, then basically crash down on the other side. Once there, I picked myself up, grabbed my backpack and started walking towards the front door. Before I got there, a small, spritely guy with a warm, Slavic face popped out of the house, and cried "You are jumping?! Why are you jumping?!"

"Oh... well, I... I just... I didn't know how to get in." I stammered.

"But there is a pathway! To the other side of the house! And now you are jumping?!"

"Oh... Oh I'm really sorry, I didn't realize --"

"Hoho -- my little jumping girl! Here you come to Magic Town, and you are jumping over fences to come stay at my hostel! Haha, my little jumping girl!"

Gregory, as he was called, continued to call me his "little jumping girl" for the whole time I was there, which, actually, I thought was kind of cute. He was enrmously friendly. Staying at Elephant on the Moon really felt like staying as a guest in his house. The "reception" area was his kitchen table, which was also where breakfast was served, and I had a single room that just seemed like a guest room, and a bathroom that felt like a normal house bathroom, no dorm-like shower stalls or rows of toilets. He let me settle in for a few moments, and then invited me downstairs to have "the full introduction", where he brought out a map of Krakow and told me all the things I should do while I was there. With a pen, he highlighted the major sights.

"Now here -- this is Castle Wawel, on the river bank. Next to it, there is big cave, where you go and visit. Then you must see dragon, who make the flame from the mouth. RAWR!"

He said the last part so loudly it made me jump, and then he laughed insanely at his own joke. I couldn't tell if the dragon was some sort of allegory, or like a painting or something, but it sounded pretty crazy, as, I might add, did Gregory. He helpfully explained all the things I should see and do, all the rules of the hostel, as well as the element he was most proud of, the "Elephant on the Moon festival." This was basically his way of saying that every night of the week he did something special for his guests. That night was movie night, but on Thursday it would be Milkshake Day, and on Sunday, Jelly Day! He was so excited to tell me about it, I tried hard to look happy and excited as well. My heart really wasn't in it. I just wanted to get out of Poland. It was cold and depressing, and in spite of Gregory's warm hospitality, I couldn't help but be constantly comparing to Ireland, and wishing I was back there.

I was remembering my Robert Heinlein, though, (Do not make irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry) and decided to have a hot shower, a nap, and then try to get myself something to eat. The hot shower and the nap were foiled by the lack of hot water in the building and the heat being turned off in my room, so that I sat shivering in my bed with a sopping wet head for an hour before I gave up the idea of sleeping. Then, on Gregory's recommendation, I took the tram back into the city to have dinner at a restaurant called Chlopskie Jadlo (HOPE-ski YAD-lo), "who make the best Polish food... in the world!" Actually, the food was amazing. The interior of the restaurant was decorated to feel like an old Polish tavern, with all wood paneling and tables and benches made of solid wood slabs. The kind of place where you would expect a buxome waitress with a front-tie corset dress to come and slam a big, foamy stein of beer on the thick wooden table. I ordered a traditional Polish bigos, made of sour cabbage (sauerkraut, I guess) with pork and sausage mixed in, and delicious thick, Polish bread on the side. It was super tasty, and really hearty. Looking back, I have to give Poland credit for having great food. In all honesty, I've been really impressed with all of the food I've eaten in Europe. In fact, the place where I was least impressed with the food was, incredibly, Paris, where I always just sort of felt that it was mediocre. But Eastern Europeans really know how to fill you up. For dessert, I ordered a thick apple-filled pancake (amazing), had a glass of hot wine, and was feeling happy and relaxed enough to go home and go to bed. Gregory had warned me that this restaurant, as a result of its superior quality, was also quite expensive. When my bill came, it was a whopping 16 zlotys! (About four euro). God bless Eastern Europe.

After a great night of restful sleep, I decided I should try to give Krakow a fair shake before I made any rash decisions about leaving. After all, dinner had been delicious, Gregory was great, and the hostel was all around very nice. I showered and dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast, where Gregory greeted me from the table.

"Good morning! Look! Winter has come to Magic Town!"

I blinked, hard. Then looked outside the window, where three inches of new snow blanketed the garden, and was still falling heavily.

I booked the next flight back to Dublin.

The earliest I could leave was the following day at noon, so I sat with Gregory, feeling depressed as ever about my location, and discussed what I should do for the day I would be staying.

"Definitely -- definitely! -- you should go to Auschwitz."

I sighed. That was not what I needed today. Instead I took the map he gave me, bundled up in thick winter clothing, and went into the city center to take in some of the sights. I wandered around the churches and museums in Old Town, finding all of them either closed for the season or undergoing renovations, and became more and more annoyed with Poland by the second. I walked down towards Castle Wawel, Krakow's crown jewel, only to find that they had sold their "quota" of tickets for the day and weren't letting anyone else in, and the exhibition called the "Dragon's Cave" didn't open until April. What a waste of time Krakow was turning out to be. I wandered down to the river and took a seat on a bench next to a bizarre, green, twisted metal statue, and tried to decide what to do next. It had stopped snowing, finally, but was still icy cold and windy, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up with a hot cocoa and watch a sappy movie, or take a hot bath. It was also starting to be time that I eat something, so I considered my options around Old Town. Just then, I heard a loud, weird, whooshing sound above my head, followed by loud crackling. I looked up to see that the statue next to me was shooting great jets of flame into the air -- upon closer look, I realized that the green, twisted metal was actually a big, extremely frightening looking dragon. The dragon who make the fire from the mouth! This was, in all honesty, pretty damn cool. It's just a big metal statue of a dragon, which you don't really notice at first, but about every five minutes it startlingly belches flame at unassuming passerby. I smiled, for the first time that day. I guess Krakow wasn't a complete loss.

I took lunch at another local restaurant Gregory had recommended, where I had the Polish specialty of pork peirogis (dumplings) and then settled in for the rest of the afternoon at a coffee shop where I drank hot tea, read a book and listened sadly to all the traditional Irish music I had just downloaded to my iPod. When I finally returned to the hostel in the evening, a few other people had arrived, so at least I was no longer alone, and a few of us stayed up to watch a movie before I went to bed, ready to get back to Ireland as soon as possible.

Oh, Ireland. What madness drove me there.