Poland

If you’ve stumbled onto this post, Poland was my last stop on a trip through Europe visiting the places my ancestors lived, and the journey starts here.

May 12, 2026

While it was Prussia at the time, my great-great-great grandpa was born in Poznań, Poland, so I hopped on a train from Berlin and made the journey over. My train arrived just in time to drop my luggage off at my hotel and find some lunch. I stayed right in the old town market square at the Hotel Brovaria, and my only (very minor) complaint about it was that there were oddly no outlets next to the bed. The room was charming, the staff was amazing, and the breakfast buffet was delicious.

And speaking of delicious… I of course had to get some pierogi while in Poland, and I found a great place just a few blocks away from the hotel called Pierogarnia Stary Młyn. My favorite thing about this place was I was able to mix and match fillings, and they also had a deal where you could get four traditional and two oven-baked pierogi. I had never even heard of oven-baked pierogi before, but they ended up being my favorites, and were quite a bit bigger than the traditional. I don’t remember exactly which ones have which fillings, but here’s what I ordered:

• Roasted chicken with cheddar cheese and mushrooms (baked)
• Roasted pork marinated in black cumin, carrots, and onions (baked)
• Stewed beef, pickles, peppers, and onions (traditional)
• Pulled beef ribs, red onion confiture, and barbecue sauce (traditional)
• Spinach stewed in cream, brine cheese, and garlic (this is definitely the green one)
• Sweet raspberries, white chocolate, mint (definitely the one with the reddish-brown stripe)
• Sour cream and caramelized onion dipping sauces

Like Leipzig, this was a city that I had a hard time finding much to do online, but unlike Leipzig, I managed to find a guided walking tour which I booked a few months before the trip. I was surprised when I showed up at the meeting place and learned I was the only one who had booked a tour that day, but it was fun getting a private tour. I really enjoyed the tour in the moment, and I’d recommend it to anyone visiting Poznań; the guide went into great detail giving me the history of all the sights, particularly during the German occupation. However, it really confirmed for me how much I struggle with auditory learning – pretty much the only thing I remember from the tour was that someone stole a Monet painting from the art museum in 2000, during open business hours, that was completely unprotected. They eventually found the painting in 2010 thanks to advancements in fingerprinting.

My two favorite parts of the city were both in the Old Town. First, there’s Garbary Street with a row of all-pink buildings, including a church and the city hall. Second was the market square with its colorful merchant houses. After my walking tour, I had a few more hours of daylight to kill and all I wanted to do was sit in the market square and read and people watch. Unfortunately at this point in the day, it was way too cold for that, and I’m saying that as someone who rarely gets cold. My pierogi lunch was super filling, so I didn’t need any dinner, and the two weeks of travel was starting to catch up to me. I ended up going to bed really early, and it turns out I really needed it. I slept all through the night, and woke up feeling refreshed and ready for the last few days of travel.

May 13, 2026

My last stop on my trip was Kraków, which was about a 5-hour train ride from Poznań. One of my favorite parts about traveling internationally is getting a glimpse at the way other people live life. All along the train ride, I kept seeing all these little buildings that at first looked like shanty-towns, but I noticed they were too nice and too uniform for that, and that each one had its own little garden. I wound up looking it up online, and learned that they’re little farming cabins that people in the city rent, and they’ll go out there for the weekend and take care of their garden. It grew out of necessity during their communist years, but have gained popularity today as a way to get away from the city.

I stayed at the Hyatt Place, which was really nice and tucked away in a quiet part of town. Bonus points: there was a Zabka basically in the parking lot, which is essentially a Polish version of a 7-11. The directions from the main train station told me to either take one bus, walk a bit, then get on a second bus that goes right to the hotel, or get on just one bus and walk half a mile across a park. I chose the park option because I found that bus first and didn’t want to have to deal with a bus transfer. I figured I dragged my suitcase across cobblestone for half a mile in Greece, I could do it across a park in Poland. Plot twist: the park was just a big open field, and what looked like a path on Google Maps was actually just a desire path. Take this as your friendly reminder to pack light.

By the time I got settled in my room, it was already late afternoon. I found that closer bus stop that didn’t make me cross the park again, and made my way into the Old Town. From there, I went straight to the market square. I popped into a few souvenir shops to find a Christmas ornament, but no luck. I visited St. Mary’s Basilica, which was gorgeous. In the middle of the market square is Cloth Hall, which naturally gets its name from trading textiles in the 15th century. Now it holds merchants selling trinkets to tourist, and so much amber jewelry, which comes from the Baltic Sea. I ended up buying myself some amber earrings and a necklace, and just as I was checking out, I noticed a little gingerbread house ornament hanging up in the back of the seller’s booth, so I really lucked out.

