Seeing a different side to Krakow

They say tourists never see the ‘real’ city. Tourists/travellers may visit the museums, local sites, try all the different foods and take tours but never get into the day to day life of living and breathing the place. But here’s the thing. Those that do live and breathe it often don’t visit those tourist attractions and often don’t get to see a side of their own city either. For me, Krakow was my second home growing up. I’ve been there at least 20 times and loved it… ok not always… when you’re 10 and going to your grandparents house instead of somewhere ‘exotic’ for the upteenth year in a row, you feel so terribly hard done by. But I did get to enjoy vast amounts of Babcia’s (gramdma’s) pierogi (dumplings) and sernik (cheesecake) every year.

Pierogi at Babcia’s

As I got older, I got to appreciated the beauty of the city a bit more as life became more about its reality and not the magical land of my bilingual dolls. My mum and I would always go for walks around the old town and the castle and I’d regularly be astounded by the beauty of the town square and the old churches.

But it wasn’t until my now fiancé turned up as a tourist in Krakow two years that I got to see a different side to Krakow. I got to look at it from a tourist point of view and develop a new love for my second home. Watching him get excited by half a baguette with cheese and mushrooms on top, tell me about how beautiful the salt mines are and running outside to take photos of frost, made me a little bit proud of my family’s home town.

Photos of frost by Jono

For him, and his mum, who spent the Christmas holidays with us this year, they got to experience Polish hospitality (read: constant feeding) and learn to communicate through translation, and hand gestures, something they probably would have never experience as tourists.

Traditional polish cakes

While for me, I did the things I’d never thought of doing before. We went on walking tours of the old Jewish quarter and the ex-ghetto and I took more photos than ever before. While I’d photographed the heck out of Paris’s bridge of locks I’d never even been to the one in Krakow, which comes complete with ripped out bits from where people’s relationships may have gone a little downhill.

The Jewish Quarter Krakow

Krakow’s bridge of locks

I had no idea the Wieliczka salt mines existed before Jono’s mum and I toured them. How is it I’ll go to the ends of the earth to see a cathedral and won’t realise there’s an underground one made of salt on my doorstep?

The underground Cathedral at Wieliczka Salt Mines

On New Year’s Eve we partied with the locals and rang in the new year in a house that used to be the SS headquarters on the edge of a concentration camp, a strange juxtaposition of events.

With the remnants of concentration camps and an area emptied of its residents and reminders all over Krakow of the suffering that went on here, alongside arguably Europe’s most beautiful square Krakow has to be one of the most incredible cities in Europe.

It takes a local to show you what day to day life in a city is like but sometimes it takes a tourist to show you the sparkle you don’t see in your own city. I’ve seen it with London and now with Krakow too.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar in their home (or second home) town?

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