For lunch we went back to Kazimierz District and ate at Ariel, a Jewish restaurant that was a favorite hang out for Steven Spielberg while he was filming Schindler’s List. We ate latkes and Berdytchov soup, a beef vegetable concoction flavored with honey and cinnamon (so good!). After lunch we went to the nearby Galicia Jewish Museum, which has an exhibit of photographs depicting life for the Jews before the war and after. We also went to Rema cemetery which has a wall made from pieces of headstones that were destroyed by Nazis during the war.
The next day, we saw Cloth Hall, a large building that now houses tourist shops; the Florian Gate, what’s left of the wall that used to surround the city; and St. Mary’s basilica, where we listened to the trumpet call that is played every hour. The trumpeting from the tower is a tradition that is centuries old. In the olden days, trumpeters used to announce the opening of the city gates in the morning and the closing in the evening. They also stood watch and warned of enemy attack. Back in (I think) the 1000’s, a trumpeter sounded the alarm of an attacking army. When they realized their chance of a surprise attack was ruined, one of the enemy army’s archers shot the trumpeter in the neck and killed him. To this day, when the trumpeters do their hourly call, they stop mid-measure as a remembrance of that trumpeter.
We only had half a day, as our train to Kiev left at 1:30pm. It was about a twenty hour journey and we had to stop at the border twice, once on the Polish side and once on the Ukraine side. Each time we got our passports stamped and were questioned by customs. The Ukrainian customs agent was unintentionally funny when he asked in broken English if we were smuggling drugs. They also brought drug-sniffing dogs on the train.