My favourite place in Kraków

I am lucky enough to have visited Kraków many times now. My wife is Polish and came to university here and whilst her family are not from the city, it’s still not a million miles away and is regularly a port of call for when we visit.

Kraków is, of course, a well-trodden destination on the European city break path. Immediately obvious when walking around the old town with the array of nationalities and different languages ringing in the air. The English stag dos singing England songs, whilst ironically choosing to drink in an ‘Irish’ bar. Italian families passing, where you catch the inevitable topic of conversation being about eating. The small group of elderly Spanish decked out in walking gear, looking unfazed by the 30 degree heat, all whilst wearing a down jacket from Decathlon.

Adam Mickiewicz statue in Rynek Głowny

Kraków has a lot to offer. Much is known and written about its culture. It has one of the world’s oldest universities (Jagielllonia), has been home to numerous Nobel laureates, is full of multiple world class museums and collections of fine arts. It has a castle. The old town square is allegedly the largest open public space in Europe, surrounded by impressive renaissance architecture, such as the Cloth Hall, St Mary’s Basilica and the Town Hall tower. The list goes on…

But it’s not these things that I enjoy the most in Kraków. Nor is it Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter, with its excellent restaurants & bars and patchwork of historical buildings. 

St. Mary’s Basilica

My favourite place in Kraków is Stary Kleparz, an old market. To the north of the old town and a few minutes walk from the main train station. The market is set in a square and is an outdoor covered market with everything you really could wish for, in terms of day-to-day living.

Leading into the square, you’re greeted by street vendors selling flowers, by the side of the road, for a very good price and local producers selling whatever fruit is in season from baskets. My most recent visit meant that this was local cherries, raspberries, blueberries, bilberries and strawberries. All are of exceptional quality with the cherries and bilberries in particular being hard to beat anywhere. 

Queuing for fruit & veg, Stary Kleparz

Stepping inside the covered market, a fairly modern collection of structures, you follow the narrow passageways around the network of stalls. There’s small brick structures with glazed frontages which essentially act as mini shops lining the route, with a more open, outdoor covered market type set up in the middle. This is where the majority of the fruit and veg vendors can be found.

Walking around is both nostalgic and new. There’s a stall selling discounted packets of confectionery items, with handwritten price labels shoved alongside the products. A vendor selling detergent “from Germany” (a hallmark of quality!?) and sellers with piles of kitchenware strewn across their stall, with all the utensils needed to make the perfect pierogi at home. Of course, the real stars of the show are the food vendors. The fruit and veg stalls with mountains of ridiculously large brocolli and cabbage. Clusters of asparagus of many varieties. Massive, ripe, nobbly tomatoes that actually have some flavour and don’t resemble biting into a Red Nose at Comic Relief (not that I have…). A vendor that only sells kiełbasa. Fishmongers. Butchers. A cheese seller. You name it, it’s here!

A confectionery stall that reminded me very much of the old school indoor markets at home

It reminds me in parts of traipsing around Rotherham or Castle markets, as a child. The sense of excitement, mixed with a bit of apprehension at the ensuing organised chaos.

Perhaps the best thing about Stary Kleparz, however is the ‘new’. This isn’t just a place to be nostalgic over. It is a place of today and of tomorrow. Modern, trendy vendors sit alongside the stall your grandma might go to for some tea bags. There’s multiple natural wine shops and bars. Greek delis. A Spanish deli. A focacceria, selling very good sandwiches. A couple of Italian delis and an oyster bar, to name but a few. 

Focaccia sandwiches from Fokarnia

I think it’s this mix of vendors. All alongside each other. All thriving and all attracting different demographics that make this such a great place to visit. There’s no pretentiousness whatsoever. It’s purely a marketplace for quality sellers. All in it together.

Sit under a vine covered terrace, eating an oyster whilst enjoying a skin contact orange wine from a small batch vineyard one minute, the next, be haggling over the price of a kilo of carrots. 