For dinner, I made my way over to The Black Duck, which was just off the market square and had quite a wait for a table. I ordered their signature cocktail which had some sort of black vodka in it, a bowl of borscht, and the cabbage rolls. Before my meal, they brought out a plate of bread with duck lard and pickles. It tasted so good, but I could only handle a few bites of it knowing that I was literally eating pure fat. I have a friend who immigrated from Belarus as a kid, and her mom made us some borscht last summer when we were in town for a Hanson show, and hers was better than this place. Here it was just a broth with dumplings, and while it had a good beet flavor, that was pretty much all there was to it. The cabbage rolls are traditionally made with a red tomato sauce, but when researching foods to try in Poland, I kept getting suggestions to try them with mushroom sauce instead, and I’m glad I did. I’ve had regular tomato-based cabbage rolls before, so it was fun to try something different. They were so good, and I was sad that I was too full to finish them.

may 14, 2026

This was my last day of the trip, and the whole reason I went to Kraków in the first place was because I figured if I was already in Poland to see where my great-great-great grandpa lived, I should also visit Auschwitz, and Kraków is the closest main city to it. That said, it’s still about an hour away, so way back in January I booked a small group private tour. They advertised they would pick me up near my hotel in the morning, the group would be no more than 15 people, and that they’d drive us out to Auschwitz and Birkenau, give us a guided tour in English, and drive us back in time to spend rest of the afternoon and evening in Kraków. However, as I was going to sleep the night before, and again when I woke up early the morning of, I had this really strong gut feeling telling me to skip it. I will always be a huge proponent of trusting your gut, so I didn’t go.

The company has great reviews on TripAdvisor, and I’m sure nothing would have gone wrong had I gone, but I’m still really glad I chose to skip it. After having visited Dachau earlier in the trip, I no longer felt like I needed to see two concentration camps in the same week, and instead I got to take my time and have a relaxed final day of vacation, getting to see more of Kraków without being so rushed and tired. Kraków surprised me – I liked it so much more than I thought I would, and there’s so much more of Poland I’d like to visit someday too, so I’m sure I’ll be back and can always see Auschwitz then.

I started the morning by walking along the Vistula River outside the Wawel Castle. I thought about touring the inside of the castle, but when I saw about a dozen different groups of school kids in line, I decided to skip it. Outside the castle along the river, there’s an iron sculpture of a dragon that supposedly actually breathes fire, but that wasn’t the case when I was there.

From there, I wandered aimlessly through the old town. All around the perimeter of the old town, where the city wall used to stand, is an urban park. I spent some time walking through the park, sitting on benches, and people watching. I eventually came across an old, round gate on the outside edge of the park, and across from it on the inside of the park was a tower gate. I stepped back inside the old city and found someone selling artwork, and when I saw a pączki shop nearby, I realized my hotel breakfast of mystery fish dips was starting to wear off, so I decided it was time for a treat.

The next place I visited was the old Jewish Ghetto, where nazis forced the Jewish people to be segregated to one part of the city. Right next to the bus stop there’s a public square called Ghetto Heroes Square with a memorial of over 60 empty metal chairs which represent the people who were deported and murdered. A little ways up the road from there, parts of the old wall that separated them from the rest of the city are still standing. I continued wandering, and while obviously not part of the Jewish history, I found a beautiful Catholic church which sat on a plaza with plenty of park benches. I ended up sitting there for over an hour people watching and reflecting on all I had experienced over the past two weeks. It was a really great way to end my time abroad.

While wandering around toward the church, I walked by a restaurant that looked really cute from the outside, and even more importantly was away from where all the other tourists were gathered. I made a mental note to look it up, and when I did I was surprised to see it was the same restaurant I had already found online as a potential late lunch/early dinner option, Kuchina Polska Gaska, which literally translates to “Kitchen Polish Goose”. While not every entree included goose, it’s something I had never had before so of course that’s what I ordered. They had a special of pulled goose in a blackcurrant compote with a side of barley and spicy green beans. I ordered a black currant cocktail to go with it, and was once again served bread with, this time, goose lard. It was all so delicious and really filling.

I had an early flight back home the next morning, so after my meal I just went back to my hotel to pack up all my things and caught up on The Testaments while snuggled in bed. This trip was everything I had hoped it would be. I hope I get the chance to return to some of these places again some day, and there are so many more new places I want to see as well. I realized though that, at least for now, I no longer have a priority of where I want to go next. I’m still on a quest to visit all 50 states before I turn 50, but internationally I guess now I’ll just see where the wind* takes me.

^{*Wind (noun): cheap flights, flights of fancy, or friends’ suggestions}