August 2015
“I. Am. A. Bear!” the brawny British voice bawls from the table to my left, hacking a brutal hole in the cosy twilight envelope of a peaceful Kraków bar’s fairy-lit courtyard.
With a resigned fingertip I bookmark the partially digested paragraph of my book, knowing the lone digit is predestined to the frequent fate for an unfocused mind: a quick slide across the yellowy page and into oblivion.
“No, you’re a wolverine.”
A clarification from his local-accented companion, in anthropomorphic endorsement.
I visualise the fusion wolf pack stalking an historic path through a warm afternoon in Kraków’s old Kazimierz quarter.
“No, I’m affectionately known just as ‘The Bear’.”
Encouraged, the voice booms louder into the eager, open faces of his captive audience of three, huddling in the looming shadow of his ever-aggrandising soapbox. An involuntary audience of many more catches the collateral soundwaves.
I inspect my drink. Maybe beer would have been better; I should look up the hallucinogenic properties of szarlotka, the local cocktail specialty. Sure, it tastes like apple pie, but that didn’t turn out so well for Hansel and Gretel, did it?
“But I also have a shark-like mouth.”
Rising off his gloss-white, wrought iron throne, he circles the table, an inadvertent dramatic oomph added by the crunch-crunch-crunch percussion of round milky pebbles underfoot. The fairy lights writhe in a sinister, tessellated dance across his face.
You’ve certainly got a mouth. A churlish mutter within my head.
Is this how a night begins at one of those infamous British university dining clubs? Having spent the odd Saturday night in the stale basement of a few frat houses at college, it’s the only tangential comparison I can bring to mind.
I try to drown the baying by crushing an ice cube between my teeth. The sharp claws of brain freeze and reverberating icy cracks are no match for the mythical hirsute shark gnashing at my periphery.
“Gatsby, it’s a pleasure to sit next to you while surrounded by so many poor people who chose our company tonight,” he bellows to his decidedly un-Gatsby-like seatmate, as the conversation shifts from the animal kingdom.
Surprisingly insightful. Another internal snipe.
I’ve cast my reading aside, bookmark hand redirected to filling my notebook with transcriptions. Eavesdropping—though is it, when done under duress?—is a generous benefactor.
Another handful of distracted minutes later my stomach wins out over wolverines and sharks and bears, oh my. I shatter a few final frosty cubes in sub-zero resignation and wander across the street to revisit a menu I’d eyed earlier.
Spruiking the promise of Polish classics with a contemporary twist, intrigue lures me inside.
As Bob Marley reassures me over the speakers that ‘no woman no cry’ over my choice of dishes, I contemplate Polish escargot, local trout and involtini, among other border-traversing options. Italian wines and German beer provide European Union palate-whetting.
At the very least it seems emblematic of this neighbourhood of Poland’s second city. Wearing the heavy history of centuries of Catholic and Jewish co-occupancy, synagogues and steeples alternate their stony footprints over jagged slices of real estate carved into the zigzagging streets.
It’s the peak of tourist season, and crowds as diverse as my evening’s menu hover around the main square. After dinner I join a quilt of inter-stitched languages—less intrusive than my earlier ursine courtyard dweller—threading itself where so much division once lived. There’s no ice crushing needed here. My ears enjoy themselves.
* * *
* * *
The next morning, a couple short intersections and a left-hand turn farther west, the scene changes.
I walk into the simplicity of a bar mleczny—directly translated, a ‘milk bar’, and more accurately a blue-collar workers’ cafeteria—a carryover from last century’s socialist and communist era conditions of food rationing and economic depression. A staple for locals, this type of frill-free spot continues to offer affordable, tasty meals.
It’s all gridded geometry. From the black, cream and rust-coloured floor tiles, to the dozen square tables clothed in red-and-white checkerboard plastic and topped with paper doilies, the parallel and perpendicular reign. An extensive handwritten menu, black ink on white Perspex between neatly ruled lines like a yearly planner, stretches nearly two metres in each direction on the wall.
