Day 30: Krakow

"I'm not here", is the title of a rather recent movie and this line crossed my thoughts a couple of times today.
Krakow is a great city. There is the cathedral, the palace, you can see on the city map, that it is an ancient city, where the old town still is partially surrounded with the city-walls. The city is crawling with people, it's full of life, which is very impressive. This place stands in contrast of what I've seen so far, concerning cities in Poland. What I found a bit weird though is all these advertisements everywhere for tours to Auschwitz. An English girl I meet at the hostel, who's apparently does her thesis about Genocides (Politics, History or Ethnology???) commented her visit at that place as "interesting", which was commented by me with; "interesting she says...!!!". Well, which kind of is all very interesting... in a weird way.
But between these pompous monuments, I was not there. It was like I always stood two steps beside everything that was happening in this town. So I did the usual, but it felt very different this time wandering the streets of the city.
Since I did not need any spare parts for the bike or to replace cloths I lost somewhere on the way, I mostly concentrated on the food. The offer is so huge, that I had a really difficult time deciding, but finally, when my stomach growled and I was on the verge of getting grumpy, I found a nice place. Actually it is brilliant to have two warm meals a day.
Another good part of the day was planning the route for the coming days. So the national park, the "High Tatre", was commented as quite wild by my father. Taking a closer look and asking a bit around, it seems to be challenging when you go there by  mountain bike and not such a good idea to try it with a touring bike. So since the information was rather sparse here and maps difficult to find in shops and on the internet, I decided to choose a route, that leaves me the option to circle around the national park. While getting closer, maybe I will find some more concrete information and hopefully people, who can recommend a particular route.
Since my body is not crying for more rest and it is all stocked up with good protein, I'll hit the road tomorrow. Anyway, Krakow would take probably a week to really plunge into it, so I save this for sometime to come back (I'll be here).
Well, other than that, it was me, that behaved very unspectacular today, not much more to add ...