TRAVELERT: Krakow Concert and Event Alerts

Each Sunday morning is your chance to check out two of Kraków’s best flea markets, just a few minutes’ walk from the hostel. Visit the stalls around Plac Nowy for clothes, mostly, and go to Hala Targowa for an unclassifyable assortment of objects ranging from baffling crap to actual antiques. Spread out on tables, or on old sheets or blankets on the pavement you might be able to find:

• stacks of old magazines, postcards, and assorted forgotten documents
• vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, DVDs — all of mysterious origin, all old, all well-used
• cute little cups, plates and dishes a grandma would love
• communist and pre-communist memorabilia
• furniture
• religious portraiture
• German porn, slightly used
• cameras, from famed plastic Russian Lomos (cheap and plentiful!) to Zenit (you can hammer in a nail with them they are so solid) to older and more exotic ones
• a set of used false teeth or assorted dental tools
• a bag of rabbits

Good places to bargain, and an a place where you can see things (and people) you will not find anywhere else. If you are looking for one specific thing, you may not find it. But if you are just looking for nothing in particular you will not be disappointed. During the week these places sell fruit and veretables and some other things (underwear, meat, spices, flowers, frozen pierogi, kitchen items, etc.) but the flea markets are only on Sunday morning.

Highly talented Edwin Moes from Holland will perform in Cafe Szafe 14 of July, starts from 7 pm (probably 7:30- 8pm).

Good folk/pop/country mix, nice place, good atmosphere, no tickets and cold beer. What else do you need Thursday evening? (Maybe dinner at Travellers before;)

Cafe Szafe

ul. Felicjanek 10

Teddy Jr  myspace page

Summer in Krakow can be really busy, Jewish Festival is getting till the end and Jazz Festival in Piwnica pod Baranami has started on the 3r ( Basement under rams). It’s the biggest polish jazz festival and one of the biggest in Europe. During one month around 50 concerts will happened and some 200 polish and foreign artist will perform for 30 thousand listeners. You can be one of them feeding your senses with jazzzzzz…………….

This year it the 16 edition of the festival, from 3 till 21 of July you have a change to listen jazz every day. Polish bands, international stars.

Tickets are available  and every day before the concerts, if you want to buy them in advance go to:

Punkt Informacji Miejskiej - ul. Św. Jana 2 oraz Plac Wszystkich Świętych 2

Filmotechnika – Rynek Główny 9, Pasaż Bielaka

Finger – ul. Warszawska 18

Here you can find program of the whole Festival

Tickets for very day concerts regular 40pln and 2opln students

Today Chick Corea is playing in Hala Wisły (tickets from 250pln to 150pln). Unfortunately can’t assure you will still get the ticket right before(ask at the reception to book it for you).

Each Thursday if we have enough people who are interested we serve a free dinner at our hostel on Sarego street. If you’re staying at the hostel or the private rooms, we encourage you to join.

If you are interested in coming, please let us know before 12.00 noon on Thursday, since we won’t cook unless we know for sure that at least 3 or 4 people are interested.

Dinners are always made with fresh ingredients from Kraków markets and are vegetarian. Dinner is served around 20.00.

POLtwór it’s a creative way of recycling. During few days you could have learn how to give a new life to the thing we usually call trash, all the objects which are remains of our use – paper, metal, plastic, glass, fabric – can be re-use.

Today’s finale brings:

2 pm – POLtwór’s flea market

5 pm – SWAP party – great chance to change our wardrobe

7:30 – PECHA KUCHA NIGHT – open arterecycling workshops

later at night – concert of Stomp Orkiestra and Kinky Beats

no commission

Be our spy and find Travellersinn mates!

This is the Main Square (of Cracow of course) and surroundings seen from pigeon’s back. More on www.krakow.travel or check other languages of this site.

Another edition of the event which have started in Berlin in 2003, for last few years in every bigger city all around Europe you have a chance to visit all sort of Museums by night.

This link will take you to the full list of Museums which you can visit between 6pm and 1 am, you don’t have to buy any ticket, not even a coin as a last year. Don’t be surprise if you see a long queue in front of the most famous ones (Wawel Castle, National Museum, Sukiennice Under and Top;).

On our “top” list are:

Botanical Garden (end of Kopernika street)

Raid (7pm – midnight,  Aleje Mickiewicza, close to Plac Inwalidów)

Etnographical Museum (Plac Wolnica)

Museum of Pharmacy (Floriańska street)

Japanise Centre (other side of the river – Konopnickiej street)

Cricotecka (Kanonicza 5, Sienna 7/5)

This year not only Museums opens their door for you late at night, but also Galeries:

Bunkier Sztuki
Atelier Iwony Siwek-Front
Galeria Zderzak
Galeria Sztuki Attis
Galeria Strefa A

Wirtualne Muzeum Erotyzmu gościnnie w Zbiorniku Kultury

Enjoy the night exploring!

If you’re visiting Kraków right now (and not living in a field in Greece) you should really make space in your life to see Animal Collective. They’ll be playing at Łaźnia Nowa in Nowa Huta. The show is at 20.00 on the 22nd of May. Tickets are 110 PLN the day of the concert (about 28 EUR) or 85 PLN in advance. This is the music that monks will sing in the future. When they are encouraged to dance more, and when they have lots of synthesizer equipment in their cells.

Every Wednesday night the pub Ptasiek in Kazimierz hosts a jam session. Starting around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. and going until late at night (or early in the morning) you can see groups form and dissipate with each new song sometimes. From jazz to rock to blues, it’s always entertaining to watch the musicians (many of whom have never played together) interact, and you never know what you’ll get. Some are professionals, most are local (but performers from other cities and countries often drop by) and many are armatures with day jobs or guys who usually busk on street corners. Bring your harmonica, guitar, kazoo or Yamaha keyboard and join in, or just sit and enjoy.

If you don’t know what to do with yourself on Tuesday afternoon you can just hang around  Krakus  Mound to explore polish prechristian, slavic culture and history. Various outdoor acivities from 10 am till late evening organized by Museum of History of the City of Krakow and  many others.

Podgórze rulez!

“Lady With An Ermine” (or, more informally in polish Dama z łasicą which means “the lady with the weasel”) is gone!

A pivotal development in the art of portraiture, this enigmatic Da Vinci masterpiece is usually one of Kraków’s top 5 tourist must-see tourist cliches. Now, however, due to the brutal ongoing renovation of the Czartoryski museum, the weasel has temporarily lost her home and has gone on tour as a result.

If you are starved for stoats, though, or pine martins, or badgers or ferrets or other rooting mammals that a daschund would want to chase, you can see a nice plaintive tribute to our famous missing weasel on the doors of Pracownia, a smart new cafe / bar in Kazimierz. And here, when the doors aren’t barred by an airbrushed ermine, you can have a nice breakfast and coffee or later grab a dark local honey beer.

Covered and prizes and dripping with acclaim (just look at all those award thingies at the bottom of that poster!) the Polish film Erratum is coming to Krakow with English subtitles. Kino Pod Banarami will present the film as part of their series which brings the most popular contemporary Polish films to a non-Polish speaking audience.

The film will be showing with English subtitles starting on the 8th of April. Check out the cinema’s website for more information, or ask the person sitting at the hostel desk to call and ask what time it’s on.

Keep in mind: the star of this film has a name which translates as “Thomas Cat.” Surely that’s a bonus.

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.