A sausage I’ll remember for a long long time.
I love Krakow. I’ve been there four times in the last 10 years, granted it’s a bit biased as I talked about before – my brother got married there in 2016 and having that knowledge on where to go, where to avoid and how to have a good time really helps. But sometimes you just discover a place that sets your soul into a warm embracing self hug.
I went to Krakow last weekend for WordCamp Europe. You’ve probably read a few dozen blog posts about it, mine is coming next week. At these events there are fringe events. One of those was after the first day of the conference – the Bluehost/Yoast Glow Party. A pride party in all but name.
Anyway, in a colossal senior moment, I travelled to the party a bit early and then realised I wasn’t 100% sure I locked the front door, so I double backed to the hotel. I’d hoped to go to a relatively uninspiring burger bar that I couldn’t find before the event, but on the tram on the way back to the distinctly average AirBNB-masquerading-as-a-hotel, I did some Googling and found a place next to the railway bridge I was staying by.
It had a few reviews, and looked interesting. A communism-era van serving Kielbasa – the Polish sausage cooked over an open flame next to the train and tram I have to get. That will do, I’m already running late and wanted to get in and out of the party before an early night before the Krakow parkrun1.
I checked the AirBNB/hotel, and walked to the van, and was greeted with a glorious sight:-
They must be onto something, right? Poland knows their sausage, and it’s a good queue of 20/30 people at least waiting for it. As the queue shortened (in a process that took about 20 minutes), I was greeted with a well oiled machine of cooking sausages over an open flame, like in those movies about New York in the 1980’s.
There was one thing on the menu – sausage, and a limited supply of drinks. Cash only. Very simple, but seemed to be a staple for a few Krakowians (Krakowites?) on a Friday evening. Their fish and chip Friday, I took the bread roll and my meal (which took about 20 minutes just to get), and stood at the table listening into conversations I didn’t understand. I felt like a fat, Welsh, bearded Anthony Bourdain.
Was it the best meal I ate in Krakow? No. The steak I had in Pimento was incredible. But the meal at Kiełbaski z Niebieskiej Nyski2, is a meal I’ll remember for a very long time.
- It didn’t end up that early, but was fine the next day. ↩︎
- Sausages from the blue Nysa – which actually from a bit of research in thinking it was a reference to a river in Poland, but is actually a literal name for the van it’s served out of ↩︎