Krakow: What to do, see, eat, avoid.

(In which Tim, donning the ill fitting mantle of a travel writer, eschews bitchy bar room observations and talks about his general thoughts on Krakow. Probably not going to go too deep into the historic churches, castles, squares. There’s other bloggers for that. This is more about my impressions. Which is a pretentious way of saying, it’s some lazy old bollocks I wrote semi pissed into my notebook whilst writing the other two parts to my Krakow Trilogy.)

Anyway, Krakow.

Yes beautiful. Definitely come here. They speak perfect English everywhere. I quizzed a barman about this. It’s the linga franca of our age. We all are dragged back to the universal English. Sorry French. Germans. Italians who, outside their own country have to meet serving staff in a third language. Our greatest achievement perhaps? The default option - the bitcoin of language.

I don’t really do touristy things but, here’s a couple off everyone’s top ten of things to do in Krakow:

1) Wawel Castle. Yes, it’s the number one place to see and rightly so. Get your lazy arse up that hill and snap those tourist shots; you know the ones… The ones you get out your phone for and bore your friends with. It’s mostly free. Pay to wander around inside and pretend to be interested in 16th century tapestries, or something. I took the dragon’s cave steps down to the town for a small fee.

2) Oskar Schindler Factory museum. Well worth a trip across the river. Thought provoking and deftly handled. Read my article here.

3) Old Town Square. Yeah, it’s big. You’ll probably spend most of your time there anyway.

4) Get pissed in various bars and write scabrous & bitchy articles through hazes of practiced ennui enthused vodka. Read mine here.

5) The dumplings. Yeah, why not.

6) Parks and cleanliness. The whole of the old square is surrounded by a greenery. I believe this is the moat converted to parkland. Very lovely.

Food and Drink

There are lots of bars and restaurants. Where did I eat?

Polish cuisine. You can’t avoid the pierogi - those stuffed dumplings (meat / spinach, cheese, take your pick). I went to Mirror Bistro which is a pierogi specialist. I had the Borsch with an egg followed by meat pierogis with caramelised onions. Very traditional. A bit dry for my liking - wish I’d have paired with a cream sauce for that satisfied ‘fuck it, I’m on holiday’ experience. Washed down with beer. 82 Zloty (£18!)

As I’m trying to avoid potatoes / wheat etc, I looked up and went to salad bar Chimera. It’s situated in a street adjacent to the main square. Yeah, I know a salad bar sounds crap but this was a good find. It’s a pretty place in a covered courtyard. There’s a long counter with various salads but also the odd meat dish too. You pay per portion. It wasn’t expensive. I had a plate full of various salads and chicken washed down with beer and (the free) freshly squeezed orange juice.

And yes, I went to a Taste Poland (Grodska) fast food joint just off the main square (Grodska 38). I had more Pierogi, a Polish sausage and pickles plus my inevitable beer (see photo above to the right). Nothing to be snobby about, it was lovely and just what I needed. Fast and friendly service (you get a beeper which goes off when your order is ready). 78 Zloty (£16). If you need a quick but authentic fuel stop, I’d go here.

But I spent most of my time in bars. You know, how else does this stuff get written?

My favourite was B.O.H.O to which I returned three times. It’s on Stolarska 6 which is near Planty Park. Read my pissed up observations of this bar written on my three visits through hazes of practiced ennui enthused vodka here.

Black Gallery Pub. (Mikołajska 24 - just above Planty). A good stop off, intriguing bar on a couple of levels, wooden look, friendly bar staff. Worth a beer before (or after) dinner.

Other random observations

Some observations about Krakow, Poland and the Polish based on a couple of days wandering around Krakow. Hot-takes are the best takes!

Denim shorts (mainly light denim like the 80’s never stopped). Must be like a national dress here in Poland. The temperature hit 30C whilst I was here and it seemed all the men - and a lot of the women - got their denim shorts out. Now, I don’t possess a pair and so, caught short, I constantly looked like a tourist. This is a disadvantage especially later on at night walking through the old town square and the main roads leading from it. A single male being identified as a tourist is not fun (see below).

Mobile phones. Polish people actually put their mobiles to their ears and have discreet conversations. And don’t put the recipient of their call on speaker phone. Oh how quaint and different from lovely Britannia where it is de rigueur to yell at the mobile and entertain your enraptured public with both sides of your conversation. The Poles clearly need to catch up.

