We only visited for 4 days, but that was more than enough time to check out all the main attractions.  Krakow is not a huge city, so we were able to see quite a bit of it even though I had limited range.  Having lived in London for 9+ months, everything in Poland seemed to be pleasantly affordable and I couldn’t help converting everything back to pounds, which that never failed to put a smile on my face.  Catching cabs everywhere was as cheap as public transport in London, so we abused the privilege on most occasions to stop me from whinging about my tired arms.

Spent the first day hobbling around Kazimierz, which is where our hotel was.  Kazimierz is considered to be the Jewish quarter, and while we were wandering past cemeteries and synagogues I was expecting to see at least a few Lubavitchers, but later on a tour I was surprised to hear that the local Jewish community was as small as 500 people.  This is obviously due to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and the community was never able to recover afterwards.  It is so sad that so many families were destroyed by the evil of the Nazis, though I imagine it would be hard for any relatives of the victims to return to a place where the memories are still strong and the evidence of what occurred a tourist attraction, but also an important memorial.

We visited Auschwitz II-Birkenau with a tour company on the second day.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought before we went.  The guided tours are obviously well rehearsed and groups are herded through just a few of the seemingly endless rows of buildings where prisoners were housed.  I was never really overcome with emotion, and didn’t notice anyone else in our group getting upset either, though I’d been told I should expect it.  In hindsight I wonder if it was because of the short time we spent there, and the way each building is presented as a museum.  The tour guide tried her best to create an atmosphere of dread, but perhaps I was just numbed by the disbelief that anyone could be so cruel to fellow human beings, treating them like animals or ‘sub-humans’ as they referred to them.  Even treating animals in such a way seems beyond reproach.

The highlight of the trip for me was the Salt Mine at Wieliczka, where we descended as deep as 134m over the course of the 2-3 hour tour covering around 2km of a mine with over 300km of tunnels!  I’m always up for a bit of sperlunking, but being on crutches it’s not something I’m going to be doing anytime soon.  Hobbling around the shiny rock salt tunnels of the mine was the next best thing and since miners have been working the mine for over 900 years there is a fascinating amount of history and many mind-boggling sculptures, cathedrals, lakes and bottomless pits that have been carved into the rock salt by the hands of extremely talented (and maybe very bored) men and women.  We only saw 2 levels of the 9 in total, and the route we took covers less than 1% of the entire mine.  There are tours that go as deep as level 8 around 300m deep, but these require a lot more time and the ability to crawl on hands on knees…  I’ll be back!

Other than those two main attractions, we mostly spent the rest of our time searching out the best Polish food we could find.  Traditionally a lof of it seems German in origin, like sauerkraut, spicy sausages and kranskies  But there’s also plenty of other classics we were able to try like Ch?odnik litewski (Beetroot soup with boiled egg), Placki ziemniaczane (potato pancakes), Pierogi (dumplings), and Rosó? z kurczaka (chicken noodle soup)… There was a lot more that I can’t remember, and even more that we didn’t have time to try.  Given how I love to eat, it’s a sure bet that I’ll be visiting Poland again to eat more, along with the 1L mugs of local beer that is perfect for washing everything down…

Krakow is an awesome little city.  Small enough that you can see just about everything in a packed weekend if you had to, but with more than enough bars, cafes and restaurants to keep you happy for a longer trip if you’re so inclined.  I highly recommend you visit and I’m giving it a 4 out of 5 on the Streetdaddy scale!

It doesn’t seem to matter how far away I am, you’re always looking out for me!  I hope you have a great day, and like father like son, that would be a relaxing day…  Lotsa love from your Son in the Motherland!

Take for example, Gob’s Program

Taiwanese fishermen run aground at Padang Padang as locals make the best of a messy situation
“It didn’t take locals long to figure out that the Taiwanese boat had been illegally fishing in Indonesian waters. When the boat ran aground (Poor navigation? Too many Arak Attacks? Captain was wearing green? No one really knows why…), the entire crew of the vessel grabbed every bit of documentation they could and booked it on the Bukit. Gone. Audi 5000. Between the fines for illegal fishing and the cost of getting the boat off the reef, they were cutting their losses.”

What next?

Update: The intrigue increases…

“The whole situation got even weirder today when rumor surfaced that the captain may have been murdered by his crew.”

