BIG BROTHER KRAKOW
DUNCAN RHODES HEAVES BACK THE IRON CURTAIN TO GO COMMIE IN KRAKOW
ANYWHERE YOU WENT IN POLAND, BIG BROTHER WAS WATCHING YOU
“Sorry I’m late. All the cats and birds made a mess on my car,” apologises Viktor, a 24-year-old shaggy bear of a man and our Crazy Guide for the day. Undeterred, I follow the rest of the group as Viktor leads us to our transport for the afternoon: a beautifully restored East German Trabant with a seriously slick, black-and-red paint job. First impressions are good, but much like the communist regime that spawned the car, the sublime quickly gives way to the ridiculous. Clambering inside, I find myself wedged into position without a seatbelt, staring at the back of a ludicrous tiger-skin seat covering. As for our mammoth driver, he is forced to sit with his shoulders hunched over the steering wheel and his head jammed fast against the fibre-glass ceiling. Not that he really seems to mind.
“Actually this is Porsche version of Trabant,” Viktor cheerfully explains as we trundle off into traffic. “But we must use this one because yesterday we broke all the regular ones. You know, drunk Spanish guys…” We never hear the full story because Viktor has to screech to a halt for a red light. “Our brakes are not the best today,” he observes stoically, before offering to make the 20-minute journey to Nowa Huta in 10.
Begun 60 years ago, in 1949, the district of Nowa Huta, which translates as “new steelworks” in English, is undoubtedly Kraków’s least likely tourist attraction.
A centrally planned Soviet city built around a vast steel-works, the area was unpopular even at the time, and since the fall of communism it has been openly lambasted as grey, boring, dangerous and – worst of all – a symbol of Russian oppression. That, however, didn’t stop one entrepreneurial Pole from seizing upon the area’s intrinsic interest to foreigners, although the hand of fate certainly played a part. Back in 2004, Michal Ostrowski – AKA “Crazy Mike” – was working as a receptionist in an Old Town hotel, where he would regularly (ab)use his position on the front desk to offer tours of the city to the hotel’s guests. One fateful day he was faced with a dilemma.
“I had been doing these tours for two or three years when I met a young couple from the USA. They said: ‘We’ve already seen the Old Town, what else can you show us?’ I didn’t know what to do, so I just took them in my Communist Fiat 126p – a small, dirty, old-school Polish car – and we set off for some adventures.”
This ad-hoc arrangement turned into a whirlwind tour of weird and wonderful attractions outside the usual tourist’s orbit, with the star of the show being Nowa Huta and the many stories Mike had to tell his new friends about the “good old days” in Poland. After tipping their driver generously, the couple invited Mike out to dinner and, with the beers in full flow, they persuaded him to set up his own tour company.
“The funniest thing was that I said to them: ‘I am broke so I can’t do this business. I can’t risk a thousand dollars. They said: ‘No problem, Mike, we’re going to give you the money.’ And they gave me a thousand bucks just like that.”
With such a fairytale beginning it’s no surprise that Mike’s alternative tour company, Crazy Guides (crazyguides.com), has gone on to become one of the success stories of the post-EU tourist boom – and along the way helped forge a new role for the city’s most despised district. Indeed, such are the horror stories about Nowa Huta that, when our Trabant wheezes to a halt and I finally have the chance to see the area for myself, I am surprised by how architecturally grand it is. From the focal point of Central Square, four sweeping avenues branch out in perfect symmetry, and between them rise weathered but attractive five-storey apartment blocks with classical and renaissance motifs. Viktor says the Polish architects who designed the city were inspired more by Parisian boulevards than by Stalin’s socialist realism. A couple of photographs later our guide leads us out of the rain and into a restaurant called Stylowa, remarkable only for being unchanged from its 1970s heyday. Amid a backdrop of brown tones and blazered men with slicked-back hair, Viktor lights a cigarette and tells us about life in the supposed Soviet paradise after the economic bubble burst.
“People were standing in queues for hours, sometimes for days – even sleeping there – to get anything. Father brought three vacuum cleaners and I couldn’t understand why. Later I realised. He exchanged one for a TV and one for a radio. The point is, if you saw the queue you joined the queue, and you bought everything you could.”
But a lack of basic amenities such as toothpaste and toilet paper – or even a surplus of vacuums – was far from the worst aspect of life under the Soviet hammer.
George Orwell’s nightmare vision of a totalitarian state was already a reality across Eastern Europe – and much earlier than his predicted date of 1984.
“You can’t even believe how big the system of secret agents was. We had three times more undercover militia than normal militia. Three times more!” Despite the fact that Viktor must recount this on a daily basis, he still seems shocked. “Ever member of Solidarity [the anti-communist trade union] had a tail. Everybody. If my father was going somewhere by car there was a car behind observing him.” In fact, almost anywhere you went in the People’s Republic of Poland, Big Brother was watching you, and secret agents frequently crept into people’s flats to carry out searches or plant bugs. No one felt safe – and no one was safe – as neighbours informed on one another and people routinely disappeared for long stints in jail, or worse. “At least war is black and white – you have an enemy, you fight for your nation so you are proud. Can you imagine communism? Forty years of fighting with no enemy. You can’t have any idea how communism affected the Polish people.”
After this powerful lesson in history it’s back in the trusty Trabbie to pay a visit to the Crazy Guides’ perfectly preserved communist apartment. The mood lightens as we travel back in time, marvelling at an impressive collection of kitsch that includes antiquated TV sets, 7-inch vinyl records, religious portraits and a Buck Rogers-style motorcycle helmet, among other treasures. The numerous vessels for drinking vodka catch my eye.
“This one is called a literatka,” says Viktor, holding up a 100ml glass. “It was for writers or intellectuals. Workers used to drink 250ml.” As guests of the apartment we’re naturally invited to try a vodka and, despite some nervous glances, we all pluck up the courage to bolt down a humble 50ml shot, quickly followed by a pickled cucumber – a genuine taste of the good old days.
As our road-weary transport splutters back to central Kraków dripping rainwater from every surface, Viktor still has plenty to tell us about the history of the iconic Trabant. “The idea was that they wanted to produce cheap cars for everybody. Still, you had to wait seven years to get one. My father, because he was a member of Solidarity, had to wait 14 years. He got the papers but he said after 14 years he’d forgotten that he had paid for it. By then communism had fallen so he bought a BMW instead!”
TOTALLY KRACK(IN’)
COMMIE CUISINE
The biggest legacy left by communism in Poland is undoubtedly the state-subsidised “milk bars”, which can still be found dotted around the Old Town today. Typically a grotty canteen staffed by moody, monolingual matrons, the milk bar is nonetheless an essential Polish experience. The food is often excellent, not to mention dirt cheap, and you’ll be expected to take your plates to a small hole in the wall when you’re done.
Polakowski
A rather civilised chain of milk bars staffed by young girls in straw hats and www.aprons.ul Tomasza 5 and ul. Miodowa 39
Bar Grodzki
Popular choice for cheap eats on the Royal Route down to the www.castle.ul Grodzka 47
Bar Mleczny
The cheapest and nastiest in town. Delicious food for less change than you have in your pocket, but so grotty that most tramps are ashamed to be seen here. Polish www.required.ul Czysta 1
RED - HOT TIP
Head to Plac Nowy, the ramshackle central square of the Old Jewish District, for Saturday’s flea market (morning only) and you might be lucky enough to dig up some old commie souvenirs. Communist crosses for button holes, miniature busts of Lenin or even old military attire turn up here regularly.
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