From Kraków with Love
- Jun 6
- 7 min read
Two weeks ago, we returned from a trip to Kraków. This time, the main reason for our travels was a Metallica concert. The concert itself was at the Silesian Stadium, but Katowice decided to dress up as a world - class metropolis for the day and demanded £300 a night for accommodation. So we chose to stay in Kraków and commute to the concert instead. And Kraków, being Kraków, was as lovely as ever.
Here are the top five highlights of our Lesser Poland - Silesia adventure.
Artistic ABC
MOCAK (Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków) was a mandatory stop for me. Slightly less so for Dan, but as always he bravely accompanied me on this artistic adventure.
And I have to admit - there was plenty to have the eye and the mind on. The always astonishing Magdalena Abakanowicz. The stage design for Krystian Lupa's play about Andy Warhol. Ewa Partum and her feminist performance. Beautiful illustrations by the Czech artist known as Toyen. However, the undisputed number one was John Baldessari's monumental work Teaching a Plant the Alphabet. And it's not just a black-and-white film showing the artist holding up alphabet cards to a plant, pronouncing each letter several times in the hope that the plant will suddenly spring to intellectual life like Trump on Twitter at three in the morning. Oh no.
To quote the experts:
This absurd exercise, with its futile, monotonous repetition and dry execution, challenges our expectations of what art should look like. The film is also Baldessari's response to the popularity of linguistics and semiotics, which influenced many conceptual artists in the 1970s.
And I must admit, I felt thoroughly challenged - not only in terms of what art should look like, but also in terms of common sense. Because it seems to me there are activities with a far greater degree of futility while simultaneously undermining semiotics and linguistics.
Have you ever tried explaining to a five-year-old that the red bits in Bolognese sauce are tomatoes - the very essence of this sauce - and that when you can't see them, they're still there, just blended up, and therefore perfectly safe to eat? No? Then I invite you to try, because you'll discover that Mr Baldessari missed a golden opportunity for an artistic revolution there.
When we booked tickets for Gubałówka several weeks in advance, we imagined breathtaking views of the Tatra Mountains in front of our eyes. Unfortunately, the only thing that unfolded before our eyes was a sea of stalls selling spiral potatoes and waffles. The weather that day consisted of a solid sixteen degrees, wrapped in fog and light rain. So all we could do was soak up the atmosphere.
The last time I visited Zakopane was in secondary school, and what I remembered was an astonishing concentration of tackiness per square metre, rivalled only by the promenade in Mielno, albeit with a mountain-themed twist involving oscypek cheese and woollen slippers. And ladies and gentlemen, I was not disappointed.
Zakopane dazzles, and Gubałówka even more so. In terms of food, the options range from pork cutlets and burgers to ice cream and oscypek with cranberry sauce. For entertainment, you can shoot at teddy bears, throw basketballs at small rotating people, or stop off for a quick prayer in the nearby church - the only building that actually matches Gubałówka aesthetically. And if anyone suddenly misses the seaside, there's even a beach. One thing that wasn't there during my school days: halal food and Arabic signage, apparently because Kraków and Zakopane have become popular destinations for visitors from the Middle East. National politics may say one thing, tourism another.
Since it was Monday and all the museums were closed, after spending half the average monthly salary on zapiekankas and waffles and soaking up the local colour, we returned to Kraków promising ourselves we'd come back to the Tatras one day - just somewhere beyond the main tourist crowds, where their beauty isn't obscured by an oscypek-and-cranberry festival.
Nissan Srissan
As I mentioned earlier, we were staying in Kraków while the concert was in Katowice, so some logistical planning was required. Dan's suggestion of spending the night at Katowice railway station appealed neither to my heart nor to my forty-year-old body. Night trains were scarce, so renting a car became the only option. And if you think that being Polish-born and holding a Polish driving licence automatically made me the designated driver, you're very much mistaken. Let me remind you that obtaining said licence took me about ten years, I hadn't driven on Polish roads in seven years, and parallel parking remains a mysterious dark art to me. Therefore Dan was appointed the driver.
The rental was supposed to cost £26, which immediately seemed suspicious. We kept wondering how "Free Car" intended to make money because the only free thing about it appeared to be the name. And I have to say I must congratulate them on their business creativity. The catch was... letters. Letters, ladies and gentlemen. I suspect the company's manager recently visited MOCAK and found inspiration in Baldessari. It turned out Dan's credit card displayed only his initials rather than his full name. The only way to rent the car under these dire circumstances was to purchase an insurance package at the incredibly special bargain price of £80. Apparently this would also save us from charges for any potential damages - such as a floor mat being slightly more to the left than before.
