As most of you know, I am 100% Polish. Naturally, Poland is on my Goals List as a result, but I wasn’t sure when or how I’d get there. My parents are just starting to do our ancestry genealogy to figure out exactly where in Poland the various families come from.
In the meantime, and totally unrelated to this, I got my chance to go, thanks to my company, RWS Moravia, and the Marketing Department that I half report to. A tradition of an annual Marketing Summit began last year during which the whole team gets together for a week to meet, discuss key topics, get to know each other and refresh for the year ahead.
Last year, we went to Brno, Czech Republic, on short notice, so I could not properly plan for some extra time to roam around. This year, we began the planning in January and in March, found a spot: a golf and spa resort in a small town in the Czech Republic not too far from the Poland border.
Five minutes of looking at a map and it was ON. My first trip to Poland.
May 10, 2019
Met up with Lee, my coworker from Boise, and the two of us flew over to Munich, Germany, then a short jaunt over to Krakow, Poland.
May 11, 2019
Arrived in Krakow in the afternoon, checked into our adorable hotel in the Jewish district, then walked to the main square. We walked into a lot of gorgeous churches, passed by Wawel Castle (we’ll get to you later!), stumbled upon our first addictive pottery shop (gorgeous hand-painted everything) and eventually landed in the main square, where there are St. Mary’s Basilica, the Town Hall Tower and Cloth Hall.
We actually covered a lot of ground that afternoon, also heading north to see St. Florian’s Gate and the Barbican, the two last remnants of the medieval city walls. (The moat that was around the city has been turned into the nicest gardens and park surrounding the main square.)
We also visited an underground museum showing the remains of the medieval marketplace and courtyard below modern day life. We fell in love with the city center, which was bustling but not overly crowded. It felt very inviting. We ended the night stumbling into a local restaurant for what else but pierogi and beet soup. SO good!
May 12, 2019
Rested and refreshed, we had another busy day on Sunday. First, we had an amazing breakfast at a small restaurant right across the street from our hotel. SUCH good coffee, ahhh! Then we walked south towards the Ghetto, or the area into which the Nazis shoved thousands of Jews during WWII when the Nazis displaced them from their homes.
We had to cross the river Vistula and were just in awe of this super fun and creative bridge.
Our stop on this side of the river was Oscar Schindler’s Factory and a tour of what is now a museum inside it. We had an English-speaking guide take us around the museum which is about Krakow during WWII. Although a bit small and crowded, the displays were really well done and I learned a lot about how bad Krakow got overrun and how poorly their people were treated by the Nazis. Of course there was a lot of information about the treatment of the Jews, too, including a replica of the Ghetto they were forced to live in.
After the tour, we ended up walking around town and finding the two fragments of the Ghetto wall that still remain. We also found a huge, gorgeous church and a very yummy sandwich shop before attempting to take a taxi to Tyniec Abbey.
We got to Tyniec, a very small town not far from Krakow, and walked up to see the Abbey. It’s a walled fortress on top of a cliff overlooking the beautiful river and countryside. We got to go inside the church, but the rest of the complex was a museum, a gift shop, a cafe and closed-off buildings (it’s still an active monastery and you can actually stay there with the monks!). So, it took us longer to get there and back to town than we spent there, but it was very pretty and worth the drive.
Back in town, we walked once again from the Jewish district to the main square to meet up for our walking food tour. Marek, our tour guide, was a funny young guy who took our motley crew of Brits, Scots, Americans and one Philipino to various bars and restaurants in town. We even got to take the tram once because it was raining!
We sampled Polish beer, cider and vodka, three types of soup, two types of pierogi, cabbage rolls stuffed with meat, potato pancakes and two types of desserts. It was a very fun evening and I was only familiar with a couple of menu items from my parents and grandparents growing up in Buffalo.
May 13, 2019
The following morning, Lee overslept so I took that time to roam around the Jewish district, Kazimierz, where we stayed. I found several synagogues (none of which were open, sadly), gorgeous little squares, a couple of Catholic churches and a Jewish cemetery that for the life of us we could never figure out how to enter.
I’m so glad we stayed in this area because it is being reborn. Once the area where thousands of Jews lived, it has a sorted and morbid past. Now, it is gentrifying with tons of bars and restaurants, food trucks, art and a vibrant, young scene. That’s so good to see.
After another awesome breakfast, we had to trek up to the bus station and spend two hours driving over the border to the Czech Republic to begin the work portion of our trip. After another 30 minutes in the most death-defying cab ride either of us has EVER had, we arrived at Miura, the golf and spa resort in the little town of Celadna. Please go to their website; my photos do not do it justice.
This hotel was SICK. It was all cement, very modern, with art all over the place. The first floor held the lobby and cigar bar. The second floor held guest rooms and the restaurant. The third and fourth floors had more guest rooms. The basement had the conference room where we held our work meetings and the SPAAAAAA……
Hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the two other mirrored, 8-bit sculptures on/near the hotel.
It was cold and raining the entire time we were there (Monday through Thursday), but I didn’t mind since we were indoors. It only cramped my photo-taking and the ability to see the pretty hills around us. Here’s a video from my hotel room of the rain falling on the golf course and the lady.
Oh and here’s my hotel room.
The first thing Lee and I did after checking in was hit said Spa because we had booked massages in advance. I got a 70-minute chocolate wrap. I had an exfoliation with some chocolate concoction, then a shower, then a massage, then chocolate oil smeared all over me, then I was wrapped in a burrito and laid there for 20 minutes, then another shower. It was heavenly and just what I needed after not sleeping for two nights and hauling my luggage on and off a bus.
Then it was spa time. That place was amazing. A hot tub in the shape of Mickey Mouse ears that could easily fit 20 people. Two lightly steamed rooms with scents. Two other steam rooms. A dry sauna. A room full of waterbeds that you could nap in. And a cold room with snow covering the walls and floor. I checked everything out and pressed all the buttons. I sweated, froze, bubbled, scented, rinsed, dried, and repeated the process over and over again every night I was there. It was a tearful goodbye to the spa on Thursday.
That night, the team had our first dinner together and it was great to both see many familiar faces from last year and finally meet a couple of other team members in person. The only complaint we had about the Michelin-star-rated facility was that while the food was out of this world, the service was crazy slow. If half of the table ordered a starter, they would not serve the main course to anyone at all until every single person had finished their starter. As a result, our meals turned into 3-hour events every day. It became a joke after a while and when we told them to hurry the hell up with lunch, they promptly ignored us and kept up the formalities.
Tuesday and Wednesday, May 14 and 15, 2019
Not much to report here. We began our meetings at 9am after an awesome breakfast in said restaurant, and our days were combinations of presentations from a few people and joint discussion sessions about key topics. I wrote down several action items for myself and I feel like the meetings were very productive. It’s also great to see the team in person to reconnect and get to know each other on a more personal level. Most of my Czech colleagues speak English very well so conversing was no problem.
On Tuesday night we had a tasting menu consisting of 7 courses. Naturally, that took 3.5 hours. I ate stuff I’ve never had before: rabbit, liver and boar. It was all very good.
On Wednesday night, we were sick of eating in the restaurant so 7 of us ventured into town. We found an Italian restaurant and walked in the rain for half an hour to get there. It was worth it, as it was also very good, yet it still took 3 hours!!! Then another half an hour walk back in the dark rain.
I’m going to end my story here and continue my journey next month. However, I’ll leave you with a parting shot of the baby crawling on the ceiling in the restaurant. Like you do.
