Three times. It seems hard to believe that I’ve already been to Berlin three times, and it’s been a different experience every time.Yet there are only so many times I can return to a place before retreading steps, and having nothing to do. The first time I visited, in 2009 with my friend James, we’d rushed around most of the city getting all the key attractions done but failing to see the inside of the Charlottenburg Palace due to it being closed when we got there. Our time was short, but we’d seen a lot. I considered Berlin done.
I hadn't accounted for the World Marathon Majors. Chasing the Six Star Finisher medal brought me back in 2021 for the Berlin Marathon, although that visit revolved almost entirely around the race before continuing by rail across Germany. Now I considered Germany to be done.
The way things changed in the USA resulted in me abandoning my attempt to get the six-stars, and refocused on the Super Half series instead. This led me and Carmen to visit Berlin in 2025 for the half marathon as a long weekend. We attempted to visit the Charlottenburg Palace, but again it was closed. The palace was becoming something of a white whale, but as far as I knew, I was once again done with Berlin.
Upon our return from Valencia, Carmen decided she’d enter the ballot for this year’s Berlin Marathon. I considered it briefly, but didn’t want to risk getting a place if Carmen didn’t. Once again however, she was unsuccessful.
Fundraising
Missing out on the ballot isn't always the end of the story. Many major marathons reserve places for charities, at great cost to the charities themselves, allowing runners to secure an entry in return for committing to a fundraising target. Serendipitously, one of Carmen’s dancing friends works for ‘Get Kids Going!’ - a charity that has bought Berlin Marathon places for many years, and wondered if Carmen would be interested in a place.
Get Kids Going! helps disabled children take part in sport by providing specialist sports wheelchairs, sports grants and year round support. They can then compete in marathons, triathlons, tennis, athletics, skiing, rugby, basketball etc. With your help, many could become Paralympic champions and world record holders. If you're unsure about them, their President is none other than David Weir CBE MBE, the gold-medalist paralympian at Beijing 2008 and London 2012, and winner of the wheel chair race in multiple big city marathons including London and New York.
Show your support, and donate to Get Kids Going
I half-joked that I could use a charity place too, and surprisingly was able to get one too. Without any real plan or intention, I was going to Berlin again, to run the marathon - again!
I’m reluctant to revisit places I’ve already been to when there are so many places I still haven’t seen. I wondered how I could work that into this trip, and suggested to Carmen that we could perhaps cross the border into Poland - their nearest neighbour. Neither of us have been there before, so everything would be new no matter where in the country we found ourselves. I looked at Warsaw to start with, but when Carmen reminded me that Poland is a chance to tick off the ‘Z’ entry for the parkrun ‘Alphabeteer’ challenge as well, our attention shifted to Kraków.
Getting Around
You would expect travel between neighbouring countries to be relatively straightforward with easy connections. We assumed we’d be able to just take a flight from Berlin to Kraków, but alas this did not seem to be the case. Our research indicated that whilst the budget airline Eurowings has at some point operated flights between the two cities, their schedule was not showing any for September.
This left us with two choices: coach, or train. I don’t think we’d have ever seriously considered a coach, especially when the train journey would take between seven and nine hours. Carmen couldn’t face that journey, and I can’t say I blame her. I’ve done coach journeys of that sort of length and they’ve not been pleasant. It’d be a whole day wasted too.
There would be the potential for further delay with potential border checks too. In July 2025, Poland re-introduced border controls on their German and Lithuanian borders, and this would mean authorities boarding some trains to carry out checks - similar to what we expected, but didn’t experience, when crossing from Copenhagen into Malmö previously. An amusing observation was that this border, defined by the Potsdam Agreement, runs down to a tri-point where it also meets the Czech Republic - our first trip of the year.
I looked at the map and pondered what we could do. Could a stop somewhere around half way work? The name that stood out the most was Wrocław (pronounced Vrots-wahf), so I checked what sights there were there. This turned out to be a bit of a surprise, as the ‘Venice of Poland’ seemed to be filled with character.
It looked like there could be a surprising amount to see in Wrocław, so we wondered if our time there and in Kraków would feel too rushed on marathon-heavy legs. We’d get one full day in Wrocław, and one in Kraków, with travel split between Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday meaning sightseeing those days would be restricted. It felt like travelling on Tuesday would have been a better idea, but by the time we realised it was too late. We’d spent £420pp for flights, about £63pp for trains, and about £990 between us for the ibis in Berlin. By the time we’d got AirBNBs booked for Poland, this was another £250 - at least they were much better value for money.
A colleague had been to Krakow some months before, and advised keeping an eye on a Facebook group for advice. Through this I knew to be wary of booking tours for Auschwitz-Birkenau as apparently they don’t work well with tour guides. I knew I needed to book ahead of time if we wanted to do it, and I understood there’s a way to do it self-guided, but couldn’t find this, so had to book an English tour directly with them.
Another colleague used to live in Poland, and recommended we try ‘Milk Bars’. The name, to me at least, conjures the image of a Wild West-style saloon where they serve nothing but glasses of milk. That image, however amusing, is inaccurate though; they’re actually a traditional Polish cafeteria, akin to those we saw in Prague, that serve cheap traditional meals like pierogi (dumplings), barszcz (beetroot soup), kotlet schabowy (pork cutlets), and potato pancakes. They originate from the late 19th century, but became very popular during their communist era due to being subsidised by the state. With us being short on time there, they might prove to be the best way to try the local cuisine.