With a pain in both heart and wallet, we paid up and headed to collect the vehicle. Floor 4.5 suggested we would be given either a golden carriage or we would disappear in the abyss of the car park like Harry Potter. After 15 minutes of waiting for someone to take care of us and another 15 mins for the car park ticket there it stood in all its glory:
A Nissan Juke.
Snow-white. Majestic. Unstoppable.
A true beast.
Except that it suffered from severe anxiety disorder.
Every time we exceeded the speed limit by even one kilometre per hour, it beeped like it was possessed. Much like my nervous system when the television volume exceeds 25. But that’s another story. The beeping never stopped. Firstly because the car's speed-limit database bore little resemblance to reality; secondly because the road authorities in their infinite wisdom decided to change speed limits every twenty metres so despite Dan’s excellent clutch control we could not keep up. So we spent hours driving to the rhythm of relentless beeping which, after passing the threshold of total irritation, slowly evolved into a strangely hypnotic beat. Had I possessed any musical talent whatsoever, we could have sampled it and sold it to Taco or Mata or another artist with a two-syllable name. For a fair price because we are good people. Eighty quid would have done nicely. Unless, of course, there weren't enough letters on the credit card.
Metallica
Now, I could joke about this. I could mention that a bunch of sixty-year-olds are still pretending to be young. I could talk about Katowice drowning in black T-shirts and slightly intoxicated gentlemen occupying every patch of grass. Or how the Louis XIV-style Carska Restaurant packed with metalheads created profound cognitive dissonance. But none of that would be fair. Because those sixty-something gentlemen delivered such an incredible show that our emotional socks were blown off. I have no idea what supplements they're taking (though I can guess) to sustain that level of energy for two hours, but I'd like some too (or maybe not).
The concert had everything a metal soul could desire: the biggest hits, the less-famous hits, flames, giant inflatable balls, and a fantastic opening act - the French band Gojira. The cherry on top was the conscience found with some great difficulty but found nonetheless by the man in front of us who after thirty minutes of standing up and blocking the view finally sat down so we could fully appreciate the scale of the spectacle.
And while listening to Nothing Else Matters, surrounded by 90,000 people, I found myself remembering the wall of cassette tapes I saw years ago when I first stepped into the flat of Hanka - my favourite Metallica fan - who had heroically secured our concert tickets and later sent us (me more than Dan really) off with homemade lemon vodka.
Bombastic
Our stay in Kraków was rather idyllic, but it ended with a bang.
Wednesday evening. John Paul II International Airport. We're heading home. I'm enormously proud of myself because I checked in the luggage in record time, and now we can peacefully proceed to the duty-free zone in order to continue our long-standing tradition of buying absolutely nothing. We're calmly riding up the escalator toward security when Dan suddenly has a revelation:
"Wait. Where's my suitcase?
“Oh.”
My "oh" goes unheard because he's already racing off after his belongings, which I had absent-mindedly abandoned to their fate. Unfortunately, pursuing luggage is difficult when you're on an escalator moving in the opposite direction.
We go down. It goes up.
We go down. It goes up.
The two of us like a meme in a silent moving heading into the nothingness. Eventually we make it back to the check-in area. And there it is. The suitcase.
Untouched. Lonely. Innocently blue.
But there is also an airport employee who clearly finds that shade of blue rather less innocent, because he has already called security after spotting an unattended bag. And we all know what an unattended bag means at an airport. I immediately imagine a bomb scare, evacuation of the entire airport, and the two of us in jail. All that's missing is a positive explosives test on my hands. Which has actually happened before. But that's another story. Fortunately, the employee displays extraordinary faith in humanity. After reminding us three separate times that luggage must never be left unattended ladies and gentlemen, you should not leave your luggage unattended, really please do not, he informs security that the owner has been found, he's British, everything is fine, and we are free to continue toward the sunset - or rather, the duty-free area - to continue purchasing absolutely nothing with or without duty.
And so our Lesser Poland - Silesia story comes to an end.
I haven't written about St. Mary's Basilica, the Czartoryski Museum, the sour cabbage soup at Morskie Oko restaurant, or the countless coffees we drank in Kraków's market square.
Because what is there really to say?
Beautiful.
That's all.
And I'm only capable of writing either comedy or horror.
Kraków - we love you.
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