4. Wednesday Wonders

Let’s start today with the ANSWER TO MONDAY’S PUZZLER: The honey-like image was a part of a church window:

And we have a new puzzler – what is this and how was it used?

And now let’s take a little trip to the most beautiful city in Poland – Krakow, where the whole Old Town has been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. And rightly so!

Getting there is a little time-consuming – the train takes an hour and a half to cover the distance of 30 miles. The railroads are poor, so most of the facilities are in disrepair. I get sentimental thinking about the times a few decades back when the train station in our town was bustling with life, and included three ticket counters, a restaurant, a store, and a sizeable waiting room, all in really good shape, decorated with a variety of plants etc. Here is where we start our travels now:

Once you het to Krakow, though, the magic begins.

To celebrate the 200^th birthday of Frederic Chopin, a famous Polish composer, Poland established The Year of Chopin. In Krakow, there are a few spots with artistic arrangements like this one where you can listen to Chopin’s music playing from the speakers. Serendipity!

Across the piano we have one of my favorite buildings – the Slowacki Theater. Slowacki was a famous poet and playwright from the Romantic era.

In Krakow, it’s good to look up, as there are so many beautiful facades all over the place.

Hunting for stained glass windows, as usual :), I stepped inside a little church – St. Barbara’s. I found some beautiful windows inside…

… and also a gothic Pieta sculpted in the early 16^th century.

By the entrance to the church there is a group of 16^th century sculptures protected behind a metal net. It is called “Gethsemane” and pictures Jesus praying in the Garden while the disciples are asleep. God sends an angel to comfort him. The background is a 15^th century wall painting featuring the moment when Jesus was arrested by the Romans.

Something old, something new – Hard Rock Café in a really old building.

Then we met with Ania my stepdaughter and first she showed me another Chopin spot: a fake bus stop (in a street where no traffic is allowed) with more music and an interactive information screen.

Then we marched to the Museum of Archeology. I expected a dusty, old-fashioned collection, which was the case in most of Polish museums not long ago, but I was sooooo pleasantly surprised! The presentation of the objects was awesome, and on top of that, the ticket guy (and the rest of the staff) turned out to be really passionate about the exhibitions and if we had time, we could probably talk for an hour :)

I’m going to include just a few things here, and there should be more on picasa… soon.

The photo above shows a sample of famous Krakovians’ portraits. From the right – Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz – two poets, Nobel-winners, and on the far left – Stanislaw Lem, a SF writer, the author of “Solaris” which the movie by the same title was based on.

A photo dedicated to my dear Perfumer & Flavorist friends: perfume vessels from the Roman Empire :)

A representative of a large group of Egyptian mummies.

A representative of the Peruvian collection. Turns out that in the times when Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria and pretty much did not exist on the map (19th century), a gentleman named Wladyslaw Kruger first went to Paris to study, and then moved on to Peru, where he built the railway from Peru to Bolivia, and then became the headmaster of the Engineering College in Lima. The government there appreciated him so much that they even erected a monument in Lima to commemorate his efforts. In his free time, he studied the culture of Peruvian Indians and later on he donated his vast collection of artifacts to the Archeological Society in Krakow

A very clever exhibit showing the history of Krakow’s environs starting with the times when mammoths roamed these hills: on the right there is a map showing the settlements in a given era; then, in the glass case are the related artifacts excavated near Krakow; on the left a diorama shows a scene from those times, and next to it there are herbarium pages presenting contemporary plants. Plus, each arch represents a layer of soil that you would find the artifacts in, if you were and archeologist. Fascinating!

The history of apparel, from the mammoth times through Renaissance.

The most precious artifact in the museum; in fact, it’s even incorporated in the museum’s logo: the four-faced Swiatowid (interpreted variously as The Worldseer, the Holy Ruler, or the Morning Star), one of the more popular gods in Eastern Europe in the pre-christian times. I thought that there is a bunch of such statues all over the place, but it turns out there is just ONE in the whole wide world! It comes from the 10^th century and was excavated from a river in 1848.

Once we fed our brains, it was time to get some food for the body. We chose a Mexican restaurant and enjoyed beautiful burritos.

Finally, we walked back to the train station. It had rained just enough to make the streets turn into mirrors.

Right next to the station, we walked through a world-class shopping mall. I much prefer to think about the old walls, though :)