Krakow trip

I made another business trip to Krakow in Poland last week (hence my absence), and it proved to be probably the best Polish trip so far. My main official reason for going this time was to check our paper stocks being held at the printers my company uses there. And a paper audit is as stimulating as it sounds!! But it all went pretty smoothly and most of the meetings were constructive.

The bonus with having a supplier based in Krakow is that it gives me a chance to go and look around the town and get to know a bit more about the culture and people. And I�m hugely privileged to have a good bunch of guys at the printers who are pretty up for going out. But more about that in minute. Krakow is a very historic city and arguably one of the prettiest in Poland. It has a rich history in art and education, and there are a lot of students who still go there (about 200,000 at the moment apparently). It still has a lot of the signs of its Communist past, but is definitely being modernised. Mostly in a good way. And it still retains some of its very beautiful landmarks such as the castle above.

There are many areas of town that I had not seen on my previous visits, one of the main ones being the Jewish quarter. This district has seen some pretty bad things during the Second World War, and then went through a time of being pretty neglected and crime ridden. Recently it has come back to life and is now one of the areas a lot of people go to hang out. There are lots of bars and restaurants, all of them definitely on a par with anything we have in the UK.
Each time I go to the city there are different people to go out with in the evenings. This time due to sickness and holiday I went out with Lukasz and Mariusz, two of a seemingly bottomless pool of friendly and well connected young guys who work for the printers. On the second evening we went to the aforementioned Jewish quarter and hooked up with another couple of friends there called Ela and Joanna and did a tour of the Jewish area (called Kazimierz). The bars there range from some very intellectual places where artists gather and talk about Proust over a good few bottles of wine and many cigarettes. (Well maybe not Proust, but you get the idea.) Through to an interesting bar laid out like a Turkish caf�, to a club which resembled a Roman villa in layout and was playing Old Skool music. We almost ended up in a place I went last time with a load of beds in the back room to chill out on (very cool and very red), but instead finished the night in what looked like the trendiest bar in town which was playing some kind of techno-salsa music.
Unlike London everyone in Krakow seems quite happy to stay up all night and keep going. When I went back to the hotel at 4am the bars were still rammed and people looking like they were on their third lease of life. And the people there are incredibly friendly and welcoming. From what I�ve seen there is a very young vibe to the place and there are some great looking guys and girls there. It reminds me very much of Prague or Barcelona, but has an undiscovered feel to it at the moment. Apparently the town and hotels are getting busier and busier each week so word is obviously getting out. So if you can get there I can strongly recommend it before it gets spoilt.

Not very interesting fact from the visit. A slang word which sounds like 'no' in polish actually means 'yes'. So if you�re chatting to a girl and she says no, it actually can mean yes. Or she might mean no. Try and figure that one out!

I think they will all be reading this, so thank you for a great couple of days and see you again as soon as possible!!