Day 49 - Kraków, Poland

Monday 6 September 2004, 16:00 CET

Dzien dobry!

I've survived my first few hours out on the streets in Kraków, and it really is a nice place. This includes buying raspberries at market, buying water and Coke, and going to the home of Wawel chocolates on the main square (Rynek Glowno) and buying a block for old-time's sake.

Here are some prices of things here to stun you all. The local currency is the zloty (pronounced exactly as it looks), each containing 100 groszy, and there's about 2.5-2.7 zloty in an Australian or Canadian dollar. (What's with the Australian dollar against the Euro at the moment?)

Big bucket of raspberries - $1.20

Tomatoes                  - 80c/kg

Internet cafe             - 80c/hour

Bottle of water (1.5L)    - 40c

Small bottle of Coke      - 40c

Block of chocolate        - $1

Krakow seems to me to be a medium-sized, friendly city with a lot of old buildings where knowing Polish would help, but the locals don't mind if you don't as long as you can point to things, have the right change and say "dzien dobry" before and "dziekuje, dobrze" after purchasing. I like the place - hope to come back one day. Now I have to find out about the upcoming Australian election so I can arrange to vote - probably from Istanbul or Singapore.