Selected
Archive News Stories of 2007 from Krakow Info
Year
2007
New
Year, As Usual
The usual number of some 120,000 people turned out for
Krakow’s traditional New Year’s Eve’s open-air
party on the
city’s central Rynek Glowny square. While
rejoicing they could watch free concert
featuring Poland’s pop stars of three generations
followed by a firework display.
2007
Voted Officially the Year of Krakow
Poland’s senate has voted 2007 to be The Year of
Krakow nation-wide to celebrate the 750th anniversary
of the city’s sweeping self-government it enjoyed in
the Middle Ages. Krakow is the country’s first city
ever honored this way.
Lajkonik,
the One and Only From Now
Visitors to Krakow can no longer take home a picture
with themselves next to the city’s iconic lajkonik
horseman. The municipality
has refused the resourceful impersonator of the
legendary Tartar a permit to earn his living for
another year through posing for tourist cameras on the
Rynek Glowny
central square. This way the city hall
wants to protect the integrity of the traditional
lajkonik figure that every year leads a
historical pageant through Krakow’s streets on the
first Thursday after the feast of Corpus
Christi.
Fountains
of Light and Harmony
Krakow’s
municipality has decided that the city’s
fountains in the Old
Town historic district and elsewhere are to
spout light and music on winter nights rather than
stand idle in freezing temperatures.
Shining strings are supposed to mimic jets of water
spurting from each fountain in warmer seasons.
Accompanying classical music, and possibly jazz as
well, will change every month or so. The first
fountain of light, in a Planty
garden near the barbican,
delivers Tchaikovsky’s compositions every night to
be replaced by Chopin’s pieces by the end of
December. Cost to Krakow’s taxpayers is an
equivalent of about 54,000 euro.
Visitors
To Stay Warm This Winter, Courtesy of City Hall
Krakow’s city
government, already famed in Poland for its
compassion for the homeless, has announced a new
service to help them weather the winter. Besides
thousands of free meals every day, accommodation for
hundreds at night shelters, a number of bath houses,
health care, and thousands of benefits in cash – all
at the cost of zlotys 4.5 million a year – the
municipality has resolved to kindle ten fire-baskets
in Krakow streets whenever the temperature drops below
minus twenty Celsius. City hall reckons that about
2,000 homeless spends the winter in Krakow, in that
number seasonal migrants from the country’s other,
less hospitable cities.
Krakow’s
Opera House–Somewhat Later and Much Costlier
Completion of a brand-new, state-of-the-art opera
building for Krakow at Lubicz street is delayed by at
least six months with new deadline set for the end of
2007. At the same time its cost has shot up to some 80
million zlotys (an equivalent of roughly twenty
million euro) from the original 54 million, the
difference to be covered by the government of the
Malopolska province whose capital city is Krakow. Till
now the Teatr
Slowackiego theater at Pl. Sw. Ducha
square has doubled as opera venue.
Property
Tax in 2007 Is Up, Barely
Krakow’s City
Council has left the yearly municipal
property tax
on residential
estates unchanged while commercial floor
space is to be taxed slightly higher in 2007. Basic
rate for commercial
property has been raised by 0.16 zloty,
to 18.25 zlotys per square meter. As before superstores
of 2,000-plus sq. m will be taxed a bit more in 2007,
at 18.6 zlotys per square meter, a rise of 0.17 zloty.
At the same time such businesses as bakeries,
bakeshops, and slaughterhouses are to pay just 9.3
zlotys per square meter, an increase of 0.08 zlotys.
Owners of flats or dwelling houses pay as little
property tax as 0.54 zloty for a square meter of the
living quarters. The Krakow municipality forecasts its
revenue from the property tax to total about 283
million zlotys, i.e. euro 72.5 million or so.
Eight
Million Visited Krakow in 2006
Last year 10.9 million tourists visited the Malopolska
province and its many
holiday
destinations, 1.3 million more than in
2005. In that number about eight million arrived to
Krakow, the province’s capital and Poland’s
southern metropolis. Foreigners accounted for roughly
three million of the visitors to Malopolska. Germans
and Britons made up respectively 17 percent and 16
percent of them with Americans distant third with 9
percent. On average a visiting foreigner spent en
equivalent of some 170 euro, compared to a hundred
euro for a Pole. The aggregate windfall for the
province amounted to an equivalent of euro 1.08
billion, of which Krakow earned some 890
million.
