Wow, did today start early. We are travelling to train from Vienna to Krakow and had to be up at 5:30. Luckily we have lunches for the train, as breakfast didn't begin at our hotel until 6:00. We transferred about half way through the trip and arrived in Krakow in the middle of the afternoon. Our hotel is a 5 minute walk from the beautiful and historically preserved Old Town of Krakow. We had an early dinner of pierogis and cabbage salad at a café on the street where our hotel is located. There is a generally high level of excitement of being in a city that has a good exchange rate to the dollar and where things are pretty cheap. The average price for a very filling lunch is between 8 and 15 zloty (the Polish currency). This converts to roughly 2.50-5.00 US$. Dinner gets a little more expensive, but still one would have to eat two dinners to spend more than the equivalent of 15 US$ in a restaurant. Following our meal, professor Stolarski treated us to hot chocolate at Café Czedolata on the Old Town square. Calling them hot chocolates does not do them justice as they coat the back of the spoon, hot fudges would be more appropriate. Following this, we were free for the rest of the evening. We spent the time navigating the part of Krakow we will call home for the next days. The city oozes history and is very closely linked with both universities and the Catholic Church.
