Photoreport from a place you already know anyway
Some of you may be interested in learning that I finally got to Kraków this year. On 24 June. No, I didn’t walk all the way, why? Anyway, since last time you hadn’t hate the Tarnów tale too much, I thought besides my business I could make a photoreport for you. One with people on the pics. Consider it your last warning.
My business lead me to Podgórze, which is a district of Kraków (hamsterwoman, you might recognize it!). It’s hard to pick your most favorite church in Kraków…
(# the Royal Cathedral is like “we want everything in the friggin’ shop, and moderation is for losers”;
# St. Francis has a stained glass window by the first name under “Art Nouveau in Poland” in all encyclopedias, who in this case went all “Goddammit, I’ll show you the Art, you stinkin’ bourgeoisie”;
# Skałka has an awesome location and lovely surroundings plus a crypt where they keep old celebrities, with an adorably awful gilded Baroque vanitas over the entrance, plus huge stairs from circa 1890s with names of donors on the steps, “I beg your pardon, why I’m below Mrs. Fancyhat, I gave a Krone and half more than her!”;
# St. Mary’s is old and gothic and crowned and Veit Stoss and all;
# St. Adalbert is so unproportionally small and stoically unmoved, literally, with its askew position, “I don’t care about y’all, Goth(ic) youngsters. What town? I was here first.”)
…especially giving the choice (Kraków probably has more pigeons than churches, but I think it’s wise to keep that “probably” in there. Certainly it has more churches than horse carriages, and it has a lot of horse carriages), but if hard pressed, there’s a chance I might pick this one at least on some days.
St. Joseph’s at Podgórze Market Square (yeah, one of funny things about Kraków is it loves market squares so much that it has more than one). It just has so nice proportions. And all the spires! and portals! and gargoyles! …and, uh, random toilets that day, apparently. The rear end of the stage for some loud event about to happen. And there go my artistic intentions… *sigh* How about inside, then?
Judging on the flowers, ready for a wedding. All this Gothic is actually Neo-Gothic, and up close the gargoyles make a rather noticeable effort to look like the thing while not being the thing, but let’s grant them some five hundred years more and they’ll success. It’s only from 1905, and that’s why it’s St. Joseph - to sell it as a tribute for Kaiser Franz Joseph, and thus easier get the okay for building it. That was a common practice in the Austro-Hungarian Galicia; the church I was baptized in had been made up the same way, only for Kaiserin Elisabeth. In this case, though, it fortunately works regardless, with St. Joseph being the patron of laborers, since Podgórze used to be Kraków’s industrial backyard that time. Now you know why Schindler’s factory is there, too.
No, that’s not a gargoyle, that’s St. John Paul II. :) See? Who says the Church can’t be quick on updating… XD
One of my favorite vistas in Kraków, though I think you need to be even higher up for it to work best.
It’s not Facebook enough without a pic of your lunch, right?
Such a sight is typical for European old town areas, and means the house used to be a mercantile and/or industrial place once, the gate being this wide for letting in wagons of stuff. And fancy carriages of the owners. Big business days gone, it lets in horseless carriages now…
Smaller business still’s on. The window of a plumbing store. :)
Passage from the old Kraków to the older yet Kraków. And me, asking myself at home “Why didn’t you take fifteen steps more to shorten the perspective and fit this in the frame somewhat acceptably, you moron?”
Poles took to the padlock thing like cat to cream. I wonder how much pad-weight on a square cm it takes for the bridge maintenance to show up some day with cutoff saws and wheelbarrows…
In case you wondered two pics ago, it’s not an illusion, the sculptures really hang this way. The trick is only the part below the line is solid, and everything above that is hollow.
One of the bestest murals in Kraków and I still can’t get a proper photo because those wretched food booths…
And then I ran like hell to get to Collegium Maius before they close the museum. (ikel89, I hear you might know this one!) It’s one of my favorites, because, well, science museum, but also because of its crazy eclectic collection. *cough* On a totally unrelated note, they also have free Saturdays.
