Sometimes, people want to know "what it was like under communism." This is akin to asking your grandfather what it was like to be 19. He may or may not remember, but you can be sure that, in either case, he's not going to be be able to convey the experience in anything like its entirety. A sigh is the best you can hope for.

Nevertheless, there are still a few places in Cracow that haven't changed much over the last fifteen and more years, and which therefore merit a visit whenever this kind of question comes up. We're not talking about nostalgic re-enactment. Nor are we being sarcastic about standards of service, etc. Far from it. These are simply places that, for one reason or another, have kept chugging along the way they used to be.

(1) The Rio Cafe, ul. Sw. Jana. This was one of two cafes that opened not long after the 1956 "October Thaw" that signalled the end of Stalinism in Poland. (The other one, more uncomfortably and eccentrically furnished, with lovely mural paintings, was Fafik on ul. Sienna.) The Rio and Fafik are said to have featured the first genuine Italian espresso machines in town, and the one at Rio is still there. The menu on the wall is almost the same as it was years ago, except that it used to feature separate prices for black coffee with and without sugar. The woman behind the counter would invariably use her little spring-loaded chrome tongs to put two sugar cubes on every saucer she served. Not everyone was assertive enough, if they didn't want their coffee sweetened, to say, "No sugar, thanks," at which she would remove the sugar cubes with an annoyed look and charge the lower price.

The distinguishing aspect of the interior is how very uncomfortable the little seats are. They are fixed about 2.54 centimeters below the irregularly-shaped tables, anchored to metal pipes. The arrangement is guaranteed to make you squirm through however many coffees you drink and cigarettes you smoke. In the old days, it must have conjured up visions of Alain Delon and Francoise Sagan. Perhaps it was more manageable if you'd spent time on the pillion of a Lambretta. Now, in the age of supersizing, some customers will have to perform contortions to get their legs under the table, and the more healthily-built must fear that the little seat cushion could disappear entirely amongst an abundance of flesh.

It seems as if many of the Rio customers have been coming here since they were in art school. On sunny days, these faithful coffee drinkers now cluster around a couple of tables on the sidewalk out front. Those tables are the most visible change the place has undergone since the fall of the old system.

(2) U Zalipianek Cafe, at the intersection of ul. Szewska and the Planty. Gomulka-era communist nationalism may well have provided the ideological impulse behind this cafe with decorations painted on the interior walls in the folk style of a village called Zalipiany. Certain elements in the waitresses' uniforms (the name of the place literally means "At the Home of the Women from Zalipiany") may still reflect that original ethnographic rationale. And a word about the waitresses: some of them have been around since they were mere wisps just out of Gastronomy School, but decades later, they still have a spring in their step (you can still see classic open-heeled "waitress sneakers" here) and that same twinkle--or even a little bit more of that twinkle--in their eyes. 

Indoors during the winter months, cold drafts howl through the rooms when the door opens, yet patrons seated near the big cast-iron radiators risk singeing their sweaters. The place is almost always packed. As at Rio, one has a sense of people coming to the same cafe they've come to all their lives. Yet there is also a strong student element, and one even occasionally encounters remnants of that great communist-era tradition of the university class who have enticed their instructor into "going out" instead of sitting in the lecture hall. 

Connoisseurs have always said that the best thing on the menu here is herbal tea with honey.  At the other end of the spectrum, quite a few habitues, especially as the afternoon wears on, prefer to order something more consoling but less healthy. The menu also offers non-herbal tea, coffee, a range of pastries, and even full breakfasts. They still serve scrambled eggs with bacon in the little aluminum pan they were fried in, just as was the universal custom in restaurants when Walesa was a pup.

U Zalipianek comes into its own during the warmer months. The place always had an outdoor terrace. The present arrangement, with awnings and fancy white railings, dates from the same summer when Gorbachev visited Cracow, or maybe the summer before that. The veteran customers turn downright jolly in the summer months, and amid their chuckles over who did what forty years ago, you half expect to hear one sexagenarian turn to another and say, "It seems like only yesterday when we played hookey and came here together for ice cream the first time." 

