Krakow in the news!

Check it out! The New York Times finally is recognizing the jewel of Europe, my own old hometown, dear Krakow............

May 27, 2007
Poland's Second City Is First Choice for the Young
excerpts:

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. The airline service into Krakow has increased dramatically in recent years, especially among low-cost carriers like easyJet, which recently added more than a dozen weekly flights to Krakow from cities like London, Belfast and Newcastle.

And with the euro climbing against not only the dollar but other foreign currencies, too, younger travelers have another reason to flock to Poland's second city. At about 2.9 Polish zloty to the dollar, Zywiec beers are still under $2, dinners rarely exceed $10 a person and a hostel bed goes for $15 a night.

Krakow's pleasures, however, are not confined to after nightfall. Unlike in Warsaw , which was largely destroyed during World War II, Krakow's stone churches and castles — some dating back to the 10th century — remain gorgeously intact. Older Poles still talk about how the occupying Nazis had apparently rigged the entire city with dynamite, but fled before detonating a single charge.

As a result, Rynek Glowny, which ranks among the largest medieval squares in Europe, looks pretty much the way it did in the Middle Ages. Dominated by the twin-towered St. Mary's Basilica and the behemoth Cloth Hall, the market square is also surprisingly un-touristy, even when the stone-paved expanse is thronged with tourists.

The same ethos holds true for Kazimierz, an old Jewish district southeast of Old Town. A tightly packed warren of crooked cobblestones and peeling facades, its hauntingly preserved streets came to attention in 1993 as the setting for Steven Spielberg's film "Schindler's List."

As with other former Jewish districts throughout Europe, Kazimierz has emerged in recent years as the city's alternative artistic center. After languishing for decades, its dingy tenements and wooden doors have been pried open and are slowly being converted into gritty pubs and sleek restaurants, with names like Le Scandale and Propaganda.