Auschwitz
Attracted A Million in 2006
Last year the record number of nearly one million
visitors toured the sites of the former Nazi most
notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau
complex of concentration camps in the city
of Oswiecim, seventy kilometers west of Krakow. The
infernal prison, where in the years 1941 to 1945 about
a million inmates perished, has been turned into a
museum after World War II. The museum’s staff
attribute the increase to the overall surge in tourism
to Poland in 2006 rather than a greater awareness of
the holocaust.
Never
Get Lost in Malopolska
Super-precise
positioning system is being launched in the Malopolska
province whose capital city is Krakow. The
system, based on radio signals from five purpose-built
stations in the main cities of the province, may
locate an object with the accuracy of two centimeters,
compared with three meters in case of the widely uses
Global Positioning System (GPS). At the cost of about
415,000 euro, three quarters of it refunded by the EU,
the Malopolska provincial government hopes the new
positioning system will be instrumental in tracing
ambulances, land surveying, construction of roads and
bridges, mapping of archeological finds, etc. The
system will be also available free of charge to any
owner of a GPS device via the access code posted on
the webesite www.gps.malopolska.pl
Krakow
Airport’s New Terminal
Krakow’s
Balice airport has got its second passenger
terminal. The brand-new, 1,800-sq-meter building has
capacity of 600,000 passengers a year and serves all
domestic flights.
It’s situated next to the airport’s cargo
facilities, some 600 m south of the main passenger
terminal that handles over two million fliers yearly.
Krakow,
the Frontiers of Silicon Valley
Google Inc. has announced it opens in Krakow
one of its ten research centers in Europe and the
company’s first such high-tech outpost in this part
of the continent. It will be staffed by just 20 to 30
employers but the American giant wants to attract
Poland’s top computer scientists. Krakow can already
boast R&D centers of Motorola and IBM.
Tourist
Mecca for Trendsetters Is Here
Orbitz, the USA’s online tourism
giant, has declared Krakow
one of the world’s seven hottest destinations in
2007 alongside Spain’s Valencia, Vietnam’s Ho Chi
Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon), and four American getaway
spots. Krakow is next Prague–reads the argument.
Orbitz highlights Krakow’s well-kept historical landmarks,
cultural
prominence, energetic nightlife,
and long carnival,
which make the city a good choice for a jaunt in
January or February.
Airport
Numbers Fly High
In 2006 Krakow’s
John Paul II International Airport in Balice,
some 15 km from the city center, served the record
number of passengers in its entire history. Last year
the Balice airport either received or dispatched the
total of 2,367,527 fliers, compared with just over 1.5
million in 2005 and mere 840,000 in 2004. This year an
estimated three-million-plus passengers should use the
Krakow airport.
1.6-Billion
Wish List
Krakow’s
City Council has voted in a ten-year
investment plan comprising 66 major municipal
development projects to be completed till the end of
2016. Their aggregate cost totals 1.5 billion Polish
zlotys, an equivalent of about 385 million
euro. The plan includes all overdue projects from an
indoor sports
arena to a convention
center to a fast commuter train line.
Papal
Autos On Sale for a Good Cause, Soon
Pope Benedict XVI has given Krakow’s Cardinal
Stanislaw Dziwisz five cars and two electric carts
that once used to ferry his predecessor John
Paul II. The two BMWs, Lancia, Toyota,
Chrysler, and two other vehicles arrived to Krakow in
mid-December. Four cars and one cart are to be
auctioned off this spring to help finance the
construction of a religious center commemorating the
late Pontiff. The vehicles are in perfect
condition.
Krakow’s
Beloved Museum Is Moved for a Time
By the end of
August, 2006 the Krakow National Museum’s popular Gallery
of the 19th-century Polish Art in the Cloth
Hall has closed for renovation with most of
its exhibits moved to Niepolomice’s castle
for the next two years. The exhibition of the
gallery’s 400 paintings and 50 sculptures in
Niepolomice, a town on the eastern outskirts of
Krakow, has opened this year in February.
The museum’s two best know giant paintings, Jan
Matejko’s ‘The Prussian Homage’ and
Henryk Siemiradzki’s ‘Nero’s Torches’,
are left behind in the Cloth Hall out of sight while four
others have been transferred temporarily to The Krakow
National Museum's main
hall at 3 Maja street. The Niepolomice castle was one
of Poland’s royal residences and its present
Renaissance architecture dates back to the 16th
century.
A
Krakow Priest Shakes the Polish Church
Krakow’s priest’s new book has galvanized
Poland’s public opinion and rocked the country’s
Catholic Church. Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski was
persecuted by the secret police under communism in the
1980s, now he wrote about the Krakow priests who were
turned into informers of the infamous SB security
service. Among others the book, based on the
agency’s documents, exposes some of today’s Polish
prelates and it has become instant bestseller. Till
recently Father Isakowicz-Zaelski was mostly known for
his charity works for the disabled.