As it is with most of Kraków, it’s actually XIX age pretending to be older, rebuilt on what’s left of centuries of underfunding and lack of renovations.
But at least they used actually old components. ;) Also, local. Kraków sits on limestone.
Collegium is Collegium because it used to be a university. That is, it keeps being one, the Jagiellonian University, they just got themselves campuses all over the town where they moved all this studying business, which has left the oldest building for pompous and touristy purposes. Still, tradition obliges and a college needs a clock, preferably noisy one. You can’t trust a student - or a professor, for that matter - to know day from night when it comes to being on time for lectures. I have one camera and two hands, which means you get either a pic or a recording. So, here’s my pic…
…and recording you get today from someone else, here. :) The music is Gaudeamus Igitur, the University’s official song, and (after the figures come out) some Renaissance court dancing piece. The figures are a bedel carrying scepters (JU’s sigil), queen Jadwiga, king Władysław II Jagiełło and (the three on the photo) John Cantius, Hugo Kołłataj and Stanisław of Skarbimierz.
Mama Blackbird is in hurry, too. (She actually looks here in the clock's direction. ;)
Do NOT believe all those pics in guides, it’s DARK inside. XP And so hard to get decent photos. A few years ago, the guide told us the younger staff called those “Hogwarts stairs”, but when you read about JU’s history, it’s 100% Unseen University. :) Except the cuisine quality. Apparently the kitchen used to be almost 100 m (~300 ft) from the refectory (the room on the photo) and professors kept complaining at cold food.
Then again, so many baking forms! Or jelly forms, possibly. Or both.
This one was labeled as “tray”, but somehow I doubt it got a lot of use. And these handles look way too fragile.
There are also books somewhere, finally, under all the kitchenware. Unseen University, I told you… *g*
And even a place when you can put up all of them for reading. Or one of them and trays of snacks.
Speaking about eclectic collection, the University always has been a hoarder. Knowledge being the greatest treasure and all that, still it’s not books what’s kept in the vaultiest vault.
Crossed scepters are the ones from the sigil, and the small globe thing in the middle is the oldest in the world remaining case of America being called America, circa 1508. Funny enough, it has no Poland on it.
JU’s founding acts. Or, to be precise, their copies from about 1950. The originals got destroyed in WWII.
The small round thing is a Nobel Prize for Literature. Wisława Szymborska’s. No, not copy, the real deal.
The medal is Olympic, Athens 2004 gold in racewalking, a gift from Robert Korzeniowski. Others are Oscar, Berlin Bear, Cannes Palm, Venice Lion and Gdańsk Lions, apparently all Andrzej Wajda’s.
Portrait of Earth signed by Neil Armstrong.
“To the Copernicus Museum, Kraków, on the 500th birthday of a giant.” (JU being Copernicus’ alma mater, Collegium Maius technically counts as his museum.)
The oldest scientific instrument in Poland, an Arabic astrolabe, 1054 year.
The ropes marked the no-go-and-don’t-even-think-about-touching zones, covered by alarm sensors’ field of sight. Which basically meant howling every five seconds in one room or another… XD
And the last room is the hall of staring. Portraits stare at each other, visitors stare at portraits, guards stare at visitors. The portal in the far end belonged once in the Town Hall, until they demolished most of it in XIX. Kraków doesn’t really believe in throwing things out. Fortunately.
Professors Garden. A sundial with an instruction for adjusting the readings to the season. Out of power at the moment. I mean, there was a cloud.
And out of the University and back to the town.
The most famous window in Kraków, the Papal window. You’re supposed to go “Oooh!”. When JPII visited Kraków, he used to stay in there and then instead go to bed, he kept sitting in this window and waving to the gathered crowd. Which makes me suspicious about the quality of said bed. Technically it is possible to walk Kraków even for half an hour and not see anything marked JPIITM, as long as you’re okay with keeping your eyes shut and walking into lanterns.