There are some tramps in Krakow. They congregate darkly on the outer benches of the parks. With unkempt beards, unwashed clothes and scrappy backpacks, they pass local firewater between themselves. They don’t shout, they don’t harass. They don’t pitch tents on the pavement, shoot up drugs in front of you or lie comatose outside international rail stations (BTW: Krakow station is immaculate and a living embarrassment to the UK). In a way, the tramps of Krakow remind me of the old school alkies I remember from the 70’s who used to hang around Rochdale’s war memorial, dissolute but discreet. In the three days I was here, I wasn’t harassed by beggars once. 

But I was harrassed during the day around the main square and river by a constant sea of hawkers, hawking their city tours, river tours, guided tours. They’re easy to spot and avoid as they like to dress up in colourful outfits. At night though, mmm, it’s a different story…

As a single man walking through the main square and the roads leading from it, I was constantly approached by, what’s the right words, pretty women who wanted me to come to a party. How friendly of them! Seemingly these parties are where women take their clothes off for money. For variation, their male counterparts - with a knowing nudge, nudge, wink, wink, also offered to take me to these self same parties.

Frankly it’s annoying and put a downer on my evening walks. However, Krakow isn’t the only place where this happens but it’s seedy and makes you distrust friendly faces and pretty girls. 

Pedestrian crossings. A strange observation perhaps but a telling one. Everyone waits for the green man signal before traversing the road. Even when there’s no traffic. Respect the culture. 

Travel

I went for three days late August 2025. I flew from Gatwick on Easy Jet. It takes just over two hours to get to Krakow. There’s a train station at the airport which takes you in twenty minutes to the central train station in Krakow. Tickets are easily bought from machines at the station or sold to you on the train. The trains are immaculate so much so that I wander up and down a few carriages thinking I was in first class. No, they’re just clean and comfy. I stayed in the IBIS budget next to the main shopping centre (and the main train station). Probably a 15 min walk to the old town. I didn’t feel unsafe wandering around - other than being accosted by enthusiasts of strip clubs. My flight back was with Wizz Air.

I booked via lastminute.com. The cost was just under £500 for the return flights and two nights at the hotel. Food, drink and entrance fees are cheap once you get there.

Thoughts from B.O.H.O. bar in Krakow

(In which a sweary Tim, vodka in one hand, beer in the other, laptop twix and between, attempts to summarise Poland’s second city sat in a bar; gradually sliding into a lulled pissness. The late summer heat is on in Krakow, the sun is shining and yet he manfully pens this hipshot hot take from within a bar taking refuge from tourists, near and perhaps within, the historic centre. Could I instead be sightseeing? Could I be looking through churches? Could I be describing the architecture? No. Fuck that. Même merde, endroit différent. For a similar cockeyed take on foreign cities, see my Thoughts from a bar in Antwerp)

Part of the Krakow Trilogy

The smoke fills the bar.

Diverse young people - in Gothic attire, suits, sporting tattoos, nose rings, ripped clothes, beards - smoke cigarettes like it’s Brighton 2007. Almost nostalgic, in fact.

Now, I’ve been around. Liberal Netherlands, for instance. Sans joint, you’re outside the joint these days. Alsjeblief. But here, and obviously not all bars in Krakow, smoking seems tolerated in some. I thought it was an EU-wide ban. Clearly not. Fans silently whir above me.

I don’t smoke (vape, anyone?) but the libertarian in me, likes the choice. I always thought - before the COVID gestapo overreach obviously - that blanket smoking bans were wrong: What about having smoking pubs and non smoking pubs? Let the public decide. But I lost the argument I never made.

Anyway, my new favourite bar in Krakow - B.O.H.O (on Stolarska Street) - doesn’t care. The clientele aren’t 50 something American tourist Karens waving their hands dismissively at the smoke, but locals and me. I sit inside. The small tables outside scoop up whatever tired tourists there are. Good, stay out on the pavement.

I mean, who’s here with me right now in this back room (with open windows onto the street)?

On the next table, we have blonde mullet guy talking to - chatting up? - a brunette girl who is giving him too much eye contact for my liking. Get a fucking room! They’re both about twenty and lean ever so closely together and pore over each other’s mobiles to demonstrate a point / show an insightful Tictoc (or whatever kids use these days). Both smoke. And both - betraying their age perhaps - are drinking some iced coffee / chocolate concoction. I think, and who cares what I think, they’ll be some fumblings, some awkward love making tonight.

