Rynek Glowny, the main square, remains much as it did in the Middle Ages.
Posted on 05/26/2007 3:04:08 PM PDT by lizol
Poland’s Second City Is First Choice for the Young
TO find Pauza, an artsy pub in the medieval heart of Krakow, slip past the rowdy British lads at the greasy kebab stands, step over the inebriated young woman splayed on the shiny cobblestones, and wait. A clique of trendy young Poles will clear a path to a soot-stained building on Ulica Florianska; follow them up a dark stairwell and open the unmarked wooden door.
The thumping electronic music may sound vaguely familiar, and the swirling psychedelic lights and photographic art are not exactly avant-garde. But if you came to Krakow — a compact city of 760,000 in southern Poland — expecting to run into boozy stag parties or old Polish men swigging rubbing-grade vodka in dank bars, you’ll be pleasantly disappointed.
On a cool night this past fall, the crowd was sexy and self-possessed, with enough bell-bottom jeans, clunky belts and gorgeous blondes to populate a runway. The men were stylishly disheveled, with hip-hop hoodies and chiseled good looks. The women were chic and funky, with impossibly high cheekbones and long legs.
“There’s a lot of creative energy here,” said Garrett Van Reed, 25, a writer from Pennsylvania, who is part of a growing expatriate community that is turning Krakow into Eastern Europe’s newest bohemian capital. “There’s tons of artists and street performers. And there’s always something going on in Rynek Glowny,” he said, referring to the picturesque main square. “You’re constantly stumbling upon something new.”
That’s easy to do when there are some 300 watering holes in Krakow’s Old Town, many of them former World War II hideouts that only the local intelligentsia seem to know about. But word is getting out.
(Excerpt) Read more at travel.nytimes.com ...
I really wish we had more cities like this in the US... Poland is definitely worth the trip. :)
I went in the summer of 2005. Krakow was incredible. A friend and I had dinner just off the main square. We were there for at least 4 hours, looking onto the square, watching people. It was that pleasant.
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