Today was the day we made the fabled transition from buses to trains.  Today was the day we were certified Inter-Rail Global Travellers once more!  We thought it’d never come, but through the Eurolines Baltic Express and the Russian border officials, nothing could now stop us getting on a train at 0915 from Warsaw Central Station.

In keeping with our intrepid-travelling roots, we were to kick it up a notch and visit our second destinations in Poland.  Heading south, we took a three hour journey, in a modern train, where we could stretch our legs and have our huge bags crammed by our sides.  Luckily, there was only a mother-daughter combo to hardly fill our six-person compartment, and we busily scribbled away on our reserved seats.

Enduring the torture of no free wi-fi, we filled our time reading and listening to our respective Apple-branded mp3 players.  I’d brought only one book with me, specifically for this journey: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.  With a visit to Auschwitz on the agenda for the following day, I thought I’d read John Boyne’s 2006 best-selling tale of Holocaust literature.  Written as a fable, and in the style of a children’s story, I’d finished the novel two hours later, haunted.

A short while dozing later, I’d recovered and we were in the centre of Krakow.  Going up some stairs and down some others and through a maze of a modern shopping centre, we stumbled into the medieval heart of the small town.

But something was wrong.  Either we’d learned to speak fluent Polish or there were a lot of English speakers around.  Sadly, it turned out to be the latter, and the small town was over-run by tourists.  We found our way to our hostel briskly enough, which appeared to be above a club on one of the main Old Town thoroughfares.  Upon hearing the (now-to-be-expected) news that we couldn’t check in for another hour and a half, we set off in search of lunch.

Picking a Polish ‘milk-bar’ canteen, we ate some meat-filled pierogi (dumplings/ravioli) and returned to ‘Tutti Frutti’ hostel.

Having spent far less than the 6-8hour pre-requisite amount of sightseeing, this was no time for rest.  Having a quick chat with some of our English room-mates, and seeing Jezz (who we met in Vilnius), we hit the Old Town square again.

The main attractions of the Stare Miasto square are: the Cloth Hall (the Sukiennice, the Mariacki Church with its Gothic spire and the copper-domed Woiciech/Adalbert’s Church (the oldest in Krakow).

With the Cloth Hall now housing nothing more than your standard tourist-tat market and the Oldest Church In Krakow fairly basic, it was up to the Mariacki Church to pique our interest. Inside is the stunning triptych high altar, built around 1480, which is a magnificent wood carving depoicting the Virgin Mary among the apostles.

Heading up the Church Tower for our standard set of town-panorama shots, we were greeted at the summit by one of the seven local firemen who play a sombre melody entitled the hejnal every hour.

Why do they do this, I hear you ask?  Well, legend has it that during one of the Tartar raids in the thirteenth-century, a gard watching from that very tower saw the invaders approaching and blew his readily-available trumpet, only for his alarm to be inconveniently cut short by an arrow through the throat.  Therefore, every hour, these firemen play the first segment of this melody, stopping at the point where the guard was supposed to have met his demise.

Beer o’clock soon reared its thirsty head, and we set ourselves down in the square oto enjoy a cold one. Or two.

After this hops-based ritual, it was soon time for dinner, and we ventured to a delightful little Polish self-service restaurant, designed like a (genuine?) Polish cabin.

With a plate full of indigenous pork and potatoes, and some more beer, we ate and drank well before heading for another night-wander through Stare Miasto, accompanied by another travel-favourite: ice cream.

While casually debating deep philosophical questions such as the meaning of life and whether or not we ever want to go back to Russia, we were approached by what, on first impression, appeared to be a homeless man.  However, this remarkably clean-and-healthy-looking gentleman with a long white beard turned out to be none other than an English-speaking guitar-playing Swedish vegan hippie, travelling through Europe on his bicycle.

We gladly held conversation for a little while, enjoying his anecdotes aboout sleeping outside the castle, among nature (in the only true ‘million-star hotel’), but made our excuses to leave when he talked of Nazi-like atrocities committed in the present day.  Typical Surreyites, never wanting to hear about unsettling things happening under our very noses.  Not true.  When we thought he’d be talking about human rights abuses, corrupt politicians and world poverty, we were intrigued.  When he started harping on about extreme animal rights and veganism, we switched off.

With a day trip to Oswiecim-Brzezinka necessitating an early start, we headed to the hostel for an early night.  With the hostel situated on top of a thriving bar/club, however, our ‘early night’ was due to be a little delayed.