Kraków: sickness and Nowa Huta

I took one too many walking tours outside in the freezing cold in Budapest and Kraków and now I'm lying in my hostel bed with a pretty nasty cold. You know what all grandmas say: let your feet get too cold for too long and you'll end up sick. I should have listened to them. But you know, there are worse fates than feeling a little bit under the weather. Which in this case is a ton of snow and freezing temperatures.

Not cool, man.
Cold.

It's a cold world.

Maybe this is why I don't feel good: snow and nuclear waste

Today I went and explored the "real" Kraków a little bit: a place called Nowa Huta, or "New Steel Mill" in Polish. This neighborhood was built by the communist regime in Poland after World War II and was supposed to represent the ideal communist neighborhood. That nuclear power plant in the above picture looms over Nowa Huta in the distance. Apparently there used to be lots of statues of Lenin and Stalin, and the central square was called something to do with the Cuban Revolution. However, since the fall of the USSR everything has been renamed.

What's the central square called now?

 

 

Yes, it seems that in the former Eastern Bloc Ronald Reagan is seen as a pretty radical dude. And by radical I mean completely non-radical and communism crushing. I saw a big statue of Reagan in Hungary and now this.

Stalin's idea of architectural perfection

Yeah, so while it's not the most gorgeous neighborhood I've ever seen, it's good to see this and learn about how things were back then in the 1950s. It is incredible to realize all of the things we never had to go through, but also to see that those who did have to go through it are pretty much the same as us.

Crazy world.