During our 20 minute break between touring Auschwitz and Birkenau, I saw a group of people come into the museum. One guy I recognized as my "roommate" for the one night I spent at the "Yellow Hostel" in Rome. I went up and introduced myself again. We started talking and he told us about this great hostel he was staying at in the center of Krakow. Jon and I still didn't have a place to stay, so we told him we'd keep it in mind when we got to the city. Also on our tour of Auschwitz were the three Australian guys we had met on our pub crawl in Prague. They were road tripping to Budapest. Small world or at least similar activities and interests.
The two hour bus ride back to Krakow was cold and long with an irritated driver. I fell asleep. In Krakow, it was so cold. We wandered aimlessly for about 30 minutes trying to find the main Rynek Glowney Town Square. We walked through a huge, fancy shopping mall and I said to Jon that "no wonder people are disappointed when they come to the US as they already have all of the same stuff here." We got directions to the main street but were still lost. We asked two Polish girls how to get to the Old Town Square. They told us and then asked where we were from:
"California,"
"Why on earth would you come to Poland in the winter, in January?!"
"We wanted the real experience."
We found the square and then looked for an internet cafe. It was so cold that it hurt to walk. Krakow was very pretty with large churches and old buildings. We finally found an internet cafe. We spent an hour sending couchsurfing requests and emails. I booked the hostel that had been recommended to me by Patrick the kid I had met in Rome and Auschwitz. We then went to look for the hostel, finding it close to the square.
Entering the "Good Bye Lenin-Let's Rock!" hostel, I knew we were going to have a great stay. The decoration was fresh and hip with pop art and cool stencils.
The reception lady was really nice and after checking in, she showed us our rooms. We met the Brazilian kids in our room and then went downstairs to the fun common room and nice kitchen.
Jon and I decided to go shopping for dinner at the market. Deciding to be more gourmet, we bought some chicken, pasta, and paprika seasoning. Back at the hostel, we took over the kitchen and started to cook. The stove didn't work great but we did a great job on the chicken and had a good meal.
Patrick and his friends Robbert from Holland, Nikola from Germany, and Stephanie from New York came downstairs and we talked to them for a while, laughing at the small world factor. The night turned out be quite fun as Robbert, Patrick, Jon and I went for a guys night out to two bars. The first was pretty dead but the second turned into a bouncing night club as the night went on. The Polish girls didn't speak very much if no English at all, so it was pretty funny trying to communicate with them. We got back to the hostel around 4:30am and after hanging out for no real reason downstairs in the common room we went to bed by 5:00am.
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