More features:

• The Obwarzanek

  
  Any culinary journey through Kraków is likely to start with the obwarzanek. A chewy dough ring sprinkled (usually extremely unevenly) with salt, poppy or sesame seeds, obwarzanki are sold from rolling carts on every other street corner in Kraków, and are so inescapable they’ve become an unofficial symbol of the city....

• Leon Schiller

  
  Born in Kraków in 1887 he graduated from the city's Jagiellonian University with degrees in Philosophy and Polish Literature under his belt, before pursuing further academic titles at the Sorbonne in Paris....

• Oskar Schindler

  
  Immortalised by Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark, and then later in the massively successful Spielberg film Schindler’s List, Oskar Schindler is a name synonymous with Kraków....

• Polish Name Days (Imieniny)

  
  In Poland, name days (imieniny) are widely celebrated and have traditionally been given a greater importance than birthday celebrations, particularly as one gets on in years....

• Błędowska Desert

  Here’s sand in your eye: 40 kilometres away, smack between Kraków and Katowice, lies Pustynia Błędowska - a bonafide, genuine, centuries-old desert....

• Polish Christmas Carols (Kolędy)

  
  The singing of holiday carols (kolędy) is extremely popular in Poland, and the Poles possess a vast, seemingly inexhaustible songbook of ancient tunes traditionally sung this time of year....

• May Days

  
  Spring ushers in the arrival of not only fair weather to Poland, but also the country’s ‘National Holiday Season’, which in addition to Easter offers two other dates to note down in the diary:First up is May 1st, otherwise known as Labour Day, and a direct leftover from the communist lurch....

• Christmas in Kraków

  
  Few places in Europe seem more suited for the holiday season than Kraków, a city which when donning a dusting of fresh snow and viewed through its own cheerful prism of holiday magic, quite convincingly transforms itself into an intricate village of gingerbread houses with candy-cane columns, gumdrop-topped gables and chimneys puffing cotton candy clouds over vanilla-iced rooftops....

• Stanisław Wyspiański

  
  In the 1890s, a new wave of artistic energy inspired by the Western European Art Noveau style rolled through the Polish lands....

• 'Kolejka' Board Game

  
  If you’ve spent any time in Poland, you know that queuing is a bit of an art in this country, if not a national pastime....

• Flower Power

  
  Lads, listen up. In concert with the societal consensus that Polish women are beautiful, the country's daughters have been dutifully trained to wield their sex in the form of elaborate and flirtatious gender games, and you will be expected, if not helpless, to play along....

• Where to find Krakow In Your Pocket

  
  If you would like a copy delivered to you outside of Poland please click here. Or if you are in town ...

• Marek Grechuta

  With his catchy spoken lyrics, roaring drink habit and rumoured schizophrenia, Marek Grechuta was the embodiment of tortured genius, his place in Polish music history cast in stone – think of this guy as the Polish Bob Dylan....

• Local Likes & Dislikes

  
  In June 2011, Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper invited 21 journalism students from City University London to visit the country’s largest cities and chronicle their experiences as tourists – using Polish services, interacting with Poles, and travelling around each city....