TRAVELERT: Krakow Concert and Event Alerts

Good news for brain enthusiasts! Jagiellonian University is hosting WEEK OF THE BRAIN 2011 from 14-20 March! Line up for events and bring your brain (which leading scientists claim is about the consistency of butter!) to the following lectures:

• How is the brain? (with Professor Krzysztof Turleiski)
• Where is free will, or How brains decide. (with Prof. Spirit Wlodzislaw)
• O bad brain – Neural system for detecting, monitoring and correction of erroneous behavior. (with Prof. Dr. Marek Tadeusz)

Consider yourself invited by THE COPERNICUS SOCIETY. You’ll need to learn Polish first, but since everyone knows we only use a small percentage of our brains (about 3.2%) it should not be that hard.

Spotted near the hostel in Krakow: this specimen of fresh spring letters. Note that they haven’t grown their serifs yet (it’s still early) but the bars and stems are thick and healthy. If they can firm and fatten up in the Summer months, they’ll surely make it through next winter’s hardship.

If the weather is good you can take advantage of the season and take a short cruise on the Wisła river. This company (you can find their boat docked at the base of the Wawel castle daily from 10.00 until 20.00) will take you up and down the river for an hour or half an hour, with a variety of stops optional.

The International Cultural Center, located on the main square, is currently running an exhibition called “Us And Them.” The collection offers curious viewers the opportunity to peer into the eyes of many strange and gnarled beasts, from illustrations such as the one above to modern comic-book imagery of sneaky humanoids carrying fetuses in bell jars.

Read about the exhibit here.

Runs from 15 March until 5 June 2011.

The gallery in the center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10.00 until 18.00. Regular tickets cost 8 Zł.

These nice pair of legs has claimed, day by day, 364 trees so far. Tomorrow the grand final, Cecylia Malik will hop on an old oak next to Colegium Novum on Planty, everyone is welcome to do the same, sometime around 7 p.m.
For explanation check Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees or ask Cecylia or consult her fb (of course).

The Absynt Kawiarnia in Kazimierz looks a little like it might have been decorated by an old lady (lace doilies, old furniture) and it serves an interesting assortment of absinthe and inventive absinthe cocktails. As the name implies. Also, as the name implies, they will sell you coffee. And other drinks.

But if you get the absinthe, they will come to your table and perform the strange little ceremony wherin the drink is briefly set on fire through a slotted spoon as sugar is caremelized. Then it’s blown out (the fire) and mixed in (the sugar) and water is added, forming a smart little swamp of death in your glass.

Highly recommended.

And if you’re feeling patriotic, you can take a bottle of the Polish Absinthe home with you, called Absinthion if I remember correctly. You can’t get a bottle for “take away” in the bar, of course, but you can at the ALKOHOLE shop across the street.

Polish vodka is varied, delicious, and (if you are coming from somewhere to the west) very very cheap especially when you factor in its quality. Many of our guests may think of vodka as something to hide inside some energy drink (don’t do it! It’ll kill you!) or disguise behind benevolent sweet Cola flavors. We humbly recommend you try some straight, particularly the flavored ones.

Here are the ones pictured above (available everywhere for drinking at pubs or for purchasing by the bottle in ALKOHOLE shop) which come highly recommended:

1. Żołąkowa Czysta — Not flavored, but very good and very pure. Maybe pure enough even for General J.D. Ripper?
2. Żubrówka — Maybe the most famous vodka outside of Poland. Flavored with a piece of grass in each bottle (you can also buy a chocolate bar with ribbons of this curiously-flavored grass woven in). “Bison Grass” vodka, with a distinct but not sweet flavor often mixed with apple juice to produce the drink called Tatanka. The slight yellow color? Legend says it is from the urine of the precious bison who favor and flavor it.
3. Wiśniówka — cherry. Very much beloved. If you can’t find a Polish grandmother to share her homemade variety, “Cherry Cordial” or Lubelska brands are quite acceptable. Good with lemon. Like all of our suggestions here (and unlike other Cherry Cordials in less enlightened countries) it is 40% alcohol.
4. Żołąkowa Gorzka flavored — The normal Żołąkowa Gorzka (literally bitter stomach) flavor is a spiced sweet digestif and very tasty. Now, though, they have spinofs — mint (maybe a little like mouthwash on it’s own but great in mixed drinks and with coffee) — bison grass (with not piece of grass like the original but sweetly delicious) — and honey.
5. Cytrynówka — lemon.
6. Malinówka — raspberry.
   
7. Krupnik — honey. Not to be confused with the soup of the same name. Note the bears on the label, sitting against a tree and toasting.
   

If you didn’t fly RyanAir or WizzAir and are allowed to have luggage carried under the plane (and not just over your seat) then you can carry some home with you. If you’re working on Euro, most of these bottles cost about 5 Euro. That’s not much!  If you can pay a little more, you fill find on Bracka street a shop selling specialty homemade varieties (many similar to the commercial versions listed above but many more, such as black pepper and honey or clove). Save money at this place by bringing your own bottle to fill. Look respectable, and you may get samples.

A good quiet place for sitting and sampling new vodkas in the city (but you’ll have to pay of course) is Wódka Bar, near the main square. Try the vodka of the day (sometimes ginger or mandarin orange) or their chocolate or walnut varieties.

photo from Madmolecule on Flickr.

The quiz happens every Thursday at Kraków’s most labyrinthine Irish Pub. Join the competition for 25 Złoty per team (teams have no more than 5 people each) and do your best to answer 4 rounds of 10 questions on a variety of topics. The winning team gets a lot of free beer, the losing teams get a lifetime of regret. It can be fun, but beware!  Some people take their pub quizzes very seriously. Starts at 21.00 each Thursday.

Under the Main Square, lots of fancy electronics.
After years of digging up the main square and burying it again, the city of Kraków has finally finished. It is now home to a “multimedia experience” devoted to Medieval Trade Routes and European Identity. The permanent exhibit (check out their homepage!) contains the following:

25 plasma screens
13 LCD screens
104 players
160 signal converters
27 multimedia projectors
37 touch screens
190 degree projection screen
1 fogscreen
98 speakers
28,000 meters of cables
5 holograms
8 animated movies
5 documentary films
7 mannequins and scale models
5 time capsules
600 3D digital reconstructions
30 multimedia posts
25 display cases
64 digital cameras

There is even something called a “multimedia fountain,” whatever that means,  so you can be sure of the enhanced nature of the historical experience you will have. The entrance is in one of the corners of the Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) and it’s not that easy to find. But it’s the only one going down. I think it’s in the northeast corner. All in all  it should be a pretty trippy experience, so make sure not to swallow any weird pills or anything beforehand; that might make it too much to handle.

It’s open Monday and Wednesday through Sunday 10am-8pm and Tuesday 10am-4pm (except the first Tuesday of the month). Admission is 13 PLN.