Selected
Archive News Stories of 2008 from Krakow Info
Year
2008
New
Year’s Fallout
Three of Poland’s main cities, Krakow among them,
are at odds over New Year’s latest revelries. Vying
for the dawn-of-2008 merrymaking primacy, Krakow and
Wroclaw dispute each other’s numbers of participants
in New Year’s Eve open-air parties that both
municipalities threw, 190,000 and 200,000
respectively, each figure by courtesy of local PR men.
Anyway, they dwarfed Warsaw’s meager 20,000, which
ignited an outcry in the capital city’s town hall
that has publicly contested the above estimates.
Councilors
Free Taxis
Krakow’s City
Council has voted to scrap ceilings on taxi
fares for the city’s cabs from January 1, 2008. At
the same time it has decided to raise the number of
available taxi licenses for another 600. As Krakow
taxi drivers hail the former decision, they openly
despise the latter. The councilors believe that their
exercise in free market will result in lower fares and
better service.
Wonder
of Wonders
Natives of Poland
have voted the country’s seven wonders, i.e. sites
most worth visiting. Two of them are located in the
center of Krakow – Wawel
Hill with the Royal
Castle and Cathedral
and the city’s central Rynek
Glowny square together with the Old
Town that surrounds it. Another of the
Seven Wonders of Poland, the Wieliczka
Salt Mine, is situated on the outskirts of
Krakow.
Smoking
Fine
Municipal
police fined seven smokers and reprimanded 543 in the
first ten days since a ban on smoking at bus and tram
stops had come into force within the limits of Krakow
in February. The cops promise to be less lenient with
time and to fine smoking offenders as a rule. The
penalty may be anything between 20 and 500 zlotys.
Live
in Krakow, Be Happy
Living in Krakow is most satisfying, according to the
Urban Audit Perception Survey, part of the European
Union’s Flash-Eurobarometer project. Conducted last
November by Gallup Hungary in 75 cities of the 27 EU
countries plus Turkey and Croatia, cosmopolitan
metropolis like Paris and London as well as some
close-knit communities like Finland’s Oulu and
Portugal’s Braga, it has revealed that 97 percent of
Krakow dwellers are satisfied to live in their city.
No other municipality can boast the same level of
satisfaction among citizenry save Groningen in The
Netherlands but only 75 percent of its denizens feel
strongly so against some 85 percent for Krakow. By
comparison, just sixty percent or so of the locals
said they were satisfied, either strongly or somewhat,
to live in Athens. Asked about concrete aspects of
urban life, residents
of Krakow assessed highest the integration
of foreigners whereas they seemed unhappy about hospital
health
services. The survey involved 500 randomly
selected individuals in each city.
Europe's
Biggest Shopping
Hungary’s developer, TriGranit, vows to construct
Europe’s biggest shopping
center in Krakow early next year. The
sprawling Bonarka City Center, situated on a
19-hectare industrial wasteland four kilometers south
of Krakow’s
central Old Town district, will boast
nearly 100,000 square meters of shopping
floor area. The whole project will cost euro 500,000
to build, with office blocks and blocks of flats to be
added later on, and will generate over 5,000 new jobs.
Grave
Finding
The city’s corporation managing Krakow’s
cemeteries has launched an online service that
localizes graves at municipal burial grounds. The
search engine available at http://www.rakowice.eu can
find the grave of any of 280,000-plus people laid to
rest at cemeteries of Bronowice, Grebalow, Kobierzyn,
Mydlniki, Nowy Podgorski, Stary Podgorski, Pradnik
Czerwony, Prokocim, Pychowice, Wola Justowska, and the
newer part of Cmentarz Rakowicki cemetery. For the
time being some command of elementary Polish seems
necessary to feed it with required data, i.e. given
names, the surname, and the date – approximate at
least – of the burial. The service doesn’t cover
Krakow’s Jewish cemeteries nor the church graveyards
and crypts.
14.5
Million Visited Malopolska
In 2007 the Malopolska
province, Wojewodztwo Malopolskie,
attracted 14.5 million visitors, including three
million from abroad, according to a survey
commissioned by the local government and carried out
by IPSOS Polska. Most of them came to Krakow. Among
visiting foreigners Britons constituted the biggest
segment, 14.4 percent, followed by Germans (10.9
percent), and Italians (8.9 percent). On average, a
foreign visitor stayed four days in Malopolska and
spent here an equivalent of 555 euro.
