A Tale of Two Cities; They Were Wrong About Krakow

One city has dragons.

Prague is a beautiful city. The neoclassical apartments painted in pastels and towering over long boulevards filled with rattling red trams: beautiful. The slow flowing river filled with drunken swan boat paddlers passing under historic bridge after bridge: beautiful. The views of reddish roofs and sprawling parks and odd, eye-catching monuments from every high point: beautiful. 

And when I lived there, I found this to be true all the time. Add in a high-octane burst of “party-party” and an international sprawl of acquaintances, bilingual yoga classes, solo hikes and cooking classes, and it was paradise (at least until winter set in, then I was really screwed.)

All true, and yet every person I have chatted with who has visited recently has says they hated  it, my own sister included. 

“How could you hate it?” I prodded. She must not have listened to my advice. She must have messed it up. But then last week, I arrived back in the grand city of Praha for a three day visit. 

I understood. Prague in the summer stinks. Not like New York City sidewalk garbage stinks, but it stinks like tourism and fake crystal shops and stag parties and inconvenient construction and long lines under the scorching sun. All the weird puppets for sale and signs on the fruit that say “NO TASTING” and the traditional Christmas treat trdelnik now being served as a tourist ice cream cone - this is not the city I remember. 

After mulling it around for awhile, I realized: I was incredibly lucky to have experienced this city the way I did, from the inside, slowly, bit by bit. Because if you try to cram it all in, it’s going explode all over you like an overfilled suitcase stuffed with too many fake crystals and puppets and bottles of Becherovka. 

Krakow, on the other hand, is a beautiful city. I have heard the line many times, “Krakow is what Prague was (10, 15, 20) years ago,” and I believed all of these random sources so much that I knew I had to go someday. 

I researched Krakow just a bit before arriving and was disappointed. Many of my favorite travel blogs said they were underwhelmed by it. The drunk emo musician on the train on the way to Krakow said it was “How do you say? Over rated?” I worried, just a little, that I had made a mistake.

Krakow is a beautiful city. It is a green, trendy, colorful, historical, small-ish, smiling city. 

Are there lots of tourists? Of course. But most of them sleep like vampires during the day so they can go out to the hidden discos at night. It is in fact possible to walk all day and see no lines. 

There are also souveniers, but most of them are inside this one hall in the middle of the market square. Instead, there are flower vendors everywhere! The Poles love flowers. And the outdoor markets sell real food, bright and big, while nanas sit on benches knitting socks to sell. 

You can just walk on in to Wawel’s palace, any time, and see how cute and clean and old it is. No lines. And around the front along the river is a FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON. Tourists like to take pictures of that. But not too many. 

The restaurant/cafe life is a hipster dream. Just when you think you’ve seen enough ivy covered walls, or cool woven hanging lamps, or old carved wooden staircases, you look through to the back and realize there is an equally cute outdoor courtyard. The courtyards are everywhere! 

Not to mention, and I won’t say this too loudly, but - Poland is so. Cheap. 

There are always things I can criticize, and Poland is no exception. There are no free bathrooms anywhere, so I always sneak into bars like a peeing criminal. The lights to cross streets aren’t long enough to cross the whole way, so you always get stuck in the middle. Polish cent coins are SO tiny, I keep dropping it everywhere. It looks like doll coins. The pierogis sometimes come out fried when you want boiled and boiled when you want fried, and the check never seems to arrive. 

But in this humble opinion, Krakow is underrated by online writers, and Prague has become a bit stinky.