It was bound to happen eventually, but downtown Krakow in the middle of the tourist area was not where I expected it to happen.  I arrived in Krakow in the morning and after getting to my hostel and changing, I went on a quick adventure run around the old town and then headed back to the Hostel.  More on the Hostel later, but first your wondering what the heck is with the foreshadowing and below picture…. It finally happened…. I got mugged.  The short of it is that I got pepper sprayed, punched in the face and my phone stolen.  Other than the aftermath burn from pepper spray, the black eye from the punch and the $1000 I had to spend to get a new phone… I was no worse for wears.  I thought this would happen more to be honest and despite always being careful, had a contingency and cards and money hidden all throughout my stuff.  In this case I didn’t even have to use it as they didn’t even take my wallet.  Might as well tell the whole Krakow story, so stay tuned as it was actually a pretty positive experience overall.

When I arrived in Krakow I went for a quick run to get myself situated.  I checked out the wall surroudning old town, the river passing through the city as well as some of the other city part of the city.

After the run, I cleaned up and got prepared for the free dinner that the hostel provides each night.  OK let’s take a minute to stop and talk about this Hostel.  It was called Greg and Tom Beer House Hostel and it was probably the best value hostel I’ve ever stayed at.

It was $13CDN for a 12 bed dorm and each evenign they provided a buffet dinner which was slightly different each night but had pizza, meat, cheese, pasta, sides and like an actual legit dinner rather than the “free dinners” you see advertised and all they are are bread and soup.  This was LEGIT and they offered it every night.  I haven’t gotten to the best part yet.

During the hour alloted for dinner, they connected a keg and had FREE BEER during dinner.  Not only that, they had water pitchers on every table and so as the end of the hour drew near, we filled up all of the water pitchers with beer and continued to hang out and have beer even after they closed the taps.  They didn’t care and all we wanted to do was hang out.  It was outrageous and awesome.  Breakfast was equally as good as dinner, but unfortunately without the beer.  The hostel provided that every night and all you needed to do was sign up so they knew how many people would be joining for food.  Not only that but the Hostel was located right in the heart of the tourist old town are of Krakow which made the location just right!  You can tell i really loved this hostel and I really would say it was one of the best value hostels I stayed at in the entire trip.

That first night I had seen a couch surfing event at a local beer bar, that was offering a free beer taster, with tasting notes by the brewmaster.  I got a few people to head that way after dinner to check it out!  It was a well attended event and despite most people knowing almost nothing about beer, I still got to have a chat with the brewmaster after and it was a pretty solid discussion  I got his card and was thinking i might head out to see the brewery, which was located just outside of town.

After the flight and a pint, we headed back to the Hostel with no real plans on what to do with the rest of the evening.

There was a pub crawl happening and I typically steer clear of those, but the rest of the people I was hanging out with decided to go, so i decided to join them.  It started by playing some games in the hostel followed by a crawl of a few nearby bars.  What they did not tell us in the beginning was that this was more of a Club crawl which is a bit different than the ones I had experienced in the past.  Usually you go to a few bars to get to know the people that you are on the crawl with and then finish at a club.  This one was club to club to club and I wasn’t really feeling it.  It is for that reason I left a bit early… alone.

This is when things changed from great to bad.  I left the bar and was on my way home when I made my first mistake.  I took a phone call from a friend I had met a while back and proceeded to talk on the phone while walking down the street at 1am.  I was approached by a group of men who asked if I had a cigarette and upon saying no, they took the opportunity to spray me with pepper spray, punch me in the face then swipe my phone.  I honestly can’t remember the details since it was a bit traumatic but essentially I was dealing with the burn from the pepper spray in my eyes and couldn’t really see.  When a few bystanders came by they called the police and the police brought me back to the Hostel, where I logged into my find my iphone and immediately locked my phone.  I was a bit dissoriented and my eyes and hands were BURNING.  Thankfully I had my laptop with some of the passwords saved so i was able to t least get into my find my iphone.  I didn’t do much else that evening, I was tired and just wanted to go to sleep.

