Little Impressions

Last week, a friend of mine visited me – she is the first of my friends (apart from relatives) who fulfilled the promise almost everyone made when I moved abroad. She deserves at least a laurel wreath for that.

One night, we were walking towards the tram stop when she said: 'How cute!' When I saw what she meant I had to smile too:

For me, one of the most important characteristics of Cracow is that it can surprise me. And no matter how much ill I have spoken of the city in my post about cultural shock (http://notsimplylooking.blogspot.com/2015/03/culture-shock.html), the majority of these surprises is positive. Or to be precise, they make me smile.
Although in my case that's not a hard task, a black and white picture on the door of our university library

or a secessionist door on the other side of the street is enough.

Such unexpected, but pleasant impressions can really make me love a city.

When I first visited Cracow with my family four and a half year ago, I think the strongest mark in my memory was left by this statue standing (or lying?) at the corner of the Main Square:

Its title is 'Eros Bendato', which means 'bound' or 'blindfolded' Eros in Italian. Its donor and creator is Igor Mitoraj, a Polish artist born in Germany, who died last year in October.

Its curiosity is that you can (and are allowed to) climb into it, although I can hardly imagine a more bizarre pose for a photo than looking out through the eyes of a bronze statue.

When I moved out here last year and suddenly found myself alone in a foreign city (this was the second time I was in Cracow), these little surprises meant a lot for my undeniably depressed state of mind. I remember for example puzzling a lot about the meaning of the poster of the Main Academic Bookshop (Główna Księgarnia Naukowa).

Is it supposed to be a warning that we are neglecting contemporary literature? Or should we simply think it over that actually long dead authors are spekaing to us through their literary works? And how is this connected to a bookshop which sells almost exclusively textbooks?

I also discovered this in those days:

I still don't know, what exactly this was supposed to be. A not very diffictult hopscotch? The squares of a huge board game? Some sort of sightseeing route? I only know for sure that it went from 1 to 1200 (if I'm not mistaken) but it wasn't always obvious, where it continued: for example field square 343 disappeared into the gutter a few streets away so that the next one would 'come up' here.

I'm very sorry that I hadn't walked along this before it suddenly disappeared. Then, perhaps, I would have found out, what it was for.

Then winter arrived and the first snow fell. In principle I'm not very fond of this season and of the ten-minute-long dressing ceremony before leaving home, and I only like looking at the snowfall from the window of a heated room but the resindents of Cracow succeeded in making me look at it more cheerfully:

I would suggest that the Mayor of Cracow patent the 'Cracovian eared snowman'-design. Or is it rather a snowbear?

Some phenomenons are even more interesting if you know their background:

These are Dumka and Konik ('Pride' and 'Horsey'), who are waiting for their master with more patience than well-bred dogs. You can often see them in Cracow on the main street or near the Church of Holy Mary. They're not ponies but so called 'koniks', which is a traditional Polish horse breed.

Their owner is Lech Krzewicki, who describes himself as a 'vagrant', although newspapers prefer to call him a hippie. He lives with his horses in an abandoned house not far from Cracow but sometimes comes into the city to shop and then, in return for a small donation, he lets tourists stroke Dumka and Konik, who endure this patiently. Except for when they break free (like last year in August –  http://www.gazetakrakowska.pl/artykul/3551235,dwa-konie-biegaly-samopas-po-krakowie-moglo-sie-skonczyc-tragicznie-zdjecia,id,t.html) and stop the traffic for a little while. The Munincipal Police (Straż Miejska, not the same as the Police (Policja)) is not exactly happy with this but the old man and his horses are quite popular so they don't fuss too much. Though the animal walfare authority examined the stalls of the horses a few years ago (http://www.gazetakrakowska.pl/artykul/215698,krakow-wedrowiec-i-jego-konie-maja-obroncow,id,t.html), which is actually a converted coal cellar, but eventually they didn't take them from their owner, who declared to the journalists that if someone tried to seize his animals, he would simple take them and move on as he had done it before – that's why he calls himself a vagrant.

In don't really think that Dumka and Konik live under worse circumstances than the entirely legal cart-drawing horses on the Main Square, whose majority seems to be – to put it mildly – a nervous wreck.

But there are some things you have the chance to discover almost exclusively if you're rowing the streets of the city as a tourist. For example I would have never thought of entering the Church of St Peter and Paul on the main street if I hadn't accompanied my godparents on their sightseeing tour. And it would have been a pity to miss it because beyond the fact that it's a nice baroque church ('to be precise: early baroque' stated my friend who visited me last week and happens to study art history), the Polish National Pantheon (Panteon Narodowy) has been established in its crypt. I guess it has been noticed that the Cathedral of the Wawel is practically full, but I'll write about that some other time. The Pantheon is not filled yet, to be exact, apart from three graves it's entirely empty. The first is the ornamented marble coffin of Andrzej Trebicki who was the bishop of Cracow in the 17th century, the second is the remains of Piotr Skarga (a Jesuit, one of the leaders of the Polish Counter-Reformation), and the third – this is where my heart started pounding – is the grave of the playwright Sławomir Mrożek.

He was the first one buried here after the foundation (2010) and opening (2012) of the National Pantheon, in 2013 – a worthy beginning, so to say.

However, you needn't go under the ground to see something interesting: you can find some amusing inscriptions just walking in the streets. For example here's a restaurant called 'The first pub in the Stolarska Street on the left side coming from the direction of the Lesser Main Square':

And I also like that there's a Peter Pan Street in Cracow:

But walking around in Cracow you'll notice the blooming street art sooner. I have already complained about the purposeless graffiti but I must admit that they're balanced by loads of actually decorative murals.

There is a long concrete wall near my residence, which is seemingly at the disposal of graffitists and therefore its decoration is slowly but constantly changing. What's more, the drawings cover a wide range of styles:

In certain neighbourhoods some walls are covered by obviously officially commissioned paintings matching the spirit of the area:

Kazimierz (the Jewish Quarter)

The campus of the Technical University of Cracow (AGH)

My personal favourite is at the edge of the inner city:

The poem 'Barcelona' by Adam Ziemianin – https://pauliwj.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/wall-of-poetry/

(This also encouraged me to follow the call of the Hungarian website Gittegylet.com and on 11 April (the Day of Hungarian Poetry) I posted the Polish translation of a poem by the Hungarian poet Sándor Petőfi at the bus stop of the street named after him (ulica Sándora Petőfiego).

Meanwhile I heroically ignored the notices which strictly forbid the posting of any kind of unofficial paper at the bus stops, so I became a real cultural terrorist.)

And I encountered an absolutely new (or at least for me unknown) type of graffiti: religious murals.

This also shows very well, what an enourmous role the character of John Paul II played (and plays today as well) in the piety of the Polish. Now, at the tenth anniversary of his death (2 April 2005) there is a particularly great amount of posters and programmes connected to him in Cracow. The city has always been one of the flagships of his cult – but I'll write about that some other time.