Behind a counter, dwarfed by the spindly capital letters of many dozens of dishes I can’t decipher, stands a woman. Alongside her is another grid, a steaming three-by-three bain-marie of soups, unidentifiable save for the crimson fluorescence of borscht. Her navy blue apron vest is speckled with a similar rouged glow.
A narrow window and doorway over her left shoulder offer fractured views into the kitchen. Gruffly raised voices of several other women slingshot back and forth from within like a frenzied ping-pong battle.
The woman digs into a crowded drawer and extracts a plastic sleeve bulging with a wad of stapled pages: an English menu. She waits expectantly as I read.
A gentleman in his seventies appears next to me. He swaps greetings with the woman, then peers at me and the menu.
“Deutsch?”
“No,” I respond. “Do you speak English?”
“Only a little…”
We limp through a broken conversation on a mutual crutch of French-English. More fusion.
She hands him a foam box.
“My brother’s lunch. I collect it for him.” He waves the box at me.
“What’s good?” The English menu still holds a few secrets.
“All of it!” he grins back unselfconsciously.
He gently presses the tab on the box lid, unlocking a rolling cloud of steam and, like the great reveal of a magician, a half-second later an explosion of rich gravy wafts from a pile of sliced veal and rough chunks of boiled potatoes.
“Traditional,” he shrugs.
Together we survey the expanse of soups and I ask about the front left vat that looks particularly interesting.
“Tripe soup.” Matter-of-fact, no caution.
Suddenly less interesting.
Instead, cheese and spinach pierogi and borscht with potatoes—semi-submerged, crumbling icebergs in a glassy, rose-coloured psychedelic ocean—form a welcome and vibrant brunch against the patchwork tablecloth. Out of synch with the time of day, nobody bats an eyelid. Culinary curiosity knows no clock restrictions.
The vinegary broth flicks on my tongue as I watch a steady flow of locals pin down the tablecloths with wrinkled elbows. Bulging string shopping bags sag with relief on the tiled floor as their handlers pause for a knowing bowl of this and a sustaining plate of that. None linger longer than to scrape plates into a bin and add to the pile of gravy-slicked ceramics towering in the narrow window with a procedural nous that seems nearly hereditary.
It’s a nourishing start to the day.
* * *
* * *
On a guided walking tour that afternoon, the area’s jig-sawed history is unveiled in more depth. Working around a little too much detail on Steven Spielberg’s favourite film locations for Schindler’s List, our guide is a master storyteller. His knack for entangling humour and history is underpinned by both sadness and hope.
“It’s what’s inside that counts, right ladies? I mean, look at my face… but my heart? And my way with words?” He chuckles, describing the contrast between the visibly striking Catholic churches, and the muted synagogue exteriors that hide beautiful internal chambers.
“There are only about 430 practicing Jews living in Kraków now,” he tells us, as we stand outside the Jewish Community Centre of Kraków, which tracks these staggering statistics.
“So many never wanted to return, never felt they would be welcomed or at home here again…”
It’s engrossing but also disconcerting to be walking these vibrant streets that once defined the 1940s Jewish ghetto, the grim, brief home to nearly 20,000 displaced Polish Jews.
* * *
* * *
The next evening I’m back at the bar mleczny for strawberry pierogi, the first dish in what becomes a four-stop, rolling dinner. My friend behind the counter smiles in recognition as I order dessert as an appetiser. No rules, just opaque, doughy shells floating in a bath of sugary cream, the colour combination again matching the tablecloth. I smile back.
A bowl of chilled cucumber soup, a dill pickle and a cabbage-stuffed sweet pepper later—two more pauses at curbside eateries around the main square—and the sunlight fades, replaced by the glow of halogen lamps. With it comes a swell of happy faces. The bars hum in the warm air.
The stomach wants what the stomach wants. And even when it doesn’t really, sitting in the square at 11pm once more surrounded by the murmur of foreign tongues, a foot-long pizza baguette—local, via Italy?—and a horseradish vodka nightcap can’t be refused. Just for the challenge and the chance to linger a little longer.
And in the haze of food and playful energy around me, the possibilities seem limitless.
I crunch on my baguette.
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