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Kraków is as much a home as I’ve ever had. The city has grown so familiar that most of the time I barely notice it. It feels more like an abstract mental space than a set of objects occupying a specific patch of the physical world around me.
It’s so everyday that I tend to forget the simple fact: the vast majority of people have never been here — and most likely never will. Let alone see it the way I do.
Yet I feel much more confident writing about something far more distant — even if it’s less interesting at its core, and even though I usually know much less about it.
It’s unfair — but can it be any different? Isn’t it the mundanity that makes home a home? Can home be more engaging? Or can something challenging feel like home?
I know from experience that a place can drive you nuts and make your life miserable if it’s a bad fit. Or it can feel like butterflies when it’s still new and unexplored.
But if it’s the right fit and it’s just there all the time, it kinda turns into yet another underappreciated part of your inland empire — until something goes out of order.
I try my best to keep the discoverer’s mindset, and sometimes Kraków rewards my effort. But it’s still a one-way trail — the further I go down, the less I have ahead.
Then again, even a thousand-year-old town isn’t all that static. By now, I can list dozens of “things that used to be different.” Most have changed for the better.
The city has grown noticeably and certainly become more international. It will never beat Warsaw in that regard, but it can keep promising a very convincing alternative.
It’s a rather conservative alternative, offering peace and quiet instead of drive and opportunity. But also beauty and order in place of pretentiousness and chaos.
Most cultural events here are on the conservative side as well. They recur annually with just small adjustment, so by now I can recite their schedule from memory.
Whenever something big happens, it sells out in minutes. You’re better off booking it in one of the European capitals, where people are spoiled and don’t care.
The only always-available option is to just idly enjoy summer, without any rush or ambition — and then enjoy hating the four dark, dreary months that follow.
I may brag all I want about how boring, square, and offbeat Kraków is. But at the end of the day, I’m happy to have a real home rather than just a nice place to stay.
