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In the early morning of Saturday, June 16th, I boarded a flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Krakow, Poland having recently spent two weeks visiting family. The plane soared over the Alps before eventually touching down in the Polish countryside.

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I took a train from the airport to Glowny, the main train station in Krakow.  Wandering around the station, I quickly encountered some familiar symbols of global culture. There’s no place like home?

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After settling into a hostel recommended by Lonely Planet, I meandered through the historic Old Town in the center of the city. The sun burned brightly as tourists photographed St. Mary’s Basilica and a folkloric parade marched through the main square.

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I also noticed signs of Holocaust tourism that inspired my ambivalence.

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Eventually, I roamed through the Podgorze District, the former site of the Jewish ghetto established by the Nazis that was liquidated in 1942-1943. A key site in the area is Zgody Square, where thousands of Jews were rounded up and deported, mainly to the Belzec death camp. Today, it contains an art installation of empty chairs.

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Zgody Square is also the site of the Pharmacy Under the Eagle run by Tadeus Pankiewicz, a Catholic Pole, who aided Jews confined to the ghetto. The site is now a museum. While I was standing outside the pharmacy, a golf cart loaded with tourists rolled up. A recorded voice emanating from the cart explained some of Zgody Square’s history  while the driver, hunched forward, scrolled through his phone. I wasn’t daring enough to snap a photo from such close range.

Overall, my first-day impressions of Krakow were mixed. It is undoubtedly a lively and engrossing city with an abundance of young people and good food – I can understand its popularity with the college and post-college crowd. The tourist industry is a bit much, though, as booking a tour to Auschwitz seems as casual and expected as taking a trip to Niagara Falls. The Podgorze District was a little eerie. At one point, I saw a lone dead pigeon on the sidewalk and couldn’t help imagining a different scene. Some of the buildings looked worn-down and untouched since the war. At the same time, I could blink and think they were sets for Schindler’s List.  Indeed, Schindler’s factory is one of the tour stops in the neighborhood. The Pharmacy Under the Eagle, meanwhile, appeared to have been recently restored. Its sponsor? Steven Spielberg. It is indeed a strangely postmodern moment when a Hollywood movie becomes the basis of a local tourist industry about genocide with the director himself stepping in to help maintain the “set.”

Next up: Auschwitz-Birkenau