Sightseeing for the not seeing. So, sightgroping. I like those, they make a classy addition even if you don’t really need them. Every larger building should have one, and some mountains, too. And my favorite thing is that the model has a tiny sightgroper where the actual one is, so it shows presents also the scale and tells your position. :)
It might be possible to have a more Cracovian photo, but I think it would demand a dragon wearing a peacock-feathered cap and munching on a bagel, or something. They’re sitting in the Planty Park in front of a seminary, the guy in white is a Dominican friar, and the sculptures are Stefan Banach and Otto M. Nikodym discussing math. I’m pretty sure Nikodym doesn’t let Banach a word.
lol wut?
Kanonicza Street, the oldest one in Kraków. You know it’s oldest by how crooked it is, because the after-foundation streets are all geometric and straight. At least that’s what you can read everywhere, but in fact, the old Kraków has more curved streets here and there, so it’s rather the oldest by the virtue of leading to the castle and having most houses overlooked by XVIII and XIX centuries’ refashioning zeal…
We’re getting closer to the Main Market Square aka full blown nuthouse. A random mirror guy.
Random knight guy…
Random bubble-makers and random newlyweds…
Random horse carriage...
...and a total lack of all architectural Obligatory Tourist Pic Targets, because at this point my life goals consisted of A. bench, B. water, C. more water. If you really need the former ones, Wikipedia is your friend, and meanwhile we can get inside rather than outside the Kraków’s oldest shopping mall aka the Cloth Hall, for a change. ;)
Which reminds me I haven’t had a new wooden box in a while. As soon as I come up with excuse for one… A pro-tip for inexperienced: buy them small. This way you’ll need more. :3
The anchors used to be mercantile symbols. These ones are just a century and half old (well, not counting the electricity, I guess), because the Cloth Hall is another XIX age thing built on Renaissance built on Medieval.
And finally, the amber, of course, aka one of the oldest businesses in Kraków. Why do we speak of the Amber Road like a thing of the past? It has never actually went out of use. ;)
Glittery farewell!
(Bonus P.S. from another day: you thought I was kidding with those Skałka stairs? ;>
)
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It's okay to comment in whatever language fits you best, as long as I get it. Don't mind the entry's language.
Można komentować w języku, który najbardziej ci odpowiada, o ile go zrozumiem. Nie przejmuj się językiem notki.
My business lead me to Podgórze, which is a district of Kraków (hamsterwoman, you might recognize it!). It’s hard to pick your most favorite church in Kraków…
(# the Royal Cathedral is like “we want everything in the friggin’ shop, and moderation is for losers”;
# St. Francis has a stained glass window by the first name under “Art Nouveau in Poland” in all encyclopedias, who in this case went all “Goddammit, I’ll show you the Art, you stinkin’ bourgeoisie”;
# Skałka has an awesome location and lovely surroundings plus a crypt where they keep old celebrities, with an adorably awful gilded Baroque vanitas over the entrance, plus huge stairs from circa 1890s with names of donors on the steps, “I beg your pardon, why I’m below Mrs. Fancyhat, I gave a Krone and half more than her!”;
# St. Mary’s is old and gothic and crowned and Veit Stoss and all;
# St. Adalbert is so unproportionally small and stoically unmoved, literally, with its askew position, “I don’t care about y’all, Goth(ic) youngsters. What town? I was here first.”)
…especially giving the choice (Kraków probably has more pigeons than churches, but I think it’s wise to keep that “probably” in there. Certainly it has more churches than horse carriages, and it has a lot of horse carriages), but if hard pressed, there’s a chance I might pick this one at least on some days.
St. Joseph’s at Podgórze Market Square (yeah, one of funny things about Kraków is it loves market squares so much that it has more than one). It just has so nice proportions. And all the spires! and portals! and gargoyles! …and, uh, random toilets that day, apparently. The rear end of the stage for some loud event about to happen. And there go my artistic intentions… *sigh* How about inside, then?
