"Strewn with time´s dead flowers."

Got up feeling weird. 4 cups of tea didn´t help. 2 Australians on their way to Munich did.

"We´re leaving this vodka here. You can have it if you like. It´s really bad."

10am. Bad Hungarian vodka. Hmm... Two cups of coffee on top of that and I was ready to go.

Walked down to Wawel (The Royal Castle) in the snow and was shocked to find the place deserted. Last time I´d been there had been in 2000, with my late uncle. It had been difficult to walk through the throng, let alone sit down. The only time I´d been before that had been in 1986. I had vague memories of the Royal Cathedral and wanted to relive them. I´d never set foot inside the Royal Castle.

Thought I´d go to the Cathedral first. On the way in, I noticed 3 large bones hanging chained up next to the entrance. They looked super cool, and so I decided that a snug happy snap was in order. I loitered around the entrance until someone turned up. It happened to be an older Japanese woman. Rather odd, being in Poland and asking in Japanese to have a photo taken.

Next, a nutty nun appeared out of nowhere and started telling me about the bones. 2 mammoth bones and one whale rib... all dug up around Krakow. According to legend, should the bones fall, the end of the world will come. Then came this:

"Gdzie Pan znalazl taka fajna Pania?"

"Where did you find yourself such a nice lady."

I explained that I´d just met the woman. The nun wouldn´t believe me. She was sure we were an "item", despite the fact that the Japanese woman must have been over 50 (but being Japanese, looked 20 years younger).

Walking around the cathedral with the Japanese woman and trying to explain things was frustrating. My Japanese was never good, but now I realised that I had forgotten how to say some very basic things. Turns out that the reason that Chikako-san was alone, was that she hadn´t wanted to visit Auschwitz with her friends and came here instead. Anway, I was glad to be of the limited help that I was. After all, if it hadn´t been for me, then Chikako-san would not have seen the largest bell in Poland nor the royal crypts. All the signs in the cathedral are in Polish.

The cathedral isn´t particularly large, but it is very impressive - a mishmash of architectural styles, thanks to various private chapel add-ons. The air almost seems heavy thanks to the blanket of history - the sarcophagi of Poland´s most renowned kings, writers, generals and saints. If I had to pick one favourite thing, it would have to be the black cross under which the Queen Jadwiga used to pray. Her marriage with the Lithuanian prince Jagiello united Poland and Lithuania into one of Europe´s most powerful empires and led to the defeat of the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald in 1410.

I went to buy tickets for entry into the Royal Castle. One office was closed. In the other, the woman chatted for 5 minutes with her friend on the phone, before bothering to sell me the overpriced ticket.

Luckily, the castle wasn´t disappointing. While it´s not dripping with gold and isn´t cluttered with Roman statues and the like, this isn´t necessarily a bad thing. There are many fine tapestries and the ceilings are interesting. Perhaps there is such a thing as being regal without being obscene.

As a child, I´d always wanted to see the carved heads that adorn the throne room. Having walked in, I had difficulty locating them. Finally I looked up and they were all looking down at me from the ceiling. Freaky. Amongst the 30 heads there´s a woman with her mouth taped up, a guy with horns, and a Jewish merchant. Originally, there were almost 200. Then following the partition of Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire set up an army barracks in the castle and soldiers lit bonfires inside for fun. As a result most of the throne room carvings were destroyed. So much for Sobieski driving the Turks out from under Vienna in 1683.

No one knows why the king commissioned the heads. But as the models for the heads were ordinary people from around town, I´d imagine that this was an effort to bring the fate of common people to the forefront of nobles´ consciousness - an impressive gesture for the time.

The other wing of the castle was equally interesting, having burnt down in the reign of Zygmunt III Waza - the man with the coolest tomb in Wawel (on top of the sarcophagus there´s a wonderfully macabre skull and crossbone carving). Zygmunt was apparently heavily into alchemy and thanks to this, managed to burn down half the castle. The new rooms were completed in a baroque style. The walls are covered with Cordovan (wallpaper made from the skin of young animals). It was also Zygmunt who moved the capital of Poland to Warsaw.

Having gotted my dose of high culture for the day, I decided to complete the second half of my mission in Crakow. Freddie (Sofia, Bulgaria), had told me to ring up his friend Agnieszka and go drinking with her. So I did.

We went to some dingy bar that was full of local students. Hearing Pet Shop Boys and Bowie got enough sexual ambiguity happening to prompt me into drinking beer with raspberry cordial. Then Agnieszka´s roommate rocked up. Then some other friends. A few beers later we decided it was time to get up and dance, as the tone of the music went to bad Columbian dance tunes and electro-trash. 2 am and the DJ played Bauhaus´ "Bela Lugosi´s Dead". I decided it was time to go home. But according to Agnieszka, it was time to go to a party. Little did I know that the party was yet to be organised, and the people organising it could barely stand up. So I walked back to the hostel at 3 am.

The streets seemed surprisingly friendly at this time. Had random drunken strangers wishing me good night. But the Portugese guy in my dorm wasn´t so lucky, as he had a random drunk walk up to him at 1 am and punch him in the head.