I’ve often wondered during my travels how much my impression of a particular city is influenced by the current weather conditions. If Prague hadn’t been basking in sunshine six of my seven days there, would I have loved it as much as I did?

Kraków is the other side of the coin. The entire week (11-18 July 2018) I was there, it rained at least once a day, and a few of those days were basically total washouts. And I really, really enjoyed my time in Kraków, despite all that. Like Prague, I left Kraków with several interesting places unexplored. Even an entire week wasn’t enough to cover everything I wanted to see. So who knows? Maybe if it had been beautiful and sunny, Kraków would have eclipsed Prague as my favorite. But then again (and this may also be attributable to the weather), I didn’t find anyplace in Kraków that was the equal of Prague’s embankment in terms of people-watching. Until I do, Prague is going to stay in the #1 slot.

• Rent: 5.0. As of today (22 July 2018), the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Kraków’s city center is $549.10.
• Walkability: 7. Like any European city worth its salt, Kraków is very walkable, at least in its most appealing areas where I spent most of my time. One guidebook I read warned that Polish drivers are among the most aggressive in Europe, but in the heavily pedestrian and touristed areas of Kraków such as the Old Town and Kazimierz, crossing the street was rarely hazardous.
  

  I didn’t have to play chicken with oncoming traffic to take this photo right in the middle of the street, and neither did those people walking in front of me (14 July 2018).

  

  The Planty, the park that rings the Old Town, makes running errands on foot very pleasant. I made sure to pass through here on my way to and from the bus and train stations to the north (12 July 2018).

• Dating: 7. Many of my previous “city ratings” posts can be rightly criticized as being a bit crass on this data point. But what it boils down to is: How likely is a lonely middle-aged American man like me to find love in this city?
• Food: 8.5. The most surprising thing for me about Poland is how great the food is here. Poland has the best (affordable) cuisine in Europe, hands-down, in my opinion. (If I could have afforded to eat things other than tater tots in Spain, then maybe we’d have a contest.) In fact, for the first time since I was in Taiwan in April, I am going to devote an entire blog post to food. Stay tuned.
• Ambience: 8. Kraków is a beautiful and charming city. But I have noticed an uptick in panhandlers and other destitute-looking people here. Poland definitely has its poverty issues, although to be fair its progress since the fall of communism here in 1989 is very impressive.
• Transit: 7. Kraków is yet another city that’s so walkable that I never once took public transportation! There’s no subway, but you’ve got plenty of trams and buses here.
  

  Here in Kazimierz in particular, you never have to wait long for a tram (12 July 2018).

• Health care: 5.1. For once, I actually needed to use the local health care system in Kraków. After suffering a low-grade toothache ever since my last night in Prague, I finally gave in and sought out a dentist on my first day here. The dentist diagnosed an infection of the roots of one of my molars (I had a similar issue last fall in D.C.), gave me a root canal, and popped a new crown on top of the affected tooth. It all went fairly smoothly and everyone in the dental office spoke at least a little English for my benefit. My only complaint was that my dentist didn’t give me a prescription for heavy-duty painkillers after the crown procedure. I really could have used some codeine or something to carry me through the following 24-48 hours of agonizing tooth pain. The pain did eventually subside and now it’s like it never happened.
  

  This infected root isn’t going to wait much longer (16 July 2018).

  

  I’m flanked here by my young dentist and dental hygienist following the crown procedure. My sh**-eating grin? In part, it’s just that the anaesthesia hasn’t worn off yet. More importantly, the price tag was very, very reasonable: 1,080 złoty ($290) for three office visits, four x-rays, removal of my old crown, the root canal itself, and the new crown. (My D.C. dentist put the old crown on last fall for $1,700. That hurt a lot more than the procedure.) (17 July 2018).

  

  The pork cutlet I had for dinner after the crown procedure was an extremely poor choice. Way too much chewing, which got very painful very quickly. I learned my lesson and my next meal consisted of a milkshake and a smoothie (17 July 2018).

• Nature: 6. Urban parks don’t exactly constitute “nature,” but Krakowskie Błownia — described at the very end of my Kraków Old Town post — is such a vast, under-manicured meadow that it kind of feels like you’re out in the wild.
• Internet: 9.
• Crime: 6.8.
• Language: 3. Polish is a tricky tongue for me. Everyplace I go, I really only try to learn three phrases: “Hello,” “thank you,” and “check, please.” It took me the entire week in Kraków before I could remember all three. I quickly gave up trying to pronounce the more informal Polish “hello,” which is spelled cześć, combines “sh” and “ch” sounds with no vowels in between, and is effectively unpronounceable. I did much better when I ditched that for the more formal “good day,” jin dobry. And I challenge any native English speaker to remember, let alone pronounce, the Polish word for “thanks,” dziękuję.
• Bikeability: 7.5. Cycling! That’s another thing I never got around to doing. Although I blame the weather in large part for that. Kraków appears to be very bike-friendly.
  

  Of course, there’s the wonderful bike path along both banks of a long stretch of the Vistula River. Like Taipei, the river is twisty enough that I could incorporate the riverfront cycling path into a convenient commuter route through the city (12 July 2018).

  

  And then, along the huge Krakowskie Błownia park, there’s this seemingly endless, straight, wide bike lane (14 July 2018).

  

  And, just as importantly, Kraków has its share of humble, narrow bike lanes in more densely packed urban areas, connecting to the longer bike paths on the greenbelts (14 July 2018).

• Friendliness: 7. The Poles are among the friendliest and most welcoming people in Slavic Europe, right up there with the Slovenians, in my opinion. That’s all the more remarkable given the battering Poland has taken from its neighbors in recent centuries.
• Pollution: 3.2. Per Numbeo, Kraków has, by European standards, really bad pollution. That surprises me, because, besides the natives smoking like chimneys like all other Europeans, the air seemed fine to me. But then maybe that’s just the silver lining on all the gray rain clouds over Kraków when I was there — the rain washed the skies clean.