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Europe: A different travel scene and a night out in Krakov

I think Midori, one of the many Japanese travelers I met in “the ´stans” said it best: “Central Asia is for dreamers.”  The healthy sprinkling of people I met in the region all had this explorer side of them, as if they were in search of a picture their minds could match to this mysterious and rather huge slice of the map.  I loved this about traveling in these countries.

   
Now I´m in Krakov and I´m grappling with another world; the western world and the tourists that have come to see it´s oldest relics.  Krakov is the best place for this as it´s chock full of ancient gothic cathedrals and castles.  Everyone walks around the nice cobblestoned streets pleasantly soaking up the historic charm of the place.  I like it too, but I´m missing the sense of discovery I found back in Asia.  What I imagined of Europe and what I´ve found in old town Krakov match up pretty well.  It´s not boring but shall I say less exciting.

Then there are the other travelers, a noticeably younger crowd.  Most of the people staying at my hostel are either recent grads or gap year folks on a cultural party tour of Europe.  This is also the largest crowd of Ozzies, Canucks, and Yankees I´ve run into since China.  I feel like an apprehensive ethnographer as I slowly ease my way into a couple of the party groups one night.

An Ozzy girl and a Canadian guy lead the pack which is ten strong to the first club.  We stand outside finishing our can beers as they go in to scout out the scene.

“There´s no girls,” says the guy upon return.

“It was better last week,” says the girl.

The rest seem strangely comfortable with their appraisal so we all take off to the next bar following some guy who says he´s working on the latest edition of Let´s Go: Eastern Europe.  Surely he´ll take us someplace cool. 

I could really care less as I´ve no real desire to booty dance and buy four dollar beers.  I´m also getting a kick out of talking to Steve the Ozzy meathead and dirty Kevin from Baaa-ston.  He was absolutely filthy.  We end up at Propaganda the quintessential ex-commie bar name.

“It´s a bar?” asks the girl.  “We walked all this way for a bar?”

I looks like a cool bar to me with Che Guevara wall hangings and old black and white “power to the people” posters.  If the ten of us strangers who have just met in the past two or three days sat down for a beer together, we´d probably have a pretty good party.  No.  The powers that be want to meet other complete strangers so we head off again, back to the first bar to see if it´s gotten cooler.  It hasn´t.  Then we go to a bar where shorts aren´t allowed to which dirty Kevin responds, “whaat da fuck up wit´dat?” 

I don´t know where things end up from there because I go home to where my dollar beers are ice cold and my bed has no cover charge.  The crowd mentality amazes me.  I don´t think I´d be a very good comrade.



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This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Eurasia: Marco Polo-in' it, Poland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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