Looking back, looking forward

Where...where are all the pictures of Ataturk? Why is there blue on these flags? Yes, there is a little bit of reverse culture shock being back in America, but the word "shock" makes it sound so unpleasant. Rather, I'm just reminded that old habits die hard. Case in point: I'm in a cafe drinking a big old 12 ounce mug of coffee right now, not sipping from a dainty porcelain fincan. I'm wearing a tank top, and since I'm sitting down, my just-above-knee-length skirt is exposing my knees ever so lasciviously to the other cafe patrons, who are paying me absolutely no attention whatsoever.

There are benefits to being back in the good ol' US of A.

I feel that amongst the people who bother to pay attention to Turkey these days (that's not an accusation; there are a lot of countries worth paying attention to in the world), there is almost no grey area between love and hate. I am of the loving opinion; I heartily enjoyed Turkey despite all its foibles. Others I have recently sparked conversations with claim to hate Turkey despite all of its finer points. One such person from the latter group told me they don't think Turkey will ever "catch up" to the West, or modernize, or develop, or whatever buzzword is being used to describe going from where Turkey is to where it needs to be in its economic, political, and social realms. From my seat here in America, I can see more clearly that Turkey does have a very long road ahead. Then again, our republic is more than 200 years old, and Turkey's republican centennial is in 2023. So ask me again in another hundred years, I guess.

OK, that's more than enough vague generalizing for now. I still have some Turkish travel yarns I've yet to spin for this blog, so I'm going to keep posting, even though I'm no longer in that bewildering wilderness called Turkey. But while I've got you here- thanks for reading!

A raised eyebrow

A while back I went to Kaş, part of which is pictured above with a Lydian tomb visible at the end of the street. There is a sunken Lydian city off of its shores, near Kekova island, so this harbor town is a favorite of scuba divers. Kaş is "eyebrow" in Turkish...I believe the name comes from the shape of the coastline.

On the way to Kaş from Antalya (it's about three hours west of Antalya), one goes through Demre, a town noteworthy for being chock full of Russians, kind of depressing by comparison to its neighbor Kaş, and for having the remains of St. Nicolas.
That's right, dear old "Noel Baba", is buried in his eponymous church. The author of my guidebook took particular delight in explaining that you can later "tell children you have visited Santa Claus's grave".

In any case, the waters in this region of Turkey's "Turquoise Coast" (aka The Turkish Riviera) are true to their name. They are pristine, clear, and most of all, blue. I could not wait to swim in them, and lo, swim I did. I opted for a boat tour which did not include diving...unless you count my numerous eager dives off the side of the boat. Boat tours from Kaş to Kekova Island generally take the better part of a day, include lunch, and stop in several coves where you can swim. Sometimes you end up anchored in a cove near other tour boats, a fact which was lamented on many a travel blog. I didn't particularly mind, as I had no illusions of being the only person who wanted to visit to a mystic Mediterranean wonderland where I could frolic with sea turtles amongst sunken ruins. This is Turkey after all, where tourist spots are almost always exploited to their utmost (not necessarily a bad thing--sometimes you want to be able to have tea at the bottom of a canyon, right?). At one point our boat drifted slowly but dangerously towards a nearby anchored boat, which caused a delightful groan of "Allahallahallahallahallahallahallahallahallah" from the other captain as he gingerly kicked our boat away from his. "Allahallah" ("Allah Allah", 'God God'), is what Turks say when we might say "Oh, for crying out loud!" or when Brits would say "Good lord!", and is separated usually as Al-lah-hal-lahhhh. The other captain, however, being a linguistic champion and particularly surprised by events as they unfolded, somehow made this exclamation last about 15 seconds. Brilliant.I had one of the top five meals of my life on this boat trip, which featured balık köftesi (fish meatballs, grilled on the diving platform of the boat), bulgur, and two kinds of incredibly fresh salad. The crowning glory was when another tiny boat approached us soon after the meal--the ice cream BOAT. It's basically a dingy with a freezer onboard. Turknology at its finest.

Kaş is a town I would consider retiring in (since that is a thing I consider from time to time, being a 50-year-old teze [Turkish for "maternal aunt," also a general term of endearment for older women] at heart). My cat and I will run a tourist shop that sells hamam-related goods...wait, dang it, it's already been done!


A hearty thank you to the Fulbrighter who accompanied me on this adventure, not only for being a great travel companion but also for taking all of the pictures I posted.