Judging on the flowers, ready for a wedding. All this Gothic is actually Neo-Gothic, and up close the gargoyles make a rather noticeable effort to look like the thing while not being the thing, but let’s grant them some five hundred years more and they’ll success. It’s only from 1905, and that’s why it’s St. Joseph - to sell it as a tribute for Kaiser Franz Joseph, and thus easier get the okay for building it. That was a common practice in the Austro-Hungarian Galicia; the church I was baptized in had been made up the same way, only for Kaiserin Elisabeth. In this case, though, it fortunately works regardless, with St. Joseph being the patron of laborers, since Podgórze used to be Kraków’s industrial backyard that time. Now you know why Schindler’s factory is there, too.
No, that’s not a gargoyle, that’s St. John Paul II. :) See? Who says the Church can’t be quick on updating… XD
One of my favorite vistas in Kraków, though I think you need to be even higher up for it to work best.
It’s not Facebook enough without a pic of your lunch, right?
Such a sight is typical for European old town areas, and means the house used to be a mercantile and/or industrial place once, the gate being this wide for letting in wagons of stuff. And fancy carriages of the owners. Big business days gone, it lets in horseless carriages now…
Smaller business still’s on. The window of a plumbing store. :)
Passage from the old Kraków to the older yet Kraków. And me, asking myself at home “Why didn’t you take fifteen steps more to shorten the perspective and fit this in the frame somewhat acceptably, you moron?”
Poles took to the padlock thing like cat to cream. I wonder how much pad-weight on a square cm it takes for the bridge maintenance to show up some day with cutoff saws and wheelbarrows…
In case you wondered two pics ago, it’s not an illusion, the sculptures really hang this way. The trick is only the part below the line is solid, and everything above that is hollow.
One of the bestest murals in Kraków and I still can’t get a proper photo because those wretched food booths…
And then I ran like hell to get to Collegium Maius before they close the museum. (ikel89, I hear you might know this one!) It’s one of my favorites, because, well, science museum, but also because of its crazy eclectic collection. *cough* On a totally unrelated note, they also have free Saturdays.
As it is with most of Kraków, it’s actually XIX age pretending to be older, rebuilt on what’s left of centuries of underfunding and lack of renovations.
But at least they used actually old components. ;) Also, local. Kraków sits on limestone.
Collegium is Collegium because it used to be a university. That is, it keeps being one, the Jagiellonian University, they just got themselves campuses all over the town where they moved all this studying business, which has left the oldest building for pompous and touristy purposes. Still, tradition obliges and a college needs a clock, preferably noisy one. You can’t trust a student - or a professor, for that matter - to know day from night when it comes to being on time for lectures. I have one camera and two hands, which means you get either a pic or a recording. So, here’s my pic…
…and recording you get today from someone else, here. :) The music is Gaudeamus Igitur, the University’s official song, and (after the figures come out) some Renaissance court dancing piece. The figures are a bedel carrying scepters (JU’s sigil), queen Jadwiga, king Władysław II Jagiełło and (the three on the photo) John Cantius, Hugo Kołłataj and Stanisław of Skarbimierz.
Mama Blackbird is in hurry, too. (She actually looks here in the clock's direction. ;)
Do NOT believe all those pics in guides, it’s DARK inside. XP And so hard to get decent photos. A few years ago, the guide told us the younger staff called those “Hogwarts stairs”, but when you read about JU’s history, it’s 100% Unseen University. :) Except the cuisine quality. Apparently the kitchen used to be almost 100 m (~300 ft) from the refectory (the room on the photo) and professors kept complaining at cold food.
Then again, so many baking forms! Or jelly forms, possibly. Or both.
This one was labeled as “tray”, but somehow I doubt it got a lot of use. And these handles look way too fragile.
There are also books somewhere, finally, under all the kitchenware. Unseen University, I told you… *g*
And even a place when you can put up all of them for reading. Or one of them and trays of snacks.
Speaking about eclectic collection, the University always has been a hoarder. Knowledge being the greatest treasure and all that, still it’s not books what’s kept in the vaultiest vault.
Crossed scepters are the ones from the sigil, and the small globe thing in the middle is the oldest in the world remaining case of America being called America, circa 1508. Funny enough, it has no Poland on it.
JU’s founding acts. Or, to be precise, their copies from about 1950. The originals got destroyed in WWII.