Pope
in His Mind
The memoirs by Krakow’s Archbishop, Cardinal
Stanislaw Dziwisz, recently published concurrently in Poland
and Italy have proved a bestseller in both countries.
And no wonder as the book evokes the prelate’s
49-year association with Pope
John Paul II, first as a chaplain and then
the late Pontiff’s private secretary for 27 years.
Tellingly, the title of the Polish edition translates
as ‘Testimony’ while the Italian publishers
opted for overly familiar ‘Life with Karol’
(the name the future Pope had been given at
baptism).
Krakow
Mourns John Paul II on the 2nd Anniversary.
On the second anniversary of the death of Pope
John Paul II, the 2nd of April, Krakow
commemorates its greatest son to date with religious
services as well as an open-air concert on the central
Rynek Glowny square and other cultural
events. Three special High Masses will be said in the
Ecce Homo sanctuary, the Sanctuary
of Divine Mercy, and in the church of SS
Peter and Paul. A prayer vigil will be held in the
front of Krakow’s Archbishop Palace from 9:30 p.m.
Earlier, at 7 p.m., an open-air concert features the
“Tu es Petrus” oratory on the Old Town’s huge
central square.
More
Money for Krakow Landmarks
This year Poland’s government, namely the
republic’s president, has pledged record funds for
the restoration of Krakow historic
buildings – Polish zlotys 45.5 million
(an equivalent of roughly 11.7 million euro) compared
to 37 million zlotys in 2006. The money will be
disbursed for 121 renovation projects. The biggest
grants are to go to the Wawel
Royal Castle (2.9 million), the Wawel
Cathedral (2.15 million), the Krzysztofory
Palace at 35 Rynek
Glowny central square (two millions), and
the TyniecAbbey
(1.9 million).
Little
Square in a Big Way
Krakow’s Maly Rynek (the name translates as
‘Little Square’), the Old Town’s picturesque
piazza just a block east of the city’s huge central
Rynek Glowny plaza, has been fenced off as it
undergoes renovation. The thorough refurbishment of
the former medieval meat market is to be completed,
fingers crossed, by June 2007 for the celebration of
the 750th anniversary of Krakow’s self-government.
After the facelift the square will be rid of parking
cars for good.
Museum
Recess
Krakow
National Museum is closing for Easter.
All its branches will stay closed on Holy Saturday,
Easter Saturday and Monday, April 7-9. Later on, from
Tuesday, April 10 till the end of the month three
departments of The
Czartoryskis Museum at 19 Sw. Jana street
will stay shut – i.e. Gallery of Antique Art,
European Handcraft, and Armory (the price of tickets
will be reduced).
Five
Presidents to Talk Oil in the Wawel Castle
Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski hosts a
two-day “energy summit” in Krakow on May 11-12. He
has invited presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan,
Ukraine, Lithuania, and Kazakhstan to the Wawel Royal Castle to
discuss the transfer of the Caspian oil through their
territories. Kazakhstan's president Nazarbayev
opted to meet with Russia's Putin instead, sending to
Krakow one of his ministers.
Krakow’s
Summit Explores the Caspian Oil
Presidents of Poland, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine,
and Lithuania plus their entourages wreaked havoc on
Krakow’s streets as they descended on the city May
11-12 to talk the transfer of the Caspian oil via
their countries to the European Union. The encounter
also produced a joint declaration supporting the
scheme and promising creation of an inter-governmental
task force to further it and a multinational company
to carry on and cash in. A follow-up summit is to take
place in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius in October 2007
possibly with the addition of the president of
Kazakhstan.
Krakow
Film Festival: Short Is Beautiful
This year’s
47th Krakow Film Festival, May 31 to June 5, will
screen 46 movies – twenty documentaries, seventeen
feature films, and nine animations. They have come
from twenty countries, including nine British
productions, five from France, and five from Russia.
They have been selected from 2260 entries. Ever since
its birth 46 years ago the Krakow Film Festival has
been confined to short films, i.e. currently those
lasting fifty minutes or less. The main festival venue
is the Kijow playhouse at 34 Krasinskiego
street.
Not
So Monumental
Krakow’s city hall has foiled the erection of a
monument to Prince Boleslaw the Shy, Poland’s ruler
who granted Krakow self-government in 1257. Two
consecutive designing competitions enticed a fair
number of entries but have failed to produce a
convincing sculpture. Thus once grandiose program for
the June celebration of the 750th anniversary has been
still further reduced.
