Tired of waiting for a guide who seems to have stood us up, we decide to go for a potter around the market stalls . Kraków is just too beautiful a city to waste any time sitting around. Just as we’re about to make a move, however, a towering figure wearing a white vest, large gold crucifix and green tracksuit bottoms suddenly materialises. He says something in Polish, and then in English, asking if we want to buy something from the vast woven bag he is brandishing. Protesting on our behalf, a waitress intervenes, and with a bit of a deft shimmy, we escape behind his back.
oments later, at a stall, we hear the wheedling voice — here he is again. I spin around firmly, saying, “No thank you, we do not want...” And suddenly he breaks into a shout of laughter. He can’t keep it up any longer.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I am your guide,” he says, laughing so hard he can hardly speak.
We should have got the hint when our last guide kept talking about how we were going to meet “the crazy guy”. But crazy isn’t really the word for Mike Ostrowski. He is a reformed lawyer, an energy bomb of fun and information whose passionate love of an alternative Kraków beyond the classic tour of the Old Town, the Jewish Quarter, the salt mines and Schindler’s factory led him to set up his own tour company — Crazy Guides (crazyguides.com).
From his clapped-out Trabant, Ostrowski shows us another side of Poland’s ancient capital, conjuring up the complex, dark, and occasionally bittersweet memories of the Polish People’s Republic and the Soviet Union, with its workers’ canteens, milk bars and brutalist architecture.
Even those of us who did not grow up behind the Iron Curtain got to sample the occasional rush of nostalgia — the bounce of the Trabi’s back seat, the blast of petrol propelling us back in time, and the patient joy of using the proper handle to wind down the window.
We visit Nowa Huta, a Soviet utopian city founded in 1949 that was one of the most renowned examples of “deliberate social engineering” in the world, visited by leaders like Fidel Castro and Indira Gandhi. Nowa Huta means “New Steelworks” in Polish, and it was built to accommodate the 40,000 workers at the enormous Vladimir Lenin Steelworks. Soviet realism architecture has a reputation for ugliness, but Ostrowski points out the beauty of this place — how it took inspiration from Paris and New York with its wide, tree-lined avenues, its soothing parks and lakes. We leave with a different view.
When the Steelworks HQ is unlocked for us, we take a breath in. It’s like a movie set, a place frozen in time, waiting only for the stern-faced industrialists to stalk back through its doors, carrying their leather briefcases.We stand in a big boardroom with its beautiful parquet floor, where a major meeting of communist bloc leaders was once held. Here, we are invited to dial a number on the switchboard — younger visitors often have no idea how to do it — and are told of intriguing recordings that still exist of a call where managers were discussing what to do about some petty theft within the organisation.
Ostrowski then takes us to a workers’ canteen where he insists that we order a Turkish coffee that blows the heads off us. He also treats us to a ‘red juice’ — a kind of berry squash given to children as a treat in an era when Coca-Cola was off the menu for all but the wealthy. As a result, many children used to collect branded drinks cans. On a rare school trip outside Poland in 1989, Ostrowski amassed a large collection of these and brought them home. Three months later, he threw the cans away. The Berlin Wall had come down.
His tour is a good, sharp palate-cleanser after the richness of exploring Kraków’s Old Town. Our earlier part of the trip had a completely different flavour as another guide, Jerzy, brought us through the historic quarter — a Unesco World Heritage Site — from Wawel Royal Castle, which boasts the largest Renaissance courtyard in Europe, to St Mary’s Basilica, where we marvelled at the Veit Stoss altarpiece, the largest Gothic altar in the world. Outside, we paused to hear the trump signal played live every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from the top of the tower.
The plaintive tune breaks off mid-stream, to commemorate a famous 13th-century trumpeter who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before a Mongol attack on the city. Nowadays, it is played by a member of the fire brigade, and it is considered a great honour to be chosen.
At The Princes Czartoryski Museum (mnk.pl), we see Leonardo Da Vinci’s stunning portrait, Lady with an Ermine, and I can’t leave the museum shop without buying a comical elongated teddy bear — the ermine — which became my daughter’s favourite the instant she saw it.
The welcome is warm in Kraków. Our hotel, the Sheraton (marriott.com), was comfortable and welcomed us with a traditional sernik Krakowski, a sweet cheese cake with a crumbly texture. The food is hearty all round. At the Piano Rouge (thepianorouge.com.pl), I have traditional bread soup and enjoy the wraparound fairytale view from the terrace. Dinner at the Pod Baranem (podbaranem.com) is delicious — wild boar tenderloins with a forest sauce which seems a suitably medieval choice for a city like this, followed by a luscious raspberry cake.
Kazimierz, the old Jewish Quarter, is the birthplace of the bagel, and has a bohemian vibe. We have lunch at the Bazaar Bistro (bazaarbistro.pl), where the hummus, cheeses and rose jam we’re brought as a preamble are so delicious, we polish off the lot and, mortified, are too full to eat when the waitress comes to take our actual order.
I leave Kraków with one thought — I have to come back to this city, because there is so much more on the menu.
Don’t miss
Explore the fascinating Rynek Underground Museum that not only presents Kraków’s rich history, but also the connections between the city and historical centres of trade and culture. muzeumkrakowa.pl
Get there
Balice Airport in Kraków is well served from Dublin, with daily flights with Ryanair (ryanair.com).
More info
For more info on the city, see poland.travel/en
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Nicola travelled as a guest of The Polish Tourism Organisation (Polska Organizacja Turystyczna)