Growing
Pains of the Balice Airport
As the projected number of passengers this year
approaches the overall annual capacity of 3.5 million,
Krakow’s
Balice airport is bursting at the seams.
Its further extension, to be completed in 2010, will
eventually raise the volume to nine million passengers
per year. The blueprint for new air terminal
facilities provides also for a train station, a
multistory underground car park, and an airport hotel.
British
Royalty in Krakow
British Prince Charles and his wife Camilla descended
on Krakow on April 29 to open a Jewish Community
Center at 24 Miodowa street. A five-story modern
eyesore adjacent to the 19th-century graceful Tempel
Synagogue, the building has come into existence thanks
to the Prince of Wales who persuaded the World Jewish
Relief, a UK’s charity, to finance its construction
in the wake of his previous visit in 2002. Prince
Charles himself nailed the mezuzah to the doorpost.
After the opening ceremony he had a kosher lunch in
the garden of Kupa Synagogue opposite.
Formula
One Krakow Hero
The whole city rejoices at the win of Rober Kubica, a
native of Krakow, in Formula One’s Grand Prix Canada
race in Montreal. The triumph on Sunday, May 8 was the
first victory in the career of the 23-year-old driver
of BMW Sauber team and the first ever for a Polish
national. Also, it has made Kubica the leader of this
year’s F1 series ahead of the world champion,
Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari, and UK’s
Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes McLaren. Montreal was
Robert Kubica’s 29th race in Formula One.
EU
Pledges a Couple of Billions for Malopolska
Malopolska
Province, whose capital city is Krakow, has
secured euro 1.29 billion from the European Union’s
funds for major infrastructure projects in the region
in the years 2007-2013. Plus the EU separate grant to
the tune of 590 million euros has been earmarked under
the Human Capital program for varied measures to boost
competitiveness of Malopolska’s workforce.
Honorary
Doctor Steven Spielberg
Krakow's Jagiellonian University has conferred an
honorary doctorate on the Hollywood filmmaker Steven
Spielberg. He has been recognized for his 'cinematic
artistry' and 'attachment to the tradition and humane
values' as well as his ‘contribution to the
commemoration of Holocaust’. Mr Spielberg authored
famous movie, 'Schindler's List', that shows the
tragedy of the Jewish
ghetto in Krakow. The Krakow University
dates back to 1364 but it awarded its first honorary
doctorate in 1816. Since then it honored this way
300-plus persons, outstanding scientists from Poland
and abroad.
Square
Dancing for the Record
Krakow holds the world record in simultaneous dancing.
It was set on August 31, 2008 when 1635 couples of
dancers waltzed at the same time for five minutes on Krakow’s
central Rynek Glowny square. The
record-breaking event was arranged by one of
Poland’s television networks, TVN, with the Guinness
Book of Records in mind.
Ultimate
Cycling
Organizers of the 65th Tour de Pologne have chosen
Krakow for the finish of its course of 1259 kilometers
in the late September, 2008. The race is part of the main Pro Tour
professional cycling circuit alongside Tour de France,
Italy’s Giro d’Italia, or Spain’s Vuelta a
Espana with all top teams participating. The first
Tour de Pologne took place in 1928.
Spanking
Few Film Festival
Krakow has got
a brand-new film festival in addition to the city’s
several other cinematic events, including the
48-year-old Krakow Film Festival. The 1st Off Camera
International Festival of Independent Cinema screened
120 indie movies in four theaters and three clubs in
the first five days of October 2008. Its international
jury awarded the main prize of 100,000 euro to the
USA’s Azazel Jacobs for his highly autobiographical
‘Mama’s Boy’. There was also another, parallel
festival competition for movies shot with a cellphone
where the prize money for the winner equaled the price
of a professional camcorder.