Van is the cat's pjamas

Van has a short list of things it is famous for, in order of appearance: the Van Lake Monster, breakfast, a castle, and white cats with one blue and one yellow eye. No one may believe me, but I could have sworn that in the dawn hours of our overnight bus ride from Mardin to Van, I saw the shifty shape of a sea monster slowly swimming alongside our bus. Van was the only place on our tour to have a Fulbright teacher, which meant we had a local guide who spoke impeccable English. This particular teacher is a tall blonde chap from Arkansas, so needless to say he attracts a lot of attention on the streets of Van. The restaurants, grocery stores, and dolmuş routes he frequents are filled with people who recognize him. He also had such insider knowledge as how to easily to avoid the 3TL entrance fee to the grounds of Van Castle. Van Castle usually has an admission fee, but not if you're a Van insider...

Van Lake at sunset as seen from the castle.

Unsatisfied with only Van, however, again we took the better part of an afternoon after our Van kahvaltı to take a 3 hour jaunt yet further east, to Doğubayazıt. This jaunt was worthwhile for so many reasons: one, Ishak Pasha Palace is beautiful, two, we were able to see Mt. Ararat, that famous mountain of Biblical lore, and three, we were able to marvel at the Turkish military presence near the border of Iran. Many of the mountainsides around the town have Ataturk quotes emblazoned upon them in towering letters, “Ne multu Türküm diyene” being the most common and famous (“What happiness to be a Turk”). We were told that this is to “inspire” the many troops there, but the quote I mentioned especially is often used as a conversational ultimatum by way of answering The Kurdish Question (to simplify: it sometimes is seen as calling out Kurds in their dogged determination to not embrace a Turkish identity). Generally the East is both distressing and beautiful.
The former dining room of Ishak Pasha Palace was one of my favorite parts, but the mosque was also stunning.


The next morning after a rest in Van we headed to the island in Van Lake which boasts an Armenian church and stunning views. Due to happenstance and warmer weather, a large group of Fulbright teachers had descended on Van (9 to be exact), and we had an impromptu picnic of sorts on the island. Usually the ferries don't leave the dock until they have what the captain deems to be a profitable number of people on board, and in this case the sudden presence of 9 Americans and a handful of Turks meant that we didn't have to wait long for departure.


The carvings on the church are remarkable. It was an excellent end to the weekend and a picturesque last glance at Van Lake before the assembled Fulbright crew all headed back to their respective Turkish hometowns.

Sacred Fish

From Kahta it was on to Şanlıurfa, or Urfa for short, famous for aptly named Urfa Kebabs and the “Balıklı Gol”, which literally means “Lake with fish”. Upon arrival at the bus station, my three companions and I were in the midst of deciding what to see first when an elderly couple began beckoning us. “Where are you going?” they asked, not quite waiting for an answer before shuffling us into the backseat of their tiny car. “We want to see the lake with fish!” we replied, earnestly. Before we knew it, we were whisked away in the car with the now-familiar stop-and-start jerkiness of a driver who is still not completely comfortable with the necessary act of changing gears manually. While exchanging pleasantries and being complimented on our Turkish, we learned that our chauffeur and his wife had two daughters who were about our age and that they wished we were staying longer so they could treat us to a home-cooked meal. Ah well, we had other fish to fry.

Urfa has more character than most of the Turkish cities I've seen in my time here. It has charm. It has a lake, with fish. Sacred fish! They are sacred because apparently they are made of the ashes of Abraham (the story behind it is unclear as per usual, and we deduced that it probably comes only from the Koran and is not featured in other holy books, because otherwise one of us might have remembered that one time Abraham was engulfed in flames and then his ashes turned into fish). The lake is more of a pond on the grounds of a mosque, but there is a whole park nearby which unites it with Urfa Castle and a small bazar. The whole area is reminiscent of what one probably imagines when one thinks of Turkey, based on Hollywood notions of “The Orient” and the like. It is beautiful nonetheless.

