Krakow, Poland

There are great cheap airlines that fly from Brussels to a variety of places in Europe. When we saw a fare for free -- yes, FREE, though we had to pay taxes that equaled 60 euros apiece -- we jumped on it. So earlier this month we headed to Krakow, Poland, for a quick visit. It was a great city, especially considering what they have been through. You look around at these people and think of how far they have come considering their history: First they fought in WWI, then came WWII and their army was quickly crushed by the Nazis. Many, many of their citizens were sent to the concentration camps. After WWII was over, Poland was ruled by communism up until the late 1980s. As part of communism, a huge steelworks plant was put in their city. The plant caused such pollution that many of their building which had survived for centuries were suddenly corroding under acid rain. The communists brought Poland into bankruptcy and finally by 1988 Poland was able to move into a democratic system. So basically they have been trying to build up a life and country in only the last 19 years.

Some thoughts we had about Krakow:
--We couldn't get over the fact that we saw no other races there besides white people. We actually realized that we saw more nuns than people who weren't white. It is amazing how monochromaic many parts of Europe are. We laughed thinking of what it must be like for someone from Poland to go see New York City.
--Along the lines of the nuns, we could not get over how many of the people are active Christians. Even though I found a statistic saying that Poland is 91% Christian while Belgium is 87% Christian, the difference in activity is night and day. All of the churches we tried to visit in Krakow were bustling with people going to concerts, weddings, confession, etc. We went to one church four times and could never actually get to the front because there was always an event taking place in it. One church we visited allowed us to enter while there was a wedding going on in the front and a confession going on in the back! It was very different from the common experience in Belgium, France and other parts of Western Europe where the churches are empty except for the tourists. It was a good reminder that this is how active churches are supposed to be, rather than the empty buildings we have seen in every other city.

Click here for photos.