President
Not Coming, Needs a Rest
Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski has eventually
opted out of Krakow’s much trumpeted 750th
anniversary of the city charter. Official
reason: he needs rest before a getaway with the
American president George W. Bush in a resort on the
Polish coast of the Baltic See. Yet the presidential
absence is widely seen as a deliberate snub to
Krakow’s leftist mayor and its centrist City Council
from the right-wing Mr. Kaczynski.
New
Tunnel for Motorists
230-meter-long, two-lane motorway tunnel under
Krakow’s central train
station and Galeria
Krakowska giant shopping mall should ease
congestion in the city center, at least somewhat. It
opened on May 15 and cost some four million euro to
build. The long overdue tunnel was originally
conceived in 1975 as part of a thorough-going
overhaul, now almost accomplished at last, of the so
called Krakow Transportation Center (Krakowskie
Centrum Komunikacyjne) consisting of the main rail
station, the adjacent central bus depot, and new
arteries in the area.
Awards
of the 47th Krakow Film Festival
United
Kingdom’s filmmaker Daniel Mulloy scooped the Grand
Prix of the 47th Krakow Film Festival while The
Netherlands’ director Jeroen Berkvens was awarded
with the Grand Prix in the category of full-length
documentaries and Poland’s 22-old-student Rafal
Skalski won its Polish leg. Since its conception in
1961 the yearly festival has been devoted to short films, and documentaries in the first place. This year
it attracted 2260 entries from all over the
world.
Political
Scandal Rocks the City
Krakow has been rocked by news about the attempted
suicide of the mayor’s acolyte and former campaign
chief charged with being an accessory to the financial
irregularities concerning zlotys 142,000 (about 37,000
euro) of campaign funds in 2002. Mr Andrzej Kulig,
once the mayor of Krakow’s chief of staff and since
2005 the CEO of the University
Hospital, is one of
five persons accused in the case. Mayor Jacek
Majchrowski dismisses the charges as a smear campaign
by his political opponents.
Rock
Climbing Galore
Poland’s biggest open-air rock-climbing center has
opened on the premises of Krakow’s KS Hutnik sports
club at 4 Ptaszyckiego street in the Nowa Huta district.
As many as 64 climbers may scale at the same time
three artificial crags 8 to 12 meters tall and eight
3.5-meter-high boulders totaling 500 square meters of
climbing facilities. Admission costs an equivalent of
three euro or so per person per day and the center is
open till 10 p.m.
New
English Weekly in Krakow
Foreign publishing partnership of Marshall Cominsz and
Nicolaas Hoff, residents of the USA and the
Netherlands respectively, has launched Krakow’s
local weekly in English. ‘The Krakow Post’,
a newspaper modeled on ‘The Warsaw Voice’
published in Poland’s capital city, deals with local
issues as well as nationwide news stories. The
publishers foresee the circulation of 10,000 copies to
be distributed free of charge.
Walk
the Walls
After half a century sightseers are allowed again to
climb the remnants of Krakow’s
medieval city walls next to the giant barbican
and walk their parapet walk. The 180-meter tour starts
in the Baszta Pasamonikow tower at the eastern end of
Pijarska street at Szpitalna street. It includes the
upstairs chapel in the 13th-century Brama Florianska
gate tower, the Brama Stolarska tower to the west, and
the barbican. They are accessible every day between
10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. A ticket costs six zlotys, an
equivalent of about 1.5 euro.
Iconic
Landmark of Today
Krakow’s historic Old Town central district has got
a distinctive modern structure in its heart. The
brand-new ‘Wyspianski 2000’ brick building at the
corner of Plac Wszystkich Swietych square and Grodzka
street adjoins the City Hall and has been meant as a
municipal information center. Yet that brainchild of
Poland’s world-famous film director Andrzej Wajda
was conceived in the first place as a frame to hold
the stunning stained-glass windows that Stanislaw
Wyspianski, Krakow’s greatest artist of the late
19th century, designed originally for the Wawel
Cathedral in 1902. The sleek edifice designed by
Krakow’s architect Krzysztof Ingarden cost euro 2.8
million to build.
Stag
Night Fever: Behave or Beware
Police has declared a policy of zero tolerance in
Krakow for misdemeanors of foreign visitors and
promised to prosecute all transgressions, including
littering, breach of the peace, and indecent behavior.
Policemen, together with border guards and the
municipal police, are to patrol intensively the
city’s downtown as well as the central train
station and its vicinity on Fridays and
Saturdays till the end of September, popular nightspots
to be watched most closely. It’s the response of the
law enforcers to the complaints of residents,
increasingly vocal in recent months, about unruly
foreigners, notably young Britons who have taken a
liking for stag parties and other drinking
binges in Krakow.