And yet, even in Arcadia... Even in U Zalipianek, the Reaper's scythe has swung. 2004 was the summer when "Black and White" ice cream disappeared from the menu. That classic concoction--two scoops of cocoa ice cream, two scoops of cream-flavored (where else but Poland are "cocoa" and "cream" popular ice-cream flavors?), topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup--had been a source of consolation even in the leanest of times. Now, inexplicably, they have dropped it, and the only ice-cream on offer is "cassate," an insipid mix of artificially flavored vanilla and strawberry that leaves an unpleasant chemical aftertaste. Talk about negative progress. Under the Soviet yoke, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free came to U Zalikpianek to get away from "cassate," which was then the most readily available ice cream. 

Nevertheless, few things are better in fine weather than a leisurely breakfast on the U Zalipianek terrace, or a cup of espresso husbanded for an hour as the sun, setting over the near end of ul. Kapucynska, shines gently through the trees along the Planty onto your face, and a strolling Romanian violinist, proudly grateful for a couple of coins, plays "O Sole Mio" on the other side of the railing, but not so loud as to interrupt your conversation.

(3) Balaton Hungarian Restaurant, ul. Grodzka. In tourist season, ul. Grodzka has few redeeming qualities, and it's not entirely clear whether Balaton is one of them. Indubitably, however, it now stands as the city's best remaining example of a full communist-era restaurant.

Let's start by clearing up some possible misconceptions. Under the old system, people ate their meals at home with their families. If they worked odd hours, or if they were students and could not make it home for dinner because Mama lived several hundred miles away, they ate in a bar (as in "milk bar," but not only). On the other hand, when they wanted to get plastered, either to celebrate something or because that was how they spent their free time (a concept which could overlap with, or even be included within, that of "working hours"), they went to a restaurant. (Naive foreigners sometimes found a place marked "restaurant" that was still open in the early evening, and wandered hopefully in, only to be told: "This is a respectable restaurant, sir. We don't have food. If you want that kind of thing, go to a bar--but at this hour, all the bars are closed.") 

In those days, eating out was not a way for adults to spend their leisure time or seek an aesthetic experience upon which to exercise their critical faculties. Theatre (experimental or mainstream), concerts, political meetings, books, and above all sex met such needs. Eating out was something you did from necessity--almost exclusively when travelling, or when dealing with visitors. Recognizing that some visitors, and especially foreigners or the members of official delegations, had high standards, the system provided restaurants to which they could be taken, alone or in groups. With brotherhood among the nations a high-value concept, Cracow boasted restaurants serving up the best that the socialist camp could offer: Ukrainian specialties at the Dnepr, Armenian delicacies at a joint across from the train station whose name is lost in the fogs of time, high-class Polish fare at the Wierzynek, and Hungarian food at the Balaton. Only the latter survives in anything like its original form. 

Indeed, it survives almost unchanged. It makes you realize that eating out used to be an occasion. The tables are long, and you--or your group, or official delegation--sit on benches. There are fresh flowers on the table and the linen napkins, folded into cone shapes, perch on their own little plates. Your place setting features a pewter platter balancing, along with the cutlery, atop a deep pile placemat lushly woven in highly contrasting colors, with red predominating. People at other tables are living it up, and, on a warm afternoon late in the summer of 2004, were ordering shots and standing up to proclaim elaborate toasts. The waiters treat the delivery of your food as a cheerful ritual. They bring it on a tray, under a cover that they whip off before deftly substituting the plate for the platter in front of you. There is a full range of soups and appetizers, with meat-oriented main course fare. Hungarian specialties include the inevitable goulash, a multi-meat "Transylvanian" composition that would get a shepherd through half the summer, and potato pancakes a la Hongroise with wild boar. These pancakes are light and satisfying, there's a good deal of meat in the spicy sauce, and it's accompanied by a raw vegetable salad, brightly garnished, and topped off with a dollop of sour cream. Whether you accomapny it with beer, wine, the first of more than a few shots, or a bottle of mineral water, is for you to decide. It's not cheap, but it's the kind of place you wouldn't be ashamed to bring your assistant party secretary to (Oh, please -- anyone seen in the company of an apparatchik would have been mortified and ostracized - ed.). 

Goulash (as soup) - 10 zl.; potato pancakes with meat and sausage - 21 zl, with wild boar - 23; roast duck - 26; Transylvania meat platter for 2 - 50. 
 

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