This Is the Very End

I'm leaving Cracow today.

After nine months of living here it feels difiicult to go away, especially if I consider that I won't return in the near future – I'll study in Hungary from September. As a farewell, I decided to try to sum up what it is like to live in Cracow.

Cracow's coat of arms

I've heard a saying: 'Warsaw is the capital of Poland but Cracow is the capital of the Polish.' This describes Cracow's position rather well: from an administrational point of view, it's not as important as Warsaw – it's only the centre of a voivodeship (województwo: more or less the Polish equivalent of 'county') called Lesser Poland (Małopolska) – but in the field of history, cultural heritage and programmes it at least equals it. The Old Town has been named a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO and the whole city has been awarded the 'City of Literature' title as well. It's not at all hard to find cultural programmes here: apart from numerous museums, theatres and concert venues there's almost always some sort of festival like the OFF Camera Feastival of independent films, the Festival of the City (Święto Miasta) or right now the Festival of Jewish Culture (Festiwal Kultury Żydowskiej).

When I first visited Cracow as a tourist a few years ago, I was absolutely charmed by the atmosphere of the city. For example, I liked the obwarzanek vendors very much. The obwarzanek is a bakery product twisted in the shape of a circle – my family simply calls it 'round pretzel'. The types most commonly sold are made with salt, cheese, sesame or poppy seed, but there's also a 'wholegrain' version with a little darker dough. At first I thought these are mainly sold to tourists but since I moved here I've known that the locals also buy them if they haven't had the opportunity to eat breakfast at home. Meanwhile I've even observed that the vendors have different strategies: some of them sort their wares by type in orderly columns:

some of them fish out the needed kind of obwarzanek from a seemingly impenetrable mess:

And there are even some who build a wall of neat columns in the front but let the chaos rule behind it…

Of course, living here since autumn I've got to know the less representative side of the city as well. For example I had to realise that the Old Town is so clean only because little electrical sweeping machines hum around in it every morning.

The other parts of the city don't experience such luxury and their looks comply with that.

Another thing I had to take in was the fact that Cracow's air is one of the most polluted in Europe because the city is situated in a valley where the wind can't really sweep through it. At first I was very suprised at this because it doesn't exactly comply with the sight of huge green areas in Cracow but later I started to notice the signs: for example the mildly purplish-greyish colour of the sky above the Old Town on windless days or that the dust settles so quickly in my room in the dormitory that I could clean the shelves every day.

But these discoveries, although they tuned my impression of the city a bit, they didn't ruin it. I still think that Cracow is a friendly place with a great atmosphere and a human scale. This latter also means that it's of a comprehesible size: it has roughly 760 000 inhabitants and the most important places are usually within walking distance from each other. Should you have to travel somewhere further away, the excellent public transport is at your service. There are numerous tram lines around the Old Town. The trains running on them are mostly pretty and modern:

This new model, still on test run (with temporary painting) is called 'Tramino'...

A bit further from the centre older trams are more common

along with buses. All the vehicles of public transport are painted with the colours of the flag of the city:

blue or blue-white – I don't know how you can set buses apart from trams this way… (In Budapest, every type of public transport has its distinct colour.)

The schedule is quite sparse from the point of view of someone from Budapest, some routes are never more frequent than fifteen minutes and the vehicles are often uncomfortably crowded. However, the system of tickets is quite practical: the single tickets are not valid for just one ride but for twenty or forty minutes, they're not too expensive and there is a 50% discount if you are a student, for example. And to top it all, there's a ticket vending machine on every vehicle (and roughly seventy percent of them are even working…), where you can buy tickets at the normal price.

At the stops you can read on a screen when the next tram comes and where it is headed:

There was no problem with the screen, it only looks strange on the photo…

That yellow button on its side is not a simple decoration: it constatly gives out a ticking sound and if someone pushes it, a mechanic voice reads out the information from the screen. This is not the only measure with which Cracow is helping the blind and partially sighted. The traffic lights at a lot of intersections give out sounds as well (in some places a male voice keeps repeating 'światło czerwone, proszę czekać' which means 'the light is red, please wait'). In other parts of the city the drivers are warned to navigate carefully:

In the Old Town you can find a maquette you can touch at every important sight with Polish and English legend – also in Braille.

Of course, the maquettes attract the perfectly sighted children (and grown-ups) as well

I don't exactly know the reason for this special priority – it might be an application the city managed to win or simply the disposition of the leaders of the administration – but I like it very much. Just like lots of other features of Cracow: the crowds of habit-wearing nuns, monks and priests in the streets, the good-humoured patience of the locals with the foreign tourists, the countless little boutiques, shops, bars and bakeries, the naturaleness of the locals as they walk past centuries-old buildings every day… I could continue the list very long.

To sum it up shortly, I've taken a liking for Cracow and I feel sorry to leave it. And I haven't even mentioned the friends I've made here, who have helped me a lot not to feel so homesick and to wish I'd be back here after I've left. I don't doubt that I'll return to Cracow – when and for how long, I don't know yet. Now I can only see that this must be the very end of my stay, so I'm leaving.