Poznań vital statistics:

• Population (2010): 551,627 (city proper); 1,400,000 (metro)
• Latitude & longitude: 52˚ 24′ N, 16˚ 55′ E
• January average temperature: High 2.3˚C (36.1˚F), low -4.6˚C (23.7˚F)
• July average temperature: High 24.6˚C (76.3˚F), low 15.5˚C (59.9˚F)
• Time zone: GMT+2 (6 hours ahead of U.S. EDT)
• Language: Polish
• Currency: Polish (New) Złoty
• Exchange rate: US$1=3.7 złoty
• Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city center: $398.42

One of my goals for this trip has been to identify “hidden treasure”-type cities that are wonderful places to visit (and, hopefully, to live) but that are inexpensive and largely undiscovered by tourists. That was my thinking behind, well, all of my European destinations except Split, Prague, Kraków, and Tallinn, which I knew were, by former Iron Curtain standards anyway, heavily touristed.

But we are living in the information age. It’s harder and harder to keep a nice place secret when it’s so easy to disseminate information about how nice it is. València, Málaga, Porto, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Brașov? Tour buses full of elderly Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and Slavs wearing matching shirts and marching in disorderly fashion behind a tour guide holding a closed umbrella with a flag on top are already on to them. Bands of drunken, rowdy, loudly off-key singing young British men are, surprisingly, resourceful enough to be in most of these cities in audible force too.

Cluj and Olomouc? Almost no tourists? Check. But there’s a reason for that: Both of those cities are pretty dull in the summer when their student populations clear out.

So imagine my surprise and delight when Poznań, Poland turns out to be the undiscovered gem I’ve been searching for. I expected Poznań to be the type of place where I can see all the sights in the first couple of days, and then retreat to my nice Airbnb apartment for the remaining five days and blog about how great Kraków was. Not so.

To be fair, Poznań isn’t a total outlier. There are more tourists here than I expected. I haven’t seen many tour groups filing through the main square, and I’ve only seen one Kraków-style tourist-filled golf cart driving through the streets of Poznań’s Old Town. But before I did my research for this trip, Warsaw was the only city in Poland I could name, and therefore the only place I could imagine foreign tourists flocking to. What sets Poznań apart as a big-bang-for-your-buck destination is that it’s got about the same level of tourism as Málaga or Zagreb but is nicer and cheaper than both of those places, and while it’s not quite as nice as València or Ljubljana, it’s less touristy and, again, cheaper than both of those.

Of all of the other cities I’ve visited, only Brașov, Romania — which is cheaper still and gets about the same volume of tourism as Poznań — vies for the title of the most wonderful off-the-radar destination I’ve stayed in. And Poznań comes with a spectacular Old Town Square, a sophisticated large-city feel, and a great food scene that Brașov can’t compete with.

I arrived in Poznań on 18 July 2018 following an uneventful six-hour train ride through the flat, uninspiring expanse of central Poland. I’m not sure how Poland’s train operators came up with their seat numbering scheme, but it appears designed to make finding your seat as difficult as possible. Maybe they’re hoping train passengers will get that much more exercise as they wander back and forth through the train car squinting at the seat numbers.

But credit where credit is due. My train was about 45 minutes late pulling into Kraków, but somehow the conductor made up the time during the journey and we arrived in Poznań six hours later exactly on time. Mind you, this whole time I was in pain ranging from agonizing to merely distracting as the result of the dental crown I’d had affixed in Kraków the day before. So once I got settled in my Airbnb apartment in central Poznań, I set out in search of milkshakes, smoothies, and other such chilled foods that I wouldn’t have to chew.

Afterward, I made a beeline for Poznań’s main square, Stary Rynek. Despite the dank drizzliness, I snapped a few photos. The next day, which started out gray and rainy again but cleared by the evening, I chose to spend indoors, recovering from a running injury I sustained in Kraków that made walking long distances slightly painful. (My forties are not starting out well. Despite my overall high level of fitness, my body seems to be falling apart piece by piece, from molars to shins.) On Friday, 20 July, the first of a succession of gorgeous, sunny, rain-free days, I returned to Stary Rynek to enjoy it (and shoot video) in fair weather.

Prague and Kraków were unusual among cities in this region of Europe in that they survived World War II largely unscathed. Poznań’s wartime experience was more typical. At the end of 1945, something like 55% of the buildings in the city were damaged so badly as to be uninhabitable. So what you see here, for the most part, has been painstakingly recreated out of the rubble.

Each day at noon, those two doors above the central clock face open up and two mechanical goats play at butting heads in clumsy, clockwork style. This is Poznań’s single biggest tourist draw, just like the very similar display in Olomouc. And like Olomouc, I shot video of the display, but it was so cheesy I deleted it. If you’re really curious, search YouTube for video of the goats — I’m sure you can find it.

But back to Stary Rynek. Highly photogenic, am I right?