Krakow
Lion Monster
Krakow has got a local cousin of the Loch Ness Monster
and the yeti. The creature has four paws, seemingly
resembles a lioness or a cougar, and reportedly it was
seen near village of Jeziorzany some 18 km southeast
of the city center in early October and even filmed
with a cellphone. Later the same day over 100
policemen, a counter-terrorist unit, two police
helicopters, several squads of firefighters and
rangers, plus paramedic ambulance crews tried to track
and corner the mysterious animal. In the afternoon
police infrared cameras apparently discovered it in
the thicket of a field of maize. Yet over the ensuing
night the creature disappeared. The hunt cost an
equivalent of some 15,000 euro.
Funshop?
Not So Funny
A shop with legal drugs has opened in Krakow selling
various over-the-counter alleged alternatives to
illicit dope. The little store – labeled as a
‘funshop’ by its owners, a UK-based World Wide
Supplements Importer – is hidden in the courtyard of
a nondescript tenement house at Starowislna streets.
It sells both chemicals and herbal concoctions and its
customer base consist mostly of the young patrons of
Krakow’s numerous night clubs. Legal as it may be,
the merchandise can prove both highly addictive and
hazardous to health, drug experts warn.
No
Frills, No Fly
Ryanair, the Irish no-frills carrier, has announced
that it suspends all its flights
from and to Krakow between November 4 and
December 19, 2008. The airline’s management excuses
itself by pointing to high fuel costs and high airport
tax at the Krakow
Airport. The airport has released a
statement in response revealing that Ryanair demanded
a blanket tax exemption in November and December and
accusing the carrier of disregard for
passengers.
Remains
of Gen. Sikorski to Be Examined
Krakow Archbishop, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, has
given permission to exhume the remains of General
Wladyslaw Sikorski on November 25 and thus he has made
possible a post-mortem. Gen. Sikorski, the wartime
premier of Poland’s government in exile and the
commander-in-chief of the Polish armed forces, was
killed in a mysterious plane crash near Gibraltar on
July 4, 1943. Blanket of secrecy thrown over the
accident and some dubious official findings of the
British authorities gave rise to a number of
conspiracy theories. Recently Poland’s state agency
responsible for investigating war crimes and human
rights violations of the past, Instytut Pamieci
Narodowej (Institute for the National Remembrance),
has opened an inquiry into the death of one of the
country’s most revered heroes. In 1993 Gen. Sikorski
was laid to rest in the crypt of Krakow’s Wawel
Cathedral alongside the Polish royalty and some other
great Poles.
Dalai
Lama's Visit to Krakow
The Dalai Lama arrived to Krakow on Sunday, December 7
to receive next day an honorary doctorate of
philosophy conferred on him in October 2007 by the
city's Jagiellonian University, Poland's oldest and
most revered. The ceremony took place in the
university's Collegium Novum, 24 Golebia street at
Planty gardens, on December 8 at 9 a.m. In the
afternoon, at 3 p.m. on the same day the Dalai Lama
met Krakow's academic community in the
Jagiellonian University's biggest hall, Auditorium
Maximum at 33 Krupnicza street. After arriving to the Krakow
airport at 9 p.m. on Sunday he had met the city’s nearly twenty Buddhist
communities representing various branches of the
religion. The 644-year-old Krakow
university was Poland's first to award an
honorary doctorate to the Dalai Lama.
Santa
Claus Is Legal At Last!
Mayor of Krakow has lifted the ban on Santas wandering
the streets one of his predecessors introduced more
than 100 years ago. The then mayor Jozef Friedlein
banned men disguised as Santa Claus as well as
accompanying devils and angels from the city by the
end of the 19th century because of frequent alcohol
abuse among them. The century-old prohibition, albeit
forgotten and disobeyed from time immemorial, has been
repealed on December 2, 2008 – just in time for the
parade of 100 Santas to be hold legally in downtown
Krakow three days later. The organizers guaranteed
sobriety of every Father Christmas.
Thousands
Feasted on Charity
The homeless from all over Poland arrived in their
thousands on Krakow’s
huge Rynek Glowny central square on Sunday,
December 21 to enjoy the traditional free meal in the
run-up of Christmas. The organizers had supplied
150,000 pierog dumplings, 6,000 liters of mushroom
soup, and 6,000 liters of stewed sauerkraut with
mushrooms – the Polish traditional Yule dishes –
among piles of other foods. And the city residents
brought durable food products to hand them out to the
homeless. One of them was the mayor
of Krakow who also offered Christmas
greetings.
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