Poland, Krakow: Not on the map?

Krakow is not currently on the map as Poland's capital. And at one point, Poland wasn't on the map of Europe.

If needing a break from history & wars, this not so much the place to go...

Polonians, people of the plains came a long time ago. Krakow became the capital and Poland a superpower under Kazimierz in 14th century.

15 & 16th century, things still good. Very tolerant of Jews & Protestants, which is why lots of them came here.

18th century and Russia, Prussia, and Austria divide up Poland, leaving no more Poland and Krakow as an independent city state.

But when Austria loses WWI, a Polish state is recreated. Yay!

Then some WWII stuff happened... Apparently it's not good to be geographically located between Germany & Russia?! 6 million Poles... Duck. Duck. Duck.

And if that's not enough, let's have 40 years of Communism. I hear it's all the rage in Eastern Europe these days.

In 1990, Poland had it's first democratically elected president. Hello, that's when my little sister was born.

INFO about KATYN because it's recent & interesting:

Just prior to WWII, the Soviets rounded up a whole bunch of Polish nationalists and intelligencia, and killed them & buried them in a huge grave in Katyn forest in Russia. This was only discovered much much later because no Poles knew about it - or if they did, during Communism, they weren't allowed to discuss it. So now, Poland has a Katyn memorial. And in April, the Polish president and all those people in the plane went to visit that gravesite in Russia, as it was some x-year memorial of the Katyn massacre. And then the plane crashed and many important Poles died on their way to visiting the gravesite. Creepy. That's why they've been saying that Katyn is sort of cursed. But when the plane crashed, the memorial in Poland, originally created to commemorate the Katyn massacre, was covered with wreaths & flowers, and used to commemorate the Polish president and the other tragic deaths.

Last fact about Poland: the trains are sllllooooooooowwwwwww. Been on one heading from Krakow to Berlin for over 10-daytime hours now...