But maybe he should get her a vodka to help nature take its course?

Permed heavy rock guy in a long overcoat (why? It’s 25C) has just left with strappy top free spirited girl. Part of me hopes that, outside the bar, she thanks him for the coffee and overlong discussion about Star Wars minutiae, and then leaves him for the comforting vibration of a rampant rabbit or something. (Editor’s note: What the fuck do you know about this Tim? Straying from the path into the dark of Mirkwood here, methinks?).

We have tattooed lady in black lipstick and shades pouring over hand written sheets of paper. Maybe her novel. She has an oversized coffee and an ashtray in front of her. She earnestly consults her phone and then carefully writes onto her sheets of paper. Edits to her masterpiece? A manifesto of hate and dislocation perhaps. More likely unrequited love and pussycats? Dunno. She offered me her plug when my laptop looked like dying which was nice of her. Battery packs are a life saver in more than one way.

Blonde couple next to me have finished their drinks but have just lit up anyway. Money seems tight. Mmmm. Anyway. Her eye contact is getting ever more suggestive. As are her ‘innocent’ hand and knee movements that accidentally touch mullet guy. He seems clueless. Take the W mate. And yet. And yet. He prevaricates like he’s channelling the younger Tim Robson. Unable to close the deal, he’s moved back into his chair. As has she. That fleeting moment lost. Maybe I should help out?

I wonder, have they ever seen Indecent Proposal? Probably not. Am I playing the ageing satyr? The world weary roué? One million dollars reduced to a round or two of vodkas? Bad Tim. Bad Tim

They liven up to Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs. It’s that sort of place. English Indie music. Perhaps I should let slip that the tune they’re half singing along to to, I saw performed at the Brighton Centre Feb 7th 1987. No? 1987! That’s like, a long fucking time ago granddad!

(The gig was to follow up on the beefed up version of Pretty in Pink which enlivened the movie de jour of the same name and briefly tickled the charts in 1986. All I remember of the gig was that they wore ridiculous raincoats which seem daft even in 1987. Not cool, just stupid.)

They sit engrossed in their own phones. She texts. He looks at something ephemeral. They leave. Probably it’ll happen on the balance of probabilities. Maybe not. I hope so. He put in the hours.

Two blokes in front of me smoke and tap on their laptops. No novels being created here. There’s a matrix of coding on one screen and impenetrable graphs on the other. Must be working. They flip between languages as they sip coffee.

Another couple sit in the corner. Apart from tangentially touching lighters and an ashtray, they sport an empty glass between them. He talks a lot. Baseball cap, wire glasses; he has views. Lots of views. The not unattactive girl robotically nods but leans her head against the wall, eyes closing. Although he’s speaking Polish, I think I can understand what he says. Roughly translated, ‘blah, blah, blah, I like to drive women away with a shitty stick’.

In fact; am I the only one in this bar who actually buys booze? The rest seem to get a coffee, a free water and then smoke cigarettes and live their life. Beardy who’s joined the two laptop nerds even takes a sip from a flask hidden in his bag and laughs as I spot him doing it. This is a fucking social club for writers, nerds and nerds trying to get laid.

Then a lady in a long red and tight dress walks in; all mystery and old time glamour. I try not to stare. She plonks down a thick feminist text and a packet of cigarettes on the table next to me and disappears off to the bar. Chance, serendipity both laugh their arse off at me. Me, who has to leave in ten minutes for the airport and out of Krakow, leaving Poland behind. I have The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera on the table next to my beer, my vodka, my laptop. Maybe she could have been the one. Maybe she would be more than just a bitchy footnote in a blog. A might have been. Indeed; She. Could. Have. Been. The. One.

But time. Circumstance. They mock my foolish thoughts and dreams.

So I drink up my beer, chug the vodka and finish this blog to the sounds of Ed’s Funky Diner.

Need a piss first though.

---

Slightly More Serious Review

B.O.H.O Coffee and Bar is within the Old Town area of Krakow, quite near to Planty Park. Small tables front the property. Inside it’s a pleasing mismatch of a large red armchairs and sofas, indispersed with more standard wooden tables. The bar staff are friendly, everyone smokes but - apart from a wannabe English writer - no one seems to drink alcohol that much. I make up for them. Could be that I came during the daytime.

