July 12th, 2005 | The lowdown by Bryan Fox

Hello Krakow.

Krakow is a great city to live in. Compact enough that you never wind up needing to take a taxi home, after a month you will recognize the locals by the park benches they sit on or the obwarzanki stands from which they hawk the local version of a cross between a New York Bagel and a Philly Pretzel. After 2 weeks I found I'd had all my favorite restaurants already mapped out on the Stare Miasto plan they give you in the Tourist Office, and I felt as though, even if I'd missed out on some of the famed 400 pubs and clubs the Old Town proudly boasts of, I'd seen enough to know which ones were worth going to and which ones were worth going back to.

Nobody seems to actually be from Krakow. All the Polish students are there from somewhere else, which is a great experience if you come from a small school and want to see what its like to be in a university town. The weather is pretty unfriendly, but in a way, that gives the town a certain charm because it means that the backpacking hordes toting Lonely Planet Europe under one arm (with all the good places already dog-eared) can only invade from around May till about September. The scourge that is the British Stag (bachelor) Party is arriving, but slowly, and again, its limited to a fairly short season. I arrived in late August to a bustling city, but realized one brisk day in early October that, at some point, it was just us locals.

Festivals abound. Jazz fairs, soup fairs, pierogi fairs and so many other manner of university functions, dances, and ceremonies that it seems as though whenever it's not snowing they're either putting up or taking down a stage in the Rynek about 4 days out of 5. They must have a special Stage Construction Budget basket passed around in church on Sunday that everyone feels somewhat obliged to toss a few grosze into. But its quite beautiful and quaint watching the snow fall on a crisp grey afternoon, sitting out at a stall in the Squares Christmas Market sipping grzane wino (mulled wine) and humming Christmas carols to yourself. I remember having a ceramic snow village as a kid, and kept coming back to that image every time I crossed the Square on the way to class or dinner.

Krakow is a religious town. Poland is a religious country. Nearly 60% of all Poles still attend church every Sunday. Memorable was the time when a Polish friend hastily ended a barroom conversation at 2am to excuse himself to get some sleep before mass later that morning. The Pope's death was a startling time to be here. Growing up in secular America, I always thought that religion was something for old people. But here it's rare to meet a Pole who doesn't go to mass once in a while, even if its just to keep the family happy.

98% of the country is ethnically Polish. If you are not white, or even, if you are not apparently Slavic, be aware that people will look at you a bit more and a bit longer than they might at home. And there's a disappointingly high amount of Negative Male Energy. By this I mean guys about town, not the university-going type, who like to start trouble if you look like you're not from just down the street. I had a few uncomfortable experiences and the Spanish Erasmus friends I have here told me they had fared far worse. Nothing to worry about, really - sometimes the only answer to an unsolicited drunken challenge is none at all. Not many people are interested enough to pursue the issue if you just walk away. A Polish friend of mine laughed and said it's just because they don't have girls, and there's probably something to that, but football hooligans are around in season as well. The standard uniform of cheap tracksuit and shaven head makes them pretty easy to spot. Its certainly not a reason not to come, but be forewarned.

Poles like to meet you, though. An English friend advised me early on that the best pickup line in a bar is Do you speak English? The answer is usually yes. In fact, young people speak well enough that you may find it frustrating if you come here to learn and practice Polish. I made the linguistically suicidal move of falling into the company of a Polish-American girl from my course a few weeks after I arrived, which meant that every time I went out, I had a translator at the ready. But hey, when the heart speaks, the mind finds it senseless to object, Kundera said, and thats what studying abroad is all about.