Re my food in Kracow anecdote:
> I find that surprising. If anything changed in E.Europe after 1989, it
> is the availability and quality of food - especially in big cities such
> as Warsaw, Cracow, Prague, or re-named Leningrad. Leningrad is an
> excellent case in point - you travel on a dilapidated subway train (once
> the pride of the Soviet system), but there is no shortage of first class
> dining, especially around Nevsky Prospect. Ditto for Prague and Cracow
> - especially the historical districts.
>
> Your problem probably might have something to do with asking locals for
> a good restaurant. Locals in E.Europe seldom dine out; they eat at
> home. If they go out, they either tend to drink-out or use fast food
> joints whose quality vary. Most of them as not as flashy as McD, but
> food quality is usually better than the stuff you buy in fast food
> joints here.
I think you were closer the first time. Central Kracow is, of course, a tourist district, and this definitely restricted the number of those small supermarket style stores which we saw elsewhere. But that was where we were given to live. Best and cheapest food around there was from small stalls by the train station open in the mornings only or from the cafes I mentioned -- two were in the central town area. Yes about eating out, though, the only food places clearly actually frequented by Poles, apart from the above-mentioned, were a couple of the hotel dining rooms and this weird Mexican restaurant. We tried it once, but it was really really awful for our tastes.
But I'm not sure about the train comment. In Poland on the lines we took there were no first class cars and no food available whatsoever. Not even between Berlin and Kracow, where we assumed there would be. I'm talking 1998. One guy we knew said it had been better in the early 90s, and that some places like Warsaw were quite different, depending on where you were living (we only stopped over there), but I don't know enough about Poland to venture any kind of explanation for that. He referred generally to closed factories and so on, and pointed them out on the train lines outside of Kracow, but he wasn't very specific. He was an opera singer and also, to be honest, didn't seem all that interested. There were clearly plenty of working farms and stuff in surrounding areas. We saw them from busses all the time. If you have theories I'd be interested.
Catherine
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