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Days 42 1st June Krakow (nightlife)
The weather took a dive overnight and the rain set in once again. It rained all night and we woke to a low grey mist shrouding the campsite. The weather forecast was heavy rain for the whole day with a glimmer of hope that it would stop late afternoon. Plans were reconsidered and we decided to stay ‘at home’ for the day.
Il P spent the day working on his business meetings for next week and trying to finish his novel. We brought out plenty of books, amongst them the Stieg Larsson Millennium Triology – we have both been gripped by them and Il P is now in the last quarter of Millennium III. I have moved on to Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen Detective novels set in Venice. For my part I took to doing the research for the second phase of our trip which takes place later this month.
We return to England on the 5th, Big Bess is having a rest out here in Poland. On the 26th we fly back out to join her and take her through Germany, up through Denmark into Norway. In order to maximise our time we need to plan carefully as the driving distances involved are huge and can sometimes be shortened by a ferry or two. Son no. 4 will be with us and son no. 3 will be picked up from Stavanger where he arrives having done a leg of the Tall Ships Race. Thereafter we spend 10 days taking advantage of Norway’s majestic fjords, stunning scenery and summer activities (mostly water based). I spent all day researching but there is still more to do and a good road map might help!
Tomorrow we visit Auschwitz-Birkenau and thereafter we are in work mode before coming home on Tuesday. We therefore decided to dress up and go ‘into town’, a little celebration of our wonderful trip (so far). It certainly made a change not wearing the walking shoes and carrying the rucksucks with the heavy guide books in them and we even treated ourselves to a taxi.
It had finally stopped raining as we were dropped off in Kazimierz, Krakow’s Jewish heart. We took in the atmosphere of a less touristy neighbourhood which was humming and seemed to have a very high concentration of pubs and nightclubs in quite a small area! We tore ourselves away and headed to the other side of the Old Town with the promise of eastern Polish (with a touch of Ukrainian & Lithuanian) cuisine. Restauracja Jarema was a charming restaurant, 19th century Polish aristocratic elegance, gentle waitresses dressed in long dresses reminiscent of Laura Ashley back in the 1970s and a duet (piano & violin) for entertainment. Il P chose a little more carefully this time so as to avoid large pieces of pork knuckle!
Having absorbed the ‘aristocratic elegance’ it was time to discover 21st century Krakow nightlife. Being ‘of an age’ we had carefully gone through our guidebooks – one was Lonely Planet and the other an American guidebook written by Rick Steves – we didn’t want to make any serious mistakes at 1 a.m. in the morning………….
I lived in Berlin for some years and the gay venues with their drag shows were always the absolute best entertainment. Krakow had given me the impression of being very like Berlin in the 1980s and so we thought an entertainment show with a bit of dancing would be fun….
“7club – Krakow’s oldest gay venue which is a dance club at the weekends with shows”. We arrive at the door of the club – steel door with bell outside and only the information that it opens at 10.30 p.m. and closes at 5 a.m. Mmmmm, shall we ring? Well, nothing to lose ………….the door is unbolted and a perfectly ordinary man dressed in T shirt and jeans looks at us quizzically taking in the reasonably smartly dressed Il P and his very female partner (me). Lots of Polish spoken and no English. We see nothing but a staircase going down into the cellar when eventually a girl appears. She too is dressed in jeans and shirt and we ask if we can come in and see the show. ‘Oh no’ says she ‘this is not for you (looking at me up and down), this is a man’s club only. Only men.’ Bang……. the door closes. We laughed as we headed off down the road – mistake no. 1 – attempting to get into a gay bar in Krakow!
Mistake No. 2:” Prozak (yes, really): A legend in its own lifetime, this nightlife giant was once celebrated for luring Krakow’s rich and beautiful into its labyrinth…” I don’t think we absorbed the word ‘was’ or were we simply getting too old (please…no!). We did get in through the bouncers (hardly surprising really) and found the labyrinth of passageways, nooks and crannies as described but we found no rich and beautiful! A short time later we left. The entire Old Town is packed with nightclubs, mostly in the cellars or in the first floors of the old buildings and we reckon that clubs must come and go like the wind as some side streets were packed with lights and music pumping from the upper floors and some were not.
Finally we settled for sampling something a little more edgy – Krakow’s thriving jazz scene. Down in a vaulted cellar off the main square we listened to a saxophonist & his band. A family affair in that Janusz Maniak, the saxophonist, plays and runs the place with his wife. We are not sure we ‘get’ Jazz music but we had a great time before catching a taxi back to Big Bess at 2 a.m.
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