July 12th, 2005 | The lowdown by Bryan Fox

Happy Hour All Night Long. The Krakow Bar Scene.

Krakow nightlife is abundant but falls into a few main categories. There are the student bars and discos that survive by being big and loud and charging 50 grosze less per beer than the non-student bars, which are also full of students anyway. Not a big house scene, much to my disappointment, but if you don't mind getting drunk on $1 pints and dancing to 80s songs remixed to a house beat, jumping up and down with first years, there's always a place to go out.

Beer and vodka are the drinks of choice, as whiskey and other liquors tend to be more expensive and there isn't a bar in town where you can get a well-made cocktail. Polish beer's best attribute, far and away, is its price. Zywiec, the local favorite, tastes as though it's been lovingly filtered down from a cool mountain stream and then carefully siphoned over the wrinkled ridges of an agitated elephant's flip side on a warm summer's eve. The most common response from foreigners drinking it on tap is 'maybe they didn't clean the pipes.' Nope, that's just they way it tastes. There's a reason you can order beer here with sok (juice) - it's rough to choke it down without assistance. Okocim is somewhat better, and Lech and Tyskie are palatable. That being said, insulting a Poles' beer is tantamount to making claims to his sister's chastity, so if you're offered a round, you'd do well to take it and drink with a smile.

As for vodka, the selection is far better. Poles drink it clean, sometimes not even cold, but the variety is limitless. There's a great corner bar called, quite simply, Vodka, on Ul. Mikolajska just outside the Rynek that has something like 60 different types, which they happily and knowledgeably serve up in chilled glasses for your tasting pleasure.

There are several clubs, and there are some local bars with character, and many others without. Generally clubs don't charge to get in, but they usually have a few doorselekcja, or bulky bald guys who will appraise your relative social worth. Many places stay open until ostanti klient (the last customer), but the bummer is that, while a lot of the places let you stay as long as you like, many wont let you in after a certain hour.

At times it feels like the student town status can take away from the development of a quality club scene. My theory is that, in a town where everybody is only living for three to five years, the clubs know they don't need to develop – they just need to offer a reliable product and the cheapest drinks possible. By the time the regulars are sick of it, they're about to move on anyway. In the few places I happened to go to regularly, the DJs played literally the same set every week. If you are into raves and an underground scene, Krakow probably wont be the most exciting place for you. I actually started raving on my first study abroad experience in Melbourne, Australia. There, the DJs are lousy but the people in the scene are great. Then I moved on to Tokyo, where the DJs are great but the people are lousy. Krakow, sadly, has managed to combine the worst of both worlds – neither the clubbers nor the DJs are all that inspiring. There is a general lack of an 'alternate' culture in general. Perhaps four decades of state-mandated conformity take a while to work their way out of the system.

The only real neighborhood outside of the Old City, Kasimierz, is a good drinking night out. Lots of low-lit bars with often outrageous décor that spill out into the street when its not too wintry. Hot wine and candlelight and fire warmth and cigarette smoke and even if you just come alone, bring a book, and sip slow on a hot chocolate watching the snow swirl down outside, nobody's going to mind. I could name names, but there's something to be said for finding which bars you like on your own. As with everything in Krakow, you cant miss them the whole neighborhood has a radius of about 4 blocks.