This trip, much like a Russian nesting doll, also involved an inner jaunt to Mardin, a mere three hour bus ride away from Urfa. Mardin is a tiny, tiny city on a hill, and it is famous for its brilliant panoramas, a former monastery, and I believe the type of stone used in building the majority of its buildings. Here in Mardin the Turkishness of the story continues, since again in our quest for our next bus we were offered a tour of the city from a native. This time the native in question was a cab driver, so he requested a nominal fee. Still, we felt looked after. Our driver was very gentlemanly, patiently smoking by the car while we took pictures and even stopping at an ATM so we could all replenish our cash reserves. He spoke a mixture of Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic, as most people do in that part of Turkey, which sounded very interesting as he chatted on the phone.
After a whirlwind hour and a half in Mardin, we headed all the way back to Urfa in order to catch our next bus to Van.

Two new words

arbiturkey [ˈɑːbɪtɜːki] adjective : 1. Turkish citing of historical 'facts' which are subject to individual will or judgment without restriction, e.g., He made the arbiturkey statement, "In Mevlana's time, people were two meters tall." 2. bureaucratic regulations which seem random at best, e.g., I can't understand the seemingly arbiturkey and ever-fluctuating rules surrounding the proper handling of residence permits.

turknology [tɜːkˈnɒlədʒɪ] noun : jumbled balls of exposed wiring, house walls propped up with old olive oil cans, or other such innovative solutions to everyday problems of modernity

Eastern Adventures

The week after I gave my first exams I had another first...I took my first trip towards the east of Turkey. In fact, I ended up going almost as far east as one can possibly go before winding up in Iran (Doğubayazıt, Turkey). I visited not one, but two famous mountains, I went to churches built before America was even discovered, and I saw both sacred fish and a famous breed of cat (not in the same city, however). But I get ahead of myself. Even though this trip was only five days long (the week after midterms, students have what they call a "head vacation", or a week when they just ditch classes to go home and let their mothers do their laundry), it it was so jam-packed that it will take a couple of posts to do it justice. Without further ado...

Kahta and Mt. Nemrut
Mt. Nemrut is a darling of the Turkish tourism bureau. They simply love putting pictures of the ancient stone heads of uncertain origins on various propaganda. As a result, tourists such as myself are drawn to the top of this mountain they would probably otherwise not pay any heed to. One of the starting points for the ascent is the town of Kahta, which, I was later informed, is known as the “rip-off capital of Turkey” or somesuch by the guidebooks. My companions and I did not really get ripped off there, but Kahta, in mild terms, was not a favorable introduction to the East for me. (Happily other cities would prove better.) It is a man-dominated town and with a pervasive aura of utter depression. It wasn't long, though, before we were in a dolmuş speeding towards the base camp of Mt. Nemrut, with several stops to see ancient things in between. The countryside surrounding Mt. Nemrut is absolutely gorgeous (as is the east in general, as I would learn).

Possibly the sketchiest ferry I've ever seen. Possibly. For a few minutes I lived in fear that we were going to try to drive on to it.

This is the approach to Mt. Nemrut. You have to hire a driver to get even close to the mountain because it is so far away from the nearest towns. In any case, right before we got to this hill we were stopped by local gendarmes for a routine roadside ID check. Our driver, however, had no ID, no money, and no registration for the bus. He got out of our bus and slowly approached the gendarmes' van with a wry look in his eye as we all watched anxiously from within. Eventually we saw him laughing, and decided that this was probably not a good sign. He sauntered back to the bus and explained: "I used to be a firefighter in town. I would bring the water to the men. I told them, are you remembering me? I was bringing you the water. Maybe I don't bring you water any more. So they say to me, 'Yes, we remember, you can go.' Ha ha ha. Maybe I not bring them water, ha ha." So...our driver quite literally carried a lot of water in that town. He told us that story triumphantly about four more times during the day.

There they are, all majestic and whatnot. They were really cool but the climb was a bit snowy (i.e. treacherous). Also there is a chain in front of them so you can no longer get right up next to them, unlike what pictures of past tourists might have you believe.


Stay tuned for more Eastern Adventures!

Mevlana Land

Konya, the land of Mevlana (also known as Rumi), the land of a thousand mosques (ok so no one actually calls it that, but there are a lot of old famous mosques), Konya, the Citadel of Islam, the land of myth...and the land of legend. Konya is generally considered famous for two things: being the home of Mevlana, and a little something they like to call etli ekmek (literally, “bread with meat”). Anyone is welcome to continue to try and convince me that "etli ekmek" is not the same thing as lahmacun. In any case, I spent a little time in Konya a few weekends ago, along with a brief but comprehensive visit to the nearby Karaman (where two other Fulbright teachers hosted me).