And I’m selfishly rubbing my hands together at:

” … this could make running our events—the Rip Curl Padang Cup & Rip Curl Pro Search—there impossible … “

So maybe me having a bit of a whinge about it here will have some cosmic effect on the outcome.  There’s also the possibility that they’ll move the waiting period forward so it’s smack bang in the middle of my trip!  Blurg…

So I pimped up my bike with some chunky dirt-lovin’ tires and BMX-style pedals, printed out some maps, and did a bit of exploring around the trails.  Funnily enough I’d stacked it within 100 metres of where the trails start, but thankfully that was the only one I had and there wasn’t anyone around to laugh at me!  A couple of hours later I’d worked out some pretty good trails and had a ball blasting through muddy puddles and charging some downhill sections, although probably still fairly basic-to-intermediate compared to some of the deeper trails I chose not to follow (this time!).

+1 mountain biking!  I’ll be out there again this weekend and will report back again once I’ve injured myself, and based on my ocean-based record it shouldn’t be to far away…

So what happened while I was away? Well, as usual I missed out on a nice easterly swell and thanks to my thoughtful mates for making sure I didn’t miss out on any post-surf glory stories. What else? Well, some of you may have seen the picture on the right, which turned up on Coastalwatch as their ‘Wave of the day’. Looks pretty scary, but further cemented my opinion that you can’t believe anything you see on the internet. Turns out it was, as suspected by many, a photoshopped fake… Which is probably a relief for some of my extended family who stay down at Forster every year for most of January!

So where do I start? I mean, I’ve already set the bar so high with thought provoking subjects like shoeys and scat-lovin’ chimpanzees, where do you go from there? Upcoming plans perhaps? DJ and I have finally gotten around to booking our flights home for festivus, and not a moment to soon since the prices had already gone up since we’d last looked. As usual we’ve got no idea what we’ll be doing for NYE, so to any of our friends reading this, we’ll be gatecrashing whatever party you go to!

About the closest I’ve come to a holiday recently was going to the Web Directions South conference in Sydney last month. I’ve been going every year since it started and in the past it’s been really interesting to get a close look at what’s happening at the cutting edge of web design and development. It’s usually half technical, half wishy washy theoretical stuff, but this year the wishy washy was in abundance. I tried to make up for it by eating at really nice restaurants, including one Korean BBQ at which I ordered the ‘Flaming Chilli Chicken, and was given the ‘are you sure?’ look from both the waitress and the two korean guys at the table next to us (who were sharing that dish and both sweating like donkeys). It looked so nice though, I couldn’t resist, and although it tasted just as good, it wasn’t so great the next day. nuff sed…

The surf up here has been almost non-existent for the last 6+ weeks. All of the East Coast surfers (there’s a lot of them), including myself, are starting to get a bit nutty which is manifesting itself in different ways. In fact, what I am typing right now may be a direct result of the boredom. Anytime there is the slightest increase in swell, every man/woman/grommet and his/her dog/mini-mal/fish are all over it from here to as far south as you can be bothered driving. Usually that’s not very far for me, that’s why I moved here!

Adelaide bound in the next few weeks and some spicy lebanese goodness in Hindley Street’s seedy underbelly…

Of the two following displays of vulgarity, which presents the greater threat to one’s personal health? Our thirsty little chimp friend innocently whetting his whistle? Or the the time honoured tradition of the ‘Shoey’ (regularily practised by my good mate The Regulator), which involves drinking beer out of someone elses sweaty shoe?

I’m pretty sure the chimp has the upper-hand. What do you think? I have asked a medical practitioner to ponder on this question and post his answer here, so stay tuned…

So anyway, I’m on the Trav-O-latorâ„¢ doing the whole Superman thing, zipping past the Trav-O-latorâ„¢-less plebs at high speed, even though I’m strolling at a leisurely pace. Suddenly in front of me appears a couple of nannas and their floral suitcases, standing completely still, blocking my way and violently jolting me out of my man-of-steel fantasy world when my heat vision fails to euthenaise them. Before I know it, I’m being overtaken by the plebs that just moments before had been left in my wake… I considered giving the nannas this very special award, but why give them all the glory when I can spread the love to all the other offenders out there! You know who you are, and to you, my Trav-O-latorâ„¢ blocking nemesises, I present the first Tool of the Month award.

* The long running Tool of the Week award has now been replaced by the slightly more realistic Tool of the Month award.