It’s a cosy bar spread over three linked rooms and is frequented by locals, distressingly way younger than me. There’s a studenty / just graduated vibe to it. The atmosphere is welcoming though and was the perfect place for me to write - in fact - it’s harder to spot those without a laptop than those with.

The music tends to be (or at least when I was there) Indie music from the 80’s. No problem with that!

I didn’t sample the cakes / food etc. They would have got in the way of my beer and vodka chasers so I can’t comment on the food but it looked good.

This was my favourite place in Krakow. It must have been; I returned there three times over three days in the blazing sun of late August 2025. Yes, the vignette above is a composite piece. All art is, by definition, arrayed in the robe of artifice my friends. I make no apology for that. It’s my literary Impressionism in action.

But for further and more sober insights into Krakow and where else other than a friendly bar to go to, check out my Krakow Trilogy.

Oskar Schindler's Factory: Thoughts

Thoughts..

Like many in the 90’s I saw Spielberg’s Schindler's List. Whilst an undoubtedly moving film, it’s probably not one you’d want to watch twice. A tale of one man’s redemption through good works as he battles the Nazi occupiers cruelty in their persecution of the Jews in Poland.

I’m in Krakow this week.

This morning I got up early and walked across the Vistula River and onto the Oskar Schindler Museum situated in the same factory buildings where he protected hundreds of Jews from the Nazi authorities and death.

I didn't know what I expected. A worthy museum perhaps, with exhibitions of metallurgy perhaps and a dry retracing through the themes of the movie. That’s not what I found.

I would say three quarters of the museum concentrates - through photographs, movies and artefacts - on the history of Krakow during the build up to the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland.

You start at the top of the building and work down as the exhibitions take you through life in Krakow through summer 1939 to 1945 and the inhumanity and savagery - even pettiness - of the Nazi occupation. The tragedy of the Polish people generally, and the sizeable Jewish population in particular, is laid out through well chosen and contemporaneous displays.

Aside: It’s quite shocking to see displays of original Nazi regalia, from banners to machine guns, right through to branded tableware. These days the swastika is so verboten it’s quite a reality check to see the real deal that, instead of some lazy reference point, was actually - not so long ago - a living symbol of real evil.

Swastikas aside, there are many other pointed reminders of the executions, restrictions and even the Germanification of Krakow (language, education, housing; even street names). (1) We in Britain, through the English Channel, Spitfires, the Royal Navy, Churchill and good luck (the free Poles too!), avoided having to face this calamity. (2)

Unlike other museums I’ve been to, the fact that this one is cited in the actual location of so much history, is somewhat humbling. (3) A couple of times, I will admit, I was holding back tears. History weighs heavy in the location, in the subject matter. And it wasn’t so very long ago. And, if history is any guide and the human condition doesn’t change - and it won’t - this could be a path we go down again.

It ends with the Soviet occupation in1945. The Poles gained a country but lost their freedom.

So, what do I conclude:

1) Definitely go to this museum. It’s well worth it and any museum that provokes thought, reflection and a sense of an individual’s heroism against a harsh world is worth the (low) admission price.

2) A renewed hatred of the Nazis. There’s a reason they’re viewed in such disgust. I would caution though that they weren’t the only ones in history with a bad reputation (all countries, peoples and cultures are guilty). They might not be the last.

3) There is hope. I walked back through Kazimierz - the historical Jewish district of Krakow. I sensed no animus but instead saw Jewish shops and restaurants (and even an Israeli flag). Many tourists. History is long with many winding roads shaded from view. Perhaps, sometimes, they lead from a dark place into the light. It’s never perfect though.

Notes

1) Ignorant buffoon that I am, a cursory reading of history reveals the Germification of the Polish language and culture isn’t confined to 1939-45. The whole 19th Century after the Partitions of Poland (1772/95), for example. In the interest of balance, the forced deportations of ethnic Germans from Poland after 1945 shouldn’t be ignored. Which all goes to show, with history, the more you know, the less you really know. Always be alert to simplification, in both broad culture and - most particularly - in the narrow interests of politicians who use collective ignorance to drive a nefarious agenda.

2) The semi satirical American put down of Brits: “You’d all be speaking German if it wasn’t for us,” never felt so chillingly real.

3) A similar sensation you get in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Different country, same tragedy.