Mevlana is known as "the Persian mystical poet" (pretty great epithet, right?). It was under his tutelage that the Sufi Order of Whirling Dervishes began, with their iconic ritual spinning dance. He is also incredibly well-known, as almost any Turk will point out to you, for having uttered the following regarding his order and by extension Konya:

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.

So, I did has Mevlana commanded and visited the museum and his tomb (under the green dome you can see in the photo below) in Konya. (Aside: dervishes still perform in Konya, and the dance ceremony is called a sama, but they only do it there once a year, in December. There are a few dervish lodges elsewhere in Turkey where they perform more regularly. All dervish lodges are state funded and controlled.) As I was wandering around the museum, taking in various signs that made vaguely informative insinuations about what I was seeing, a Turkish man approached me and asked “English?” My subsequent nod led to two hours of him showing me the highlights of the museum and of Konya, a discussion of President Obama's potential reelection, and, of course, a new Facebook friendship. To top it all off he actually thanked me for the privilege of my English-speaking company. All I had to do to find a friend in Konya was to stand around and be American.

Kahve Falı

I had my coffee-ground fortune (faal, or maybe just fal; it's unclear) read for the first time a few nights ago at a friend's house. It was vague and amazing. The woman who performed this feat cracked me up but I had to be really grave and serious the whole time to avoid offending anyone.

Example:

"There is a man...with....a short neck.... and combed hair....DO YOU KNOW SUCH A MAN?"
"Um...yes, that one guy...."
"He will tell you...NEWS. It will be ok, do not worry about the news."
"Uh...ok."

I don't think there was too much lost in translation...because I don't think too much of note was actually said. She said I had a "bright star" though, which sounds pretty neat, and also that I looked very "natural" (literally- doğal).

Hey DigiTurk Hey DigiTurk

Please let me offer you a quick apology: apparently due to some inappropriate video postings constituting potential copyright infringement, Blogger has been temporarily blocked in Turkey pending litigation with the Turkish company DigiTurk. Thus it is easier for me to post at the university, where websites are not blocked, and where I have access to a Turkish keyboard, but typically when I am at work people are always calling on me to "teach English" (the NERVE). In any case I promise to add some updates this week because I went to the East for the first time and it was absolutely gorgeous.

Berlin ftw*

FUN FACT: That tower is 30,666 Rittersports high.

Recently I had the privilege of visiting Berlin for a Fulbright conference. How can I even begin to describe Berlin to you, dear readers? Let's try a visualization exercise.

First, imagine a sprawling city where none of the buildings are too high and every so often you encounter a narrow river. Then imagine some medieval architecture and some heavily graffiti-ed Soviet-style concrete blocks. Then, add the look, taste and texture of a beautifully frothy beer. Add a lot of hearty meat dishes but also some crazy-good pastries, some ice cream and edible imports like noodles and döner. Now top that all off with a black bear on its hind legs. That's kind of like Berlin in a nutshell.

As I was taking my leave of that fine city, I figured out what so captivated me about Berlin. First, I find the German language adorable (that's right, adorable. As in cute. Seriously listen to someone say “flughafen” and try not to think “awww”). Second, I like Germans. They're known for being shy and punctual and they love a good beer (and I can relate to at least the first and third parts). Third, Berlin has little pieces of other cultures I enjoy (there is a not insignificant amount of Turks there) added to its own vibrancy. Actually, maybe it could just be that I have a thing for geographical places that are notorious for their past or present east-west divisions. Who knows.

Here is a picture of two German dudes enjoying a sunny Sunday in front of a wall covered with graffiti. I don't think there's a beer in this picture (you can drink it wherever you want! and there's sauce on the döner! Is Berlin just bizzaro-Turkey?!) but otherwise it would really encapsulate a lot of the city.

This was a really cool (and famous?) Sunday flea market in the north-ish part of the city. I had my first currywurst at that flea market (basically a brat in special curry-y sauce, pretty good but I think I prefer regular bratwurst).

At the flea market, there was a throng of Japanese people selling rice balls for earthquake relief, calling themselves "Operation Onigiri". I was delighted to give them some of my euros.

