4) The Jewish Quarter and friendly Americans

 Part 4 of my diaries from my trip to Kraków. Read them in order!

 

Back at the hostel, I met my first dorm mate properly. The chap who’d been in the bunk above me introduced himself as John. The owner of a couple of record shops in Philadelphia, he was having problems dealing with a break in at one of his stores from the other side of the world, thanks to an obstreperous landlord. A most amiable individual, John invited me to join him and his two friends for dinner. I accepted gratefully and he showed me on a map where we would be eating.

Despite being only a few minutes walk from the hostel, over the road in Kazimierz, I turned up at the restaurant five minutes late. Not a problem, I’m sure, but I was annoyed with myself as I’d had ample time to get ready and lately had been making an effort to improve my awareness of time and my punctuality.

 

As I took a seat at the table outside Avacado, John’s friends introduced themselves as Chris and Justin. I thought I heard ‘Chester’, so that was what I thought Justin was called until later in the evening, when we rehearsed names again and I realised my mistake.

 

John, Chris and Justin (hereafter referred to as “the guys”) had just ordered beers and “Passover Slivovitz” vodka so I joined them with one of each. Conversation started out with the usual: who does what, reasons for visit, impressions of Kraków etc.

 

When the vodkas arrived, they came in bulbous glasses with long thin stems. To my surprise, they were hot. We downed them to a cry of, “Na zdrowie!” (Cheers in Polish; literally, “to health”). Having quite a kick, there was something familiar about the aftertaste, but I couldn’t place it.

 

I’d been thinking that the weather had been too good to last, so when the heavens opened, I thought that the sun and warmth were coming to an end and that the BBC’s miserable predictions of rain and gloom for the week were finally going to come true. John was getting wet, so we moved the tables and shuffled ourselves further under the shelter of the parasols forming a patchy canopy over the outdoor seating area. Eventually, however, we opted to move indoors, where we ordered and ate our meals.

 

Beef sirloin tournedos à la Rossini in red wine sauce. Until it arrived at my table, I wouldn’t have known a tournedos à la Rossini if it had hit me in the face. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I still wouldn’t recognise one if I saw it. All I know is that it was just about the best flippin’ piece of beef I’ve ever eaten!

 

The guys had been taking it in turn to pay for each night’s dinner, so Justin put the bill on his card and I gave him cash to cover my meal. That was a great theory, until I opened my wallet and discovered that my collection of Polish banknotes was looking rather impoverished!

 

I gave Justin 50zł and said I’d get the first round of drinks at our next venue, after I’ve been to a kantor. Finding my proposition acceptable, the guys lead me to a bar they’d been to the night before. “Szynk” was a pub that sold real beer! Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy a good pint of lager (not that anyone will serve you a pint in Poland) but there’s “beer” and then there’s real beer!

 

John needed to make a phone call from a payphone, so he and I headed back towards the old town while Chris and Justin found a table and got settled in at Szynk. Running up Godzka street, I found a kantor and changed some more of my English banknotes before racing back to Kazimierz only to realise I hadn’t paid any attention to the location of the pub. Luckily I found my way back after only a little haphazard wandering.

 

I ordered Szynk’s own brewed amber ale on the guys’ recommendation and very nice it was too. I reciprocated with a recommendation of my own. Grzegorz, my friend from Gdańsk and former lodger, had introduced me to Wódka Żołądkowa Gorzka – one of the various vodkas you can buy from Polish run Alma’s Delicatessen in Coventry. The vodka is actually quite sweet, though roughly translated its name means bitter vodka for the stomach, as it is flavoured with bitter herbs.

 

We chatted into the evening until the guys were ready to head back to the hostel. They had an early start ahead of them as they were leaving Kraków in the morning. In talking about their travels within Poland so far, the mentioned how slow the trains were, echoing Grzegorz’s warning not to assume that travel by train would get me anywhere quickly in Poland!

More to follow...

Amber ale at Szynk, Kazimierz. Mmmmmm!