Wine on the vine covered terrace of Kawa i Wino

There are some similar examples in the UK. Borough Market being an obvious one. But it is such a tourist trap that if you can cope with the cattle-like conditions of navigating around, you’re then ripped off with eye-watering  prices for often mediocre products. It’s the perfect example of a market being gentrified and not, what a market should be – egalitarian and convivial. Stary Kleparz, for now at least, is both and it seems to be striking the balance perfectly well. 

It’s a good analogy really for the best bits of modern Poland. Forward looking with a renewed confidence, all whilst having a close tie to tradition. Aside from the obvious links I now have with this country, it’s maybe the reason why I most enjoy spending time here and why Stary Kleparz is my top tip to anyone visiting Kraków and wishing to get a ‘proper’ experience. 

Point & Shoot

As a child, family holidays were punctuated with a questioning of why my mum was taking a long time trying to take a photograph of a Greek Orthodox priest walking down some stairs, or waiting for the right moment, with no people in frame, to photograph a sweeping white sandy beach. 

But, as I got older, I began to appreciate the art of photography and the process of being creative. Good quality camera phones came along during my early 20s, along with Instagram and it suddenly became a social necessity to take a photo of your dinner, or that visit to the pub, just to fit in amongst your peers. Around this time, I bought myself an entry-level Canon DSLR camera, to try and capture more ‘professional’ looking shots, but never really fully got into it, thanks to the convenience of having an iPhone. The bulky, heavy DSLR that prevented those moments of instant gratitude wasn’t usually an attractive proposition and so, I ultimately ended up selling it.

I hit 30, just a few weeks after lockdown and the unusual 12-18 months which followed for all, provided a time to reflect and see the world differently, despite all the negative downsides of having to exist this way. 

During this period of time, I saw many others shifting to film photography and in particular, cheap point-and-shoot cameras became popular and cool. 

Once lockdown was over, I asked my mum if she had any old cameras I could use, as I was keen to try out this relatively spartan way of photographing and being a fan of the inconsistent and retro aesthetic that it could produce.

I took a Ricoh camera that my mum had given me to my first post-lockdown holiday abroad with my now wife, in Puglia, Italy. The results were mixed, but the thrill was and is, a constant. 

My first foray using a point-and-shoot. Bari Vecchia, September 2021

Firstly and most obviously, being handicapped by not knowing what the photograph would turn out like for days/weeks to come, provided a fresh contrast from digital. Furthermore, working with a point and shoot meant I could only influence the outcome of the photo by my eye; for how it should be composed, understanding of light and how these all interacted with whichever film I chose to use in the camera. 

All three are things I am still trying to understand and master. Personally, this is where the pleasure lies with using a point-and-shoot. It’s not really something that you can ever master, given its limitations, but it’s these limitations which add character, life and a uniqueness that would be hard to find with a more elaborate film camera, or a with digital. 

I enjoy the battle, often accompanied by much frustrations of trying to make a picture work with a point-and-shoot. But the thrill of receiving scans back is unrivalled, especially when there’s something which has turned out even better than expected.

I Raggazi, living ‘la dolce vita’, Ceglie Messapica, Puglia, Sept 2023

It is sadly a hobby with a certain degree of privilege now, thanks to the costs involved, but it’s one which I wish to continue with, alongside those quick shots taken on an iPhone in day-to-day life and alongside the new mirrorless Canon camera we recently purchased. There’s a place and a time for each and they all have their benefits. 

I have in recent years upgraded my point and shoot from the ones my mum gave me (I still posses them), purchasing a Leica Minizoom. Perhaps the boujeist point-and-shoot you could find, but by no means without its faults. 

The process is a reminder of the simple pleasures, of patience and that moments in life don’t have to be perfect to be thoroughly enjoyable and appreciated.

Children playing in a fountain in Warsaw, on a hot July afternoon. 2023