The small round thing is a Nobel Prize for Literature. Wisława Szymborska’s. No, not copy, the real deal.
The medal is Olympic, Athens 2004 gold in racewalking, a gift from Robert Korzeniowski. Others are Oscar, Berlin Bear, Cannes Palm, Venice Lion and Gdańsk Lions, apparently all Andrzej Wajda’s.
Portrait of Earth signed by Neil Armstrong.
“To the Copernicus Museum, Kraków, on the 500th birthday of a giant.” (JU being Copernicus’ alma mater, Collegium Maius technically counts as his museum.)
The oldest scientific instrument in Poland, an Arabic astrolabe, 1054 year.
The ropes marked the no-go-and-don’t-even-think-about-touching zones, covered by alarm sensors’ field of sight. Which basically meant howling every five seconds in one room or another… XD
And the last room is the hall of staring. Portraits stare at each other, visitors stare at portraits, guards stare at visitors. The portal in the far end belonged once in the Town Hall, until they demolished most of it in XIX. Kraków doesn’t really believe in throwing things out. Fortunately.
Professors Garden. A sundial with an instruction for adjusting the readings to the season. Out of power at the moment. I mean, there was a cloud.
And out of the University and back to the town.
The most famous window in Kraków, the Papal window. You’re supposed to go “Oooh!”. When JPII visited Kraków, he used to stay in there and then instead go to bed, he kept sitting in this window and waving to the gathered crowd. Which makes me suspicious about the quality of said bed. Technically it is possible to walk Kraków even for half an hour and not see anything marked JPIITM, as long as you’re okay with keeping your eyes shut and walking into lanterns.
Sightseeing for the not seeing. So, sightgroping. I like those, they make a classy addition even if you don’t really need them. Every larger building should have one, and some mountains, too. And my favorite thing is that the model has a tiny sightgroper where the actual one is, so it shows presents also the scale and tells your position. :)
It might be possible to have a more Cracovian photo, but I think it would demand a dragon wearing a peacock-feathered cap and munching on a bagel, or something. They’re sitting in the Planty Park in front of a seminary, the guy in white is a Dominican friar, and the sculptures are Stefan Banach and Otto M. Nikodym discussing math. I’m pretty sure Nikodym doesn’t let Banach a word.
lol wut?
Kanonicza Street, the oldest one in Kraków. You know it’s oldest by how crooked it is, because the after-foundation streets are all geometric and straight. At least that’s what you can read everywhere, but in fact, the old Kraków has more curved streets here and there, so it’s rather the oldest by the virtue of leading to the castle and having most houses overlooked by XVIII and XIX centuries’ refashioning zeal…
We’re getting closer to the Main Market Square aka full blown nuthouse. A random mirror guy.
Random knight guy…
Random bubble-makers and random newlyweds…
Random horse carriage...
...and a total lack of all architectural Obligatory Tourist Pic Targets, because at this point my life goals consisted of A. bench, B. water, C. more water. If you really need the former ones, Wikipedia is your friend, and meanwhile we can get inside rather than outside the Kraków’s oldest shopping mall aka the Cloth Hall, for a change. ;)
Which reminds me I haven’t had a new wooden box in a while. As soon as I come up with excuse for one… A pro-tip for inexperienced: buy them small. This way you’ll need more. :3
The anchors used to be mercantile symbols. These ones are just a century and half old (well, not counting the electricity, I guess), because the Cloth Hall is another XIX age thing built on Renaissance built on Medieval.
And finally, the amber, of course, aka one of the oldest businesses in Kraków. Why do we speak of the Amber Road like a thing of the past? It has never actually went out of use. ;)
Glittery farewell!
(Bonus P.S. from another day: you thought I was kidding with those Skałka stairs? ;>
)
--------------------------------------------------
Disqus
It's okay to comment in whatever language fits you best, as long as I get it. Don't mind the entry's language.
Można komentować w języku, który najbardziej ci odpowiada, o ile go zrozumiem. Nie przejmuj się językiem notki.