- ✈️ Flights (x2) - £840.00
- 🚆 Cross-Border Trains (x2) - £126.00
- 🏨 ibis Berlin Hotel - £990.00
- 🏡 Poland AirBnBs - £250.00
Currency
Whilst Berlin uses the Euro, Poland uses the Polish złoty (PLN). I was advised it's useful to have some cash on you in Poland, especially for things like public facilities where cash is the only option. As I'd need to convert some anyway, I calculated how much to take by looking at the entrance fees for sights we'd want to visit and couldn't prebook, and the average cost of meals - rounding up every time so I'd be over-estimating needs. From this I estimated about £400 for two people would be about right for 4-5 days in Poland, and around £330 for just over 4 days in Berlin.
For the full day in Wrocław we'd spend very little beyond food, so most of our sightseeing cost would be in Kraków where entrance fees range from 20 zł for St. Mary's Basilica, up to 60 zł for Oskar Schindler's enamel factory. The more expensive sights such as the Wieliczka Salt Mine and Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum would be pre-booked at least 30 days ahead of time. My hope was we could do the same for Wawel Royal Castle to make sure we'd get to see the state rooms. For the castle you pay for the different sections you want to see, with prices at the time of planning, broken down as follows:
- Castle 1st or 2nd Floor (State Rooms / Apartments): Regular ~57 PLN / Reduced ~45 PLN
- Crown Treasury & Armoury: Regular 43 PLN / Reduced 32 PLN
- Castle Underground / Lost Wawel: Regular ~43 PLN / Reduced ~32 PLN
- Wawel – The Most Precious (Guided Tour): Regular 155 PLN / Reduced 116 PLN
- Wawel for Enthusiasts (All-Access Combo): Regular 199 PLN / Reduced 149 PLN
- Wawel Cathedral: Separate entry costs 26 PLN (Regular) / 18 PLN (Reduced)
- Wawel Hill and Courtyard: Free to enter without a ticket
Background
Poland is a country neither me, nor Carmen, have visited before. Whenever I think of the country, the first thing that comes to mind is the sketch from Fawlty Towers where Basil Fawlty is continuously aggravating his German guests.
German: Will you stop talking about the war!
Basil: Me? You started it!
German: We did not start it.
Basil: Yes you did, you invaded Poland...
Even with Polish colleagues, there wasn’t that much more I knew about the country beyond that.
I think it’s fair to say that the Republic of Poland has had a tumultuous past. Western Polans, long-term settlers of the area, created the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 with their first ruler being Bolesław I the Brave, who was also the Duke of Bohemia. His dynasty came to an end in 1370, and was succeeded by Louis I of Hungary, who was also King of Hungary and Croatia. It was the Jagiellonian dynasty, starting with the Duke of Lithuania marrying into the ruling family, that created close ties with Lithuania that created a Commonwealth between them.
The Commonwealth lasted until a series of invasions and partitions of the country by the Habsburgs, the Prussians (whose capital was Berlin), and Russia. They had lost their independence until after the Treaty of Versailles following the First World War, when the Second Polish Republic was formed.
In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Officially, it was a non-aggression agreement between the two countries, but in secret it was also an agreement of who would invade and control what European countries. It was a truth that would only come to light during the Nuremberg trials. Poland had once been part of Russia, but was taken over by Germany in the Great War before gaining their independence. With rising territorial tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union, Germany proposed an alliance with Poland against Russia. It was rejected by Poland on the basis that it could be a threat to their independence, as they would become little more than a client state.
As the years went on, tensions grew, and Germany demanded the return of the Free City of Danzig (modern-day Gdańsk), which had been placed under League of Nations administration after the First World War. Britain guaranteed "if any action clearly threatened Polish independence, and if the Poles felt it vital to resist such action by force, Britain would come to their aid."
The Second World War started on 1st September 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, in what they referred to as a ‘defensive war’ with a planned genocide. Just over two weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Poland's armed forces were overwhelmed within weeks, and Kraków fell without prolonged fighting. Their leadership went into hiding as the Polish Underground State.
After the end of the war, Poland lost lands to the east as they were taken by Russia, but were given some German lands to the west in repayment. The same agreement also had Stalin bring the leadership to Moscow to go on trial, and install his own government as they were now to be a satellite state of the USSR.
The Polish People’s Republic, and later the Polish United Workers' Party, lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union, and at this point gained their own freedom from Moscow’s influence. They were finally free, and the Third Polish Republic was born.
Today, Poland still bears some of the scars and reminders of the horrors of the Second World War, and the Cold War. Wrocław had become a fortress city in 1945, and has plaques and memorials for the siege that took place there. Kraków on the other hand still has buildings that people will be all too familiar with - you can see Oskar Schindler's Factory, and the nearby concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. They are places that survive in notoriety, along with other places such as the Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, as warnings. Each one carries the message of “Never again.” History, unfortunately, suggests that humanity still struggles to keep that promise.