The next morning the burning had not subsided and I was still pretty uncomfortable.  I decided to try and have a shower to reduce the sensation, which was a terrible idea because shortly after my entire body was now burning.  My hands were pretty bad and I realized that my laptop had some residue on it because when I started using that again, my hands started to burn even more.  It was very uncomfortable and annoying.  I logged in to find my iphone and to my surprise could see that the thieves had not turned off the phone immediately and there location was visible.  However, the police had zero ammount of English capability and there was no way I was showing up to a strangers apartment who had just mugged me the night before.  So I got over it and headed to the electronics store to get a new phone.  The cheapest option there was almost $1000 iphone 8 64gb.  It sucked but whatever.  I then got in contact with my friend in San Francisco who runs our family plan and he got a new sim card with my phone number on it and put it in an extra phone that he had.  This was important because in order to set up the new phone with all of my apps and accounts, I needed two factor authentication which requires a code to be sent to my phone (which I no longer had) so he would get the code on his other phone and then send me the code over facwbook messenger since I was still logged in on my computer.  This was a saving grace as my icloud backup was up to date and my phone was exactly the way it had been the night before (even the pictures had auto uploaded since I had connected to wifi at the hostel before heading out for the night.  I was on my way to having my phone back except for the fact that I did not have a sim card.  I ended up rectifying that in Istanbul but that’s another story.  For now I had a phone again, it just didn’t have a cell signal.  Time to move on with my trip now that I had all of that stuff out of the way.  It was a major inconvenience but could have been much much worse.  My wallet getting stolen would have been pretty annoying so luckily that did not happen!  Moral of the story, I am glad I pay for icloud backups as I didn’t lose any photos and my cloud backup was ready and waiting.  I could have gone with a much cheaper android phone replacement, but this backup was worth the extra money.

Once I got all of that figured out it was the afternoon and it was kind of rainy outside.  I decided to go on an afternoon free walking tour to learn more about the city.  The stories and architecture was pretty enlightening.  So far Polish buildings are pretty pretty.

There was a cave up on the hill near the palace which concluded next to a dragon statue that shot fire every few minutes.  The story goes that the dragon used to live in the cave at the base of a hill (where the palace was built) and was eventually slain by the sons of one of the rulers of Poland.  It was pretty neat and the fire was real.

After the walking tour I decided to lay low that evening, so jut went back for dinner and chilled in the hostel with some friends I had made.

Despite my set back, there were a ton of things to do in Krakow and I didn’t want to let some stupid thing ruin my experience in the city.  The next day we got a group of people together and took the train out to the Krakow salt mines, which were absolutely massive.

The tour only covered a small portion of the whole mine and it was like going back in time because each section you went through was built in a different period and it changed based on when it was mined.  The workers over the years created elaborate carvings in the mine and even created a giant  chapel in the middle of the mine.  It had sculptures made of salt and was pretty incredible.

The walls were obviosuly all salt as well, so I couldn’t help myself but to test that theory.

There were also super salty underground lakes.  Every corner was a new surprise.

The tour was pretty cool and the size was impressive as well as how manual everything was done to create something so big.  They even had underground event spaces made from salt where you could host your next business function or event.

After we were done the tour, we got back on the ghost train and headed back into town.

As always there was a tour available that would have bused us there and taken care of everything, but we saved a lot of money by just doing it ourselves.  I will say that it did take a bit longer to get there and wait for an entry time, but we got to experience the train and figure things out on our own.  I much prefer to do that type of travelling rather than rely on a tour every time.  We determined our own schedule and didn’t have to worry about stopping at a stupid tourist place to buy things halfway through.

That evening after dinner, we headed to a jazz bar to enjoy a relaxing evening of jazz!

I decided to cut the night a bit short as I was scheduled to depart on the morning tour of Auschwitz.  This one i did do a tour because it was very difficult to get out there without an organized tour and in this case it worked out very well.  We got a tour of Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2.  It is very difficult to explain what one feels when visiting a place like that.  The tour went over the things that went on in the camps and how many people passed through the gates.  The whole experience is hard to put into words so I won’t try.  I will post a few photos and leave it at that.  Probably the most mind boggling thing I saw was the ruins of the gas chambers in the larger camp as they were purposefully designed for death and the photos of people lining up directly off the train towards the gas chambers.  It was all just overwhelming.

The whole experience was surreal and I am glad that they have been preserving and allowing visitors as a reminder that this should never happen for the rest of human history. This was my last day in Krakow as I was headed south towards Budapest in the morning.  I would say that this stop was one of the most memorable and self reflecting stops on my trip so far.  So much to think about.  I left Krakow alive and healthy and that’s what counts.