Krakow - A dragon and and ATM

Here's a riddle for you - what do a dragon and an ATM have in common?
They both eat up things that should not be eaten.

During our lovely mid-day tour of the market square, I stopped to get some Zlotys out of the ATM (in case you care, there are about 4 Zlotys to euro, or around 3 to a dollar). I chose the ATM outside of the Deutsche Bank, since that's the same bank where we have an account. And the machine ate my card. With Kaska's help, we learned that the ATM actually does not belong to the bank at all, and that I could not even withdraw money inside or request a new card because the Polish Deutsche Bank has no relationship at all with the German Deutsche Bank. Plus the teller lady was crabby. So Kaska called the phone number on the ATM and sweet talked the guy on the other end into restarting the machine in hopes that it would spit out my card. This meant that we had to keep anyone else from using the ATM for about 20 minutes. So while the boys went to get something to drink, Kaska and I fended off tourists by telling them in English, Polish, German and Spanish (actually they spoke Italian but it was close enough) that they could not use the ATM. This got funnier and funnier as they kept coming at us and we threw any language we could at them. The Italian lady was not satisfied and tried to shove her way past us to try and get some cash. I re-told her in Spanish that it was not going to happen.

When the restart didn't work, we had to call Deutsche Bank (the German one) where apparently no one in the entire call center that day could speak English, and Thorsten helped me ask them to cancel the ATM card.

There's another creature in Krakow that devours things, or he used to. His name is Smok Wawelski, and he is a dragon who lived in the caves below Wawel Castle. He had the nasty habit of eating virgins. So one day the king offered a reward half his kingdom and the princess's hand in marriage to any man who could kill the dragon. While many men tried and got eaten themselves, a young tailor decided to take on the challenge. He made sewed a sheep and filled it with sulphur, then set it outside of the dragon's cave. Smok gobbled up the fake sheep, which started a fire in his belly. He was so thirsty that he gulped down water from the Vistula River and exploded. The tailor married the princess, became king, and they lived happily ever after.

 

 

Fire-breathing statue of Smok

 The legend is, of course, true, and Wawel Castle is still there. It sits up on a hill and inside the castle walls are the official buildings and the Krakow Cathedral. Unlike St. Mary's, the cathedral is more of a religious/political museum than a place for people to gather for Mass. There aren't even many places to sit. My favorite part of the castle was the view. You can look over the river and see the city - modern, medieval, and socialist, laid out below.
And on a beautiful spring day, who needs to worry about bank cards, fire-breathing dragons, or sabotage by sheep? We just enjoyed the view.

Wawel Castle