Finally, I had a ton of chocolate in my last few days in Berlin. I met up with a U of C alum and we went to the Rittersport "museum" and a famous Berlin chocolatier, Fassbender & Rausch. We did a comparison study of their hot chocolates (the latter shop's offering pictured above), and while Fassbender and Rausch certainly wins for fanciness and did not lack for taste, the Rittersport hot chocolate was not only spot-on, but also had the cutest lil' Rittersport gracing the saucer. It won by a small margin overall. Also you can make your own Rittersport bar at the shop, which is fun and delicious.

Just your neighborhood palace...

In conclusion, Berlin is awesome. Sure, it was a bit of a downer that Knut died basically the day I got there, but as one of our Fulbright panelists, Ingeborg Junge-Reyer (Berlin's "mayor and senator" for urban development and one of my new favorite people) said in response to a question from the audience which I would basically paraphrase as "KNUT IS DEAD WHY WHY WHY?", "We must remember, he was [only] a bear." I look forward to the day when I can go back to Germany and look more Germans in the eye and say "Prost!" over another brew. Happily I will definitely be back in that fine country in May...for Eurovision!


*I'll save you the trouble: I know I'm a bit of a nerd. (And ftw = for the win, so non-nerds don't have to google it.)

Şirince Fruit Flavor Palooza

Last week I went on a day trip to Şirince, a little tourist town near Selcuk and Izmir. Şirince is famous for şarap, or wine, made of almost every kind of fruit you might want. My two traveling companions and I tasted a dizzying array of fruit wines, listed more or less in order of agreed-upon deliciousness, from most to least:

black mulberry (karadut),
melon (kavun),
cherry (vişne),
quince (ayva),
strawberry (çilek),
peach (şeftali),
raspberry (ahududu),
blackberry (böğürtlen),
apple (elma),
pomegranate (nar),
blueberry (yabanmersini).

We really wanted to like blueberry, but it was just sour and strange. A word to the wise- trying the same wines in different places is a good idea, because we hated the first strawberry wine we tasted but the second one was amazing. We tried a little regular wine of the grape (uzum) variety as well but after the myriad sweet fruit flavors our palates could not really taste "real" wine properly. Fruit wine, at 12TL, or 6Euro, or 8-ish dollars a bottle, is the most economical non-Efes (most "popular" Turkish beer) way to get your drank on in Turkey. (Aside: Turkish beer is pretty terrible. Ask any Fulbrighter.)

Being three Fulbrighters, my traveling companions and I have all been in Turkey almost six months to date. This clearly gives us the know-how to gauge the authenticity of Turkish towns, and we decided that Şirince is one of the most genuinely Turkish-feeling towns we visited. Later we learned it is currently populated mostly by immigrants and that a lot of the village's quaint buildings are leftovers from Greek times. Sounds pretty Turkish to me, actually.


Thanks to my Fulbright companion for these pictures, because goodness knows that as per my normal habits I did not even remember to bring my camera.

Makin' Mantı

This weekend I learned how to make one of my favorite Turkish foods, mantı. (OK, technically it's my favorite "Central Asian" food, but I'll just adopt the Turkish norm of referring to its Turkish origins.) The name is often translated as "Turkish ravioli" in English menus, a name which gives a sense of the dish but does not do justice to the particular deliciousness of these tiny meat-filled dumplings.

So that you may learn, and I may not forget, here is the nub and gist of mantı preparation. First off, the dough consists of flour, eggs, and salt water. How much? Oh, enough. Of course these things are only "measured" by the watchful eye of the senior Turkish housewife present, in this case, my coworker's mother. The dough is kneaded and kneaded and kneaded by rolling your fists on it, kind of like slow-motion punches. Then it is separated into smaller chunks, in our case, four. Then more kneading and more flour to keep it from sticking. There is a special low, round, wooden table and long, thin rolling pin used for mantı, gözleme, börek; basically anything that involves rolling out dough. I would give the Turkish names for the table and rolling pin here but a) I forgot them and b) they differ by region.

The smaller hunks of dough are rolled first in the normal fashion of stroking the pin across the dough's surface. After an appropriately thin dough is achieved the whole thing is rolled around the thin rolling pin and pulled outwards by the motion of your hands from the middle to the outside. (That sounds a lot more complicated then it is, and if I had a picture of myself engaged in this pursuit, it would be much clearer.) In any case you stretch and stretch the dough until it is almost as big as the table, and then you do it a few more times, just in case. Then the dough is cut into the tiny squares you see below and filled with a finely chopped mixture of ground beef, onion, parsley, salt, and "spices", which I believe referred to red pepper in this case. You poke a little morsel of the meat mixture onto each square, and then fold the corners together and then press them into the middle to form a little pocket*. This part takes the longest- filling and folding each of the tiny squares took about 3 hours, with four tireless women working together.



