The peaceful city of Krakow, Poland

I am loving being in Krakow.  It is such a lovely, peaceful, interesting place.  It's very soothing after my less so experience of Prague.

Snowdon has organized two great apartments for us.  We move into the second one tomorrow, and will be there for five days - oh yes, five days in the same place!  Whilst here in Krakow I'm in charge of food (which I'll happily do), and Snowdon is in charge of the planning (which thankfully he'll happily do).

At the moment we are staying in the old town very close to the gorgeous 'Main Market Square'.  So far we've had some nice chill out time in our apartment, wondered around the local area and visited the surrounds of Wawel Castel.

We've also found a concert in St. Peter and St. Paul's Church (see pic below) to attend tonight where we will experience the music of The Crakow Chamber Orchestra of St. Maurice.  They are playing 'Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Albinoni, Dvorak, Mozart, Torelli and Brahams'.  Very cultured of us.  Snowdon has 'music' in his bones, but I think it'll be quite educational for me - I'm really looking forward to it.

Insert:  Well we didn't make that concert (due to a miscommunication) but decided to go for an evening stroll instead.  Incidentally we happened upon another concert, this time in the very famous 'Barbakan' (Barbican) - a fortified outpost of, and gateway leading into Cracow's old town (wikipedia), and apparently a masterpiece of medieval architecture.  Well it was wonderful attending a concert there.  The pianist 'Bartlomiej Kominek' was very very skilled man, his hands moved in all kinds of ways over that grand piano and stirred up all kinds of emotions for me.  The concert was 'Chopin inspired' (said Sho-pan apparently, I was just corrected) and I noticed when he played Chopin (who I tonight learned was Polish) he played with even more emotion!  Snowdon also found the concert wonderful, so much that he is inspired to ask Harold to teach him several of the pieces that he played (that Harold can play - wow Harold impressive - I look forward to witnessing that!)  It was lovely when a bird emerged from out of its nest in the Barbican wall and flew around the round inside wall a few times, as if to acknowledge and enjoy the music, then retreated again.

      

    

Snowdon and I have been reflecting upon why it is so nice and so peaceful in this city.  Some examples are:

• When the locals approach us to give us a pamphlet or ask us if we'd like a tour and we say 'no thanks', they thank us, bid us a good day with a friendly smile, and happily retreat.  eg. tonight "You want to drink beer?" "No thanks" "Oh ok thanks, enjoy your night (big smile)".
• Musicians are really valued here.  Today we got invited to three classical concerts and I saw signs for several more.  Live classical music is prevalent and readily accessible.  
• On the way home tonight we happened upon some busking breakdancers.  Well in my experience breakdancers can choose some heavy tunes - these ones were good and they were dancing to, wait for it, "the rhythm is going to get you...."  How lovely!  

Some of our theories so far are:

• They have such incomprehendable brutality in their recent history (murder of 3 000 000 Jews from Poland) and after experiencing such a devastation are now able to bounce further to the peaceful end of the spectrum.
• They respect musicians and thus can experience this beautiful artistic joy, with such a range of emotions, 'live' often and this contributes to their peacefulness.
• Tourism hasn't hit in full force yet (I'm hoping this one is incorrect and that they can retain their beautiful ambience).

I'm sure we'll continue to ponder that one during our time here, meanwhile its just lovely to soak up the atmosphere.

It is very hot here - my new favourite thing is fizzy water (water with gas), and I've been drinking litres of it. Oh yum it's so refreshing, just the thing for these scorching days.  I like it even more now that I buy it from the supermarket (as opposed to restaurants).  Food is much more affordable here, which, after five and a half months of travelling, I'm appreciating!

Today whilst perusing some art books in a bookshop I found another artist to admire.  Tamara de Lempicka, a Polish Art Deco painter, was the first woman artist to be a glamour star (wikipedia).



She had a pretty interesting life, which includes pinpointing and 'going after' her husband (which I did too - hah), then freeing him from the Bolsheviks (which I don't think I'll have to do), and some other very controversial things for the time period (umm prob not either).  There is even a stage play named 'Tamara' after her which is the longest running stage play in LA (11 years)  wow!  In the book it said something along the lines of, 'I endeavour to find the elegance within my subjects'.  Well I think she certainly did that!

This is my favourite of her work.

Girl in Green with Gloves aka Jeune fille en Vert (Tamara de Lempicka), 1929

Although this is her most well-known piece:

Self portrait - Tamara in the Green Bugatti, 1925

As per Snowdon's 'Krakow' plan:

• Tomorrow morning (Saturday) we move into the other apartment then explore the Jewish District, Kazimierz.  This is apparently very interesting so I'm looking forward to it.  After seeing the movie Schindler's list in Rome we're also busting to visit Schindler's 'actual' Factory (which is also in the area). I mean how exciting to see the legendary place where that amazingly inspiring and generous  (previously drunken, womanizing, solely money orientated) man saved 1000 people!  And lastly we have The Ghetto + heroes of the ghetto square which I don't know much about YET, but know that involves a lot of big chairs.
• Sunday we go to the extermination camp, Auschwitz, which I don't think needs much explaining.
• Monday - we hire bikes for three days (yahoo some exercise additional to walking) and will be heading East to 'Aqua Park' where we will run around and act like kids on the varous slides, all day!
• Tuesday we cycle West to Wolski Forest and the 'Mounds'.
• Wednesday we bike to The Fortress.
• Thursday we fly to Brussels, then train to Brugge.

Ahh so well planned - the joy of being married to a good planner who enjoys planning!

PS:  I've made myself a new rule, in order to heighten my productivity (which took a dive recently - note the lack of blog entries).  I have stuff to do!  I'm now only allowing myself to check Facebook twice a day maximum.  The results today have been startling.  In addition to our site-seeing today, I had time to confirm a job interview in Singapore and send my CV and cover letter away, organize treats for Snowdon whilst he was planning our next journey to Belgium, finish my book - Creative Visualization (+ began to review it in order to begin the exercises in it), and completed this blog!

I am inspired and productive again.  Keep your eyes open for more blogs, there's quite a backlog, so I have plenty of material to work with!  Good night!