Krakow and west

KRAKOW, Poland — The shrill, thin whistle of the train; the rattling wooden boxcars filled with moaning, miserable people; the tracks leading from the West and ending in a single track entering into the horror of Birkenau are memories emblazoned into the collective memory of the civilized world.

I was one of the lucky ones to have escaped all that, and now I was retracing a train voyage in the opposite direction: from Krakow through Silesia to Wroclaw (long known by its German name, Breslau), through what was East Germany, into Berlin and Potsdam, ending in Munich.

The journey of a group of travel writers began in Krakow, that splendid medieval city barely touched by the ravages of World War II, whose charter dates to 1257. Once there were eight gates to the city and 47 towers along its moated walls. The towers were defended by the various guilds, such as those for the haberdashers, butchers and carpenters; just a few remain. The moat has been transformed into a park that encircles the inner city.

The main entrance to the city is St. Florian’s Gate, with the emblem of Poland, the royal eagle, upon it. A second fortification to protect the entrance to the city was built in the 15th century. Although the second wall no longer exists, St. Florian’s Gate and the Barbican, a red brick construction in Arabian design, still stand. Street musicians play Bach and Mozart on accordions and xylophones beside the thick stone walls.

Ulica Florianska is the street leading from St. Florian’s Gate to Krakow’s magnificent 13th-century medieval market square. The street is lined with small hotels, restaurants and shops and once was part of the Royal Route traveled by the kings on their way from Warsaw to be crowned in Krakow.

Krakow’s market square is one of the largest and certainly most splendid medieval squares in all of Europe, divided in two by the great Cloth Hall, perhaps the world’s first shopping mall. The Cloth Hall is filled with souvenir shops selling more than cloth — amber from the Baltic, folk craft, postcards and pottery.

The square is lined with cafes and overrun with pigeons. According to legend, the pigeons are knights who were turned into birds by a witch. As the story goes, a duke who wanted to be king sought counsel from a witch, who exchanged his knights for the money he needed for his quest. She transformed the knights into pigeons when the duke failed to keep his promises.

Every hour, from the highest tower of St. Mary’s Church on one side of the square, a trumpeter plays the hejnal, commemorating the 13th-century Tatar raid on the city. A watchman noticed that the Tatars were approaching and sounded the alarm on his trumpet. One of the invaders saw the bugler on the tower and killed him with an arrow through his throat. Because the watchman saved the town but was silenced in midwarning, the modern-day trumpeter cuts his playing short in the middle of the hejnal.

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The noon playing of the hejnal is broadcast daily on Polish radio. We watched as a group of Polish students clapped and cheered the bugler’s performance one afternoon. He, in turn, leaned out of his high window and waved his trumpet in salute to the crowd below.

From the market square, we wandered into the graceful courtyard of the university’s Collegium Maius. Krakow’s university was founded by King Kasimir the Great in 1364 and is the second-oldest in Eastern Europe; Copernicus is its most illustrious one-time student. The Collegium Maius, built in 1400 with the funds from the sale of the jewelry of Poland’s young queen-saint Jadwiga, is the oldest surviving college.

From the heart of the city, we walked up Wawel Hill, seat of Krakow’s original settlement and site of the royal palace and cathedral where the kings were crowned. Hanging at the entrance to St. Stanislas Cathedral is a large bone, said to be all that is left of the dragon that once inhabited Wawel Hill.

The dragon, named Smok Wawelski, lived in a cave near what is now the castle. He feasted on the peasants’ sheep (and young virgins). One day, a shoemaker (or perhaps it was an old man) named Krakus smeared a sheep with sulphur. The dragon, as was his wont, gobbled up the sheep, but he became so thirsty that he drank half of the river Vistula and exploded, much to the joy of the community, which named the city after its hero.

Krakow is an exquisite city with many good museums, graceful art-nouveau decorations, and Renaissance and Gothic buildings. The old Jewish ghetto is located in Kazimierz, once a separate town created by Kasimir the Great.

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