After this, the many many finished products are at long last boiled for about 10 minutes, their size making it extremely easy to cook them quickly. Traditionally there are several sauces for them, and sometimes they are also used as dumplings in soup. In our case we put some lightly spiced tomato paste (salça) in butter and added a small amount of this to salted and slightly watered-down yogurt (ayran) by way of sauce. I have also eaten them with nothing but an entirely ill-advised amount of butter and walnuts on top.

(Aside: this picture was taken from Turkish wikipedia, credited to OsManduRdu, but it is almost identical to the scene in my Turkish coworker's kitchen. The spice in the jar is sumac, to be spooned on later if desired.)

A total of about 5 hours of work makes them taste at LEAST five times as good as in any restaurant. When I first began eating I inhaled those little yogurt-covered meat-packets as though I hadn't eaten for days (and by virtue of my being in Turkey we all know that is utterly impossible), and when I finished my last bite it slowly dawned on me that in polite circles the rapidity of my consumption might have been considered a bit rude. But as I looked up from my plate for the first time since the first taste hit my eager taste buds, I saw that I was behind in finishing by two other girls, and they immediately begged me to let them fill my plate anew, a request which I quickly and grateful obliged.

Afiyet olsun!



*In other words, you reunite the meat, which I'll call Numa, with the mantı's core. Sorry, that joke is for the benefit of only one reader of this blog.

Salt versus Skulls

For a trip that lasted two weeks, it sure was a whirlwind. There were two utterly indescribable highlights from both cities I visited...which I will, of course, endeavor to describe below. I couldn't resist trying to compare them, but in the end both teams played hard, and in a battle no one should win, who can win? I should also mention that both of the highlights were not in their respective cities proper, but short trips outside the environs. Without further ado:

PRAGUE HIGHLIGHT: THE SEDLEC OSSUARY
The Sedlec Ossuary is actually in the former second-largest town in Czech[Republic]oslovakia, Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is beautiful in its own Bohemian way...but I didn't go there to enjoy the town. Make no bones about it, I was headed to the hippest joint in the place: a chapel decorated with the remains of an estimated 40,000 plague victims. Needless to say, my jaw dropped as I toured the inner radius of the chapel, and I got a bit of playful ribbing from my friend about how many pictures I took. The story of the place is that "Henry", the abbot of the Cistercian Monastery in Sedlec, went to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage and brought back some official Holy Land soil, and so the chapel cemetery became quite the desirable place to send the dead. However, when the plague struck the sheer number of bodies got a bit overwhelming, and in 1870 to "get the bones in order" an intrepid carpenter , František Rint, decided, in keeping with the chapel's “Baroque” fashion, to decorate the church with the bones of the dead. I don't think I can do this place much more justice in words, so please just admire these photos. The whole place is morbidly breathtaking and totally enthralling, and the beauty of something like a garland of human skulls makes it very difficult to wrap one's mind around the fact that they are actual human remains, which has the surprising effect of making the chapel more of an aesthetic experience than a spiritual one. At least, that's how it was for me. I also could hear John Cleese yelling “LOOK AT THE BONES!” in my head for much of the time, which was rather irreverent, but seriously--just look at them.






KRAKOW HIGHLIGHT: WIELICZKA SALT MINE
Why was the salt mine so awesome? Well, for one thing, it was the first (and likely the only) tour I've ever been on where I've been invited to lick the walls (whether this was facetious or not is unclear due to my guide's completely emotionless delivery of his well-rehearsed English patter about the mine that did not change in tone for the two hour duration of the tour). Secondly, while the mine itself is an unbelievable testament to the human addiction to salt, and is an unfathomable labyrinth of complex tunnels, carvings, chapels, salty lakes, and the like, it also boasts not one, but TWO ridiculous music-and-light shows on the tourist route. You know, to make it interesting. Out of the many tours you could get carted around on in Krakow, it's hard to dwarf how much this one rocks. The mine is definitely a good pick and I'd recommend you ax questions of your guide in order to get all the information, lest you be shafted. You'll learn that the mine also has a bit of meta-tourism going for it, because inside it has carved tributes to the famous tourists that have visited (Copernicus, Goethe, Chopin, Pope John Paul II, and more!) in addition to antiquated and currently unused tourist attractions like a subterranean ferry across one of the salty lakes. Sodium, baby! (Unfortunately due to being underground I have few to no good pictures. The final picture, of the salt-crystal chandelier, is from Wikipedia, taken by Andrzej Barabasz.)



