John (Poland) A Week in Krakow

Well, it's been a fun first week here in Krakow. As I think of that, I marvel how much longer you all have been abroad and feel like I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Well, I've been loving the program here. This week was set aside basically to adjust to Krakow, learn about the city and program I'm in, and basically be tourists. My dorm is located about 15 minutes from the market square, which is the largest in Europe and is the heart of the Medieval Old Town and a lot of the historic buildings, cathedrals, museums, etc. Krakow is an incredible city, which was left relatively untouched by WWII, and thus is still filled with incredible 14th and 15th century buildings and art and walking around it is so surreal when compared to almost any American city (except kinda Boston). Poland is an incredibly Catholic country so there are churches and cathedrals everywhere and not only are they gorgeous (St. Mary's, in the market square has some of the best Gothic and Renaissance art of any Cathedral in Europe) but they are also constantly in use for masses, offerings and individual prayers. Among the sites we've seen around the city are the Collegium Maius (great college) of the Jagiellonian University, which was stuffed with great art, maps and scientific instruments used throughout the history of the second-oldest University in Europe. We also toured Kazimierz, the old Jewish district, now the hip, interesting new neighborhood as well as the Soviet factory town, Nowa Huta, built to give Krakow a proletarian influence. Pics of this and all my other SA stuff are on my Facebook.

My program itself only has three other people, Megan, Christine and Caitlin, which makes me the literal odd man out, but fortunately we all seem to like each other, so it should work out well. Our program director is a wonderful Polish lady named Beata, who is an archeologist working on the excavation project in the Wawel Castle, which would be the Polish equivalent of a British archaeologist working on Westminster Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. She is a wealth of knowledge on history, sociology, art, architecture and archeology and will be giving us a lot of our lectures in our Polish History and Culture course, which looks to be wonderful. She also knows lots of interesting people who she has guest lecture or show us various sites around the city. For example, on Thursday she managed to get us a tour of the ongoing archaeological dig underneath the historic town square, which will eventually be open to the public. When we went down, however, we saw the old foundation of the market building, a 13th century pipe system and cottages from the same time period which were being excavated. Our academic program will focus on such experiences which combine firsthand visits with expert lecturers, so I'm actually itching for classes to start tomorrow. This will also be good because my Polish is laughably poor and even though one can get by with mostly English, I look forward to actually learning the language.

I realize that next week will be my first class since early December, so I should be pretty busy but I'll hopefully be able to make time to tell you all about the wonders of Polish beer and make everyone using Pounds and Euros incredibly jealous over the prices here. Hope everyone's doing well!

P.S. Get out to those polls on Tuesday, Beloiters!