Life in Kraków

By August Kochanowski

My whole spring semester of 2009 was spent in gleeful anticipation of the upcoming Krakow trip.
That is already here and, now, almost gone. Now that I look back on my time, with first impressions being a thing of the past, I can honestly comment on life in Krakow.

A great deal of my time in Krakow was spent in transit. When I say transit, I mean walking. This is one of the first things you will notice when arriving in this city; everyone walks everywhere. This doesn’t mean that Krakow has no public transportation. On the contrary the city is a crisscross of tram lines, some as old as communism and others modern and streamlined. Because of this people here are as skinny as rails. You can always tell who the foreigners are long before you hear them speak. When the locals aren’t walking you can find them on their knees in church. In all my travels I have never come across a place where people are so devout. On any given Sunday you can see parishioners congregated outside the churches listening to mass via a loud speaker. And it is not just Grandpa and Grandma; it’s also young people.

Krakow, being the cultural center of the country, has all of the best of Europe that you would expect such as cafes, cobblestone walks, statue-lined parks, and magnificent churches. But what I find so charming about this city are the things you won’t find in your guide book like the smell of coal in the air whenever it gets cold, the sound of people talking in a language foreign to my ear, pigeons (yes pigeons) and most of all the sense of pride I feel being in the homeland of my roots.