In retrospect, the obvious answer to the question of which is better is simply...both. Who will carve a bone chapel inside the salt mine, though?

Catholicism, Communism, and [hot] Chocolate[...ism?]

My train trip from Prague to the motherland was a near-fiasco, but all's well that ends well. Just note that if you take the train from Prague and have to change trains in Katowice, most likely no one will speak English, and you ought consult the departure schedules yourself (and know the Polish word for departures) instead of waiting for the quaint flap-board to display your train. It's easy to get a ticket from Katowice to Krakow if you make a mistake, however, so I'd recommend the trip if you have a spare day.

The old town of Krakow has a wonderfully medieval feel. I thought I had reached hot chocolate nirvana in Prague, but that was before I went to Wedel and got a cup of their traditional drinking chocolate—heavenly. Big shout-out to Nowa Prowincja for their amazing drinks and beautiful interior. I went there thrice, I couldn't help myself.

Wawel Castle was as beautiful inside as its smok statue was brutals, but I was a bit disappointed that the “dragon's lair” is closed in the winter months. Entry to Wawel Castle Cathedral entitles you to a trip up and down the bell tower, where each of the huge bells has a name and a history. The Cathedral also has some beautiful tapestries inside, as do the castle staterooms. A word to the wise: admission prices and ticket-buying is a bit confusing, but all of it is cool, so you really can't go wrong. I bought tickets first and then tried to figure out what parts of the castle they were for, rather than trying to find tickets for parts I wanted to see. This worked nicely, but you need to be easy-going about it.
These guys were pretty easy-going, just kind of hanging out and crooning to the accordion on the entry ramp to Wawel Castle.

Krakow had more museums than I knew what to do with (which sounds funny after coming from Prague...). I would highly, highly recommend the Cloth Hall museum in the main square: it's only four rooms, but it has hands-down some of the most intricate and masterful paintings (some on 30-ft canvases) that I have ever seen. Also if you don't think you'll miss the 7 zloty (about 3 dollars), the Archeology Museum feels like a well-done 7th grade social studies project, as it makes ample use of dioramas. The big draw is the only Slavic cult god statue ever found.
I also rekindled a little Catholic feeling by going to Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral (pictured in the background above) and visiting the former apartments of Pope John Paul II (before he was a pope, when he was a professor and cardinal, from 1951-1968 or thereabouts).

Of course, everyone knows that a trip to Eastern Europe is just incomplete without some kind of communist history thrown in. Well, my hunt for remnants of communism in Poland took me nearby the Krakow School of Economics to see Skeletor, a Soviet building that was started but never completed and now stands as a skeleton due to the complexity of zoning laws that prohibit its destruction. But I repeat: it shadows the Krakow School of Economics. Best juxtaposition ever?
And speaking of amazing juxtapositions...
Being unsatisfied with this mere taste of the communist legacy, I continued along the tram line to Nowa Huta, or New Steelworks. This is a completely Stalin-planned community on the outskirts of Krakow (now a part of Krakow), apparently built to countermand how beautiful, medieval, and artistic Krakow was through its industrial, worker-championing layout and amenities. It was not nearly as depressing as I expected, but it sure was a lot of nearly identical dilapidated concrete buildings. I would have tried to adhere more to the route on the map, but I was a bit too cold to stay there too long.

On the way back to Prague I took a bus because the timing was more convenient. Please be aware: when you take a bus across the Czech/Polish border, border patrol will board the bus, take your passport, and then GET OFF THE BUS WITH YOUR PASSPORT. This is absolutely terrifying to someone who does not speak Polish and who consequently thought her passport was gone forever as the bus pulled away, but eventually at the dinner stop (20 agonizing minutes later) the border guards pulled up and returned all of the documents. In any case, one of the movies shown on the bus was called Holy Business (I think). It was about two men who supposedly inherit a car owned by Pope John Paul II. It was adorable, it mercifully had English subtitles, and it was a very fitting end to my time in Krakow.