New
Address of Municipal Offices for Entrepreneurs
Effective July 9, Krakow’s
municipality has moved its private enterprises
department from the notoriously overcrowded front
office at Powstania Warszawskie street to a
nondescript office building at 28a Wielicka street,
newly refurbished at a cost of euro two million.
Clerks and their business
customers have been allotted an entire story. The
remaining five floors are meant for personnel catering
to those Krakow citizens who live in the Podgorze
district.
Krakow’s
Tennis Player Wins Wimbledon
17-year-old native of Krakow, Urszula Radwanska, won
this year’s girls competition of the Wimbledon tennis
tournament. On the same day, teamed with Russia’s
rising tennis star Anastasia Pavluchenkova, she also
won the girl doubles championship. Earlier Miss
Radwanska had defeated Pavluchenkova in the single’s
quarterfinal.
Krakow
Teen Beats Sharapova
The city is agog with the news of Krakow’s teenage tennis
player Agnieszka Radwanska’s surprise win over the
defending champion Maria Sharapova in the third round
of the US Open. The 18-year-old Radwanska, seeded No.
30, beat the world No. 2 in three sets 6–4, 1–6,
6–0 at Arthur Ashe Stadium on September 1. Her
defeat of the Russian tennis superstar has elevated Ms
Radwanska to the status of a local hero on a par with
Krakow’s Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica.
Family
Matters
Surprise decision of Krakow’s quintessential
politician to quit politics has electrified the city.
Jan Rokita MP, one of the leaders of the Civic
Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) party, announced his
retirement in the wake of his wife’s appointment as
adviser to President Lech Kaczynski associated with
the rival PiS party led by twin brother Jaroslaw
Kaczynski. Mr. Rokita, 48, former cabinet minister and
a candidate for office of the country’s premier, has
been Member of Parliament for Krakow since 1989 and
one of Poland’s most recognizable political figures
of the last decade.
Election
Ups and Downs
Krakow has voted overwhelmingly for the main
opposition party, Civic Platform (Platforma
Obywatelska, PO) in the recent snap parliamentary
elections on October 21. The centrist party has won
47.4 percent votes at the ballot in the city, compared to
41.4 percent it has secured nationwide. Its main
opponents, the governing rightist Law and Justice (Prawo
i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS), have got 34.4 percent of the
Krakow votes and 32.2 nationally. Two other parties
that have scaled the five-percent threshold to win
seats in Poland’s house of representatives, Sejm,
the leftist Left and Democrats (Lewica i Demokraci,
LiD) and the peasant Polish Popular Party (Polskie
Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL) have obtained 9.7 percent and
4.2 percent respectively in Krakow against 13.2 percent and
8.9 percent countrywide. At the same time,
in Krakow 61.4 percent of eligible voters
bothered to cast the ballots while the nationwide
turnout proved record high at 54 percent.
Museum
of Medieval Art, Reactivation
Long overdue, Krakow’s renowned museum of medieval
and baroque art reopens on October 19. The branch of
the Krakow National Museum, it has been moved to the
thoroughly renovated Palace of Bishop Erasmus Ciolek (Palac
Biskupa Erazma Ciolka) of the early 16th century, 17
Kanonicza street, at the foot of the Wawel Royal
Castle. The ground floor of the Renaissance lavish
residence has been turned to a gallery of the Orthodox
church art from the 15th century to the 20th century.
Upstairs the museum exhibits the Polish medieval
church art of the 15th and 16th centuries, a
collection of portraits of the nobility from the 16th
to the 18th century, and the ancient village art.
Krakow
Airport Is Schengen-Ready
A separate departure area for ‘Schengen’
passengers has been added to the international
terminal of the Krakow
airport in Balice. The 3,000-sq-meter
extension contains 15 new check-in desks and five new
points for security checks. It has increased the
Balice airport capacity to 3.5 million passengers a
year and enabled a more secure five-stage processing
of luggage now in place. The new facilities allow to
separate ‘Schengen flights’ – i.e. to most of
the continental European Union – from the non-Schengen
ones. It makes the Krakow airport ready for Poland’s
inclusion in the
‘Schengen area’ of abolished border controls on
December 20. Even so, as regards air travel, the
introduction of new rules will be postponed till March
2008.
Museums
for Free
The city’s 21 museums plus the
Botanic Garden may be
visited free of charge on Sunday, November 25,
declared the Krakow Museums Open-door Day. Last
year 27,500 visitors took advantage of
complimentary admission on similar occasion
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