Spring break part 5: Przemyśl, Poland

I had picked Przemyśl as our next distination based on the fact that it has the closest train station to the Ukraine boarder which, at the time, was our next stop. It was also discribed as being a "relaxed" place, and with only 60,000 people and with it's location in the Carpathian Mountains, it sounded like a pretty nice place. But I had no idea how much we would fall in love with it.

When we got off the bus at the autobussijaam, we needed to find the town square, but didn't have any sort of map since the place was so small it only got a half a page in our travel guide. We though it should be pretty obvious, but it wasn't. So we went to somewhere that we thought was a tourist info center (which we were really shocked would be open at 8:00 at night), but it turned out it wasn't. I don't know what it was. But there was a guy sitting behind a desk and we showed him the address of the hotel we were trying to find, and asked him how we get there. He definitely didn't speak any English, but he actually walked outside with us and pointed out where we needed to go and gestured very dramatically how we needed to go up the steps, to the right, and past the castle. The Poles are VERY nice people. They don't go out of their way to talk to you, but every interaction we had with them was truly amazing. I was really feeling them. I think we had some common blood going on.

And sure enough, there was the 14th century castle.

Unfortunately however, it seemed our Hotelik Pod Basztą was no longer in operation (note the painted out H O T E L of Hotelik).

But that was okay, as we found another place that was just fine (although it wasn't directly across the street from a 14th century castle, it was just down the hill). After we checked in we went out to eat and then to a super cool bar with really nice ironwork, tiles, atmosphere, and beer. 

View of the town square out the bar widow

It was so wonderful to be in a place that 1) didn't speak English (not at all. Not even the receptionist at our hotel), 2) was not used to having tourists, and 3) was just busy doing its genuine southern Poland thing. It sounds cheesy, but it really did feel like we had discovered a "hidden gem." The only bad thing about this ideal little town (besides the fact that we couldn't say the name of it, which sounded something like shea-mesh) was that the air was absolutely filled with coal smoke. All the houses in southern Poland burn coal, and something about the valley location of this town made it just terrible. You could see it hanging in the air and it burned my eyes. It was even worse than I remember the air in China being. But other then the fact that you would get black lung after a few years of living there, it was perfect. 

The town square. In addition to someone to clean up their air, they could also use a good arborist. 

What up, 14th century castle? 

The statues were all eroded from the acid rain

Communist 

(I'd like to take a moment to credit Pinky for a lot of these photos. He took this one down a little alley while I was using the ATM)

Przemyśl is famous across Poland for its manufacturing of bells. So there is a museum of pipes and bells in the town's bell tower. Pinky has always wanted to be a bellmaker (ever since reading Redwall), so he was very excited about this. 

Pinky admiring the bells

And the strange pipes. Elvis, Reagan, and the Beetles among others. 

 And I don't know who this is, but it freaks me out. 

Inside the clock

Going up to the top of the bell tower.

And the view from the top

Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee