Die Welt des Krakauer Tangos

Last  Monday night, after not dancing for a month, we danced at this little bar in Krakow called Klub Zaraz Wracam Tu. We stayed in the old town and took the tram there. The ride took 15 minutes, and we passed many beautiful old buildings.

Krakow is one of the few cities that wasn’t destroyed in WWII, but the city was mined by the departing Germans before they left the city, but luckily, the Polish partisans defused the mines. (I have heard many different stories about this.)

As we entered the club, there’s the typical section of smokers gathered around a small table in an even smaller outdoor space. In Poland, smoking is only permitted outside.

Surveying the room dancers, we looked for the host, who is also the dj, Roman Halek. He was dancing as he wasn’t sitting at his computer.

We watched the dancers. We looked at the embraced.
We looked at the steps.
We looked at the floor craft.
We looked at the tables that were all situated against the walls.

We noticed the temperature in the room was quite warm, even if the exterior temperature was a bit cooler.
We waited to find a table until the end of the tanda.

Unexpectedly, we were greeted by a helpful leader who spoke English and told to put our admission price into the open box on the dj table, and we could sit anywhere we liked.

Okay, the seating is a bit similar to most milongas in European countries except here the seating is not assigned to you as experienced in some milongas in Spain or  Buenos Aires and it doesn’t seem neccesaryto make a reservation either.]

We started to walk towards a table, when the organizer, Roman, a big bear of a man, found us and I was greeted with a tango kiss on each cheek. He reiterated, “Please sit anywhere!”

Welcome to Milonga Loca. The room is filled with people dancing. All kinds of embraces and all kinds of bodies. They are mostly closed embraced, but a few are in open embrace. They dance around the room with some sense of etiquette. Some dancing to the music played and others dancing to the rhythms that only the leader hears.

We sit at a large table. We hear the music, and Maximo nods to me, and I respond with a nod.

We asked our neighbors to get up as we have peeps seated on both sides of us. Politely, we move onto the floor, and we take a moment to connect with each other, breathe, and then we move.

I find my body is a bit rigid as I haven’t danced for a month, same is true for my partner. We breathe. We dance. The second tanda is better, and by the third, we are both feeling better and dancing a bit looser.

We dance, we chat with our table mates. We drink our water from our canteens. If a beverage is wanted, you must walk up to the bar in the front  area, order it, and bring it to your table.

We stay for a few hours. Enjoying the tango classic music of the old orchestras. We enjoy watching the peeps dance. Good DJ and music selections.

We take our leave as in reading the transportion schedule the trams stop running at 11.30 and the last run of the night is by bus.

We wait, and the bus shows up exactly on time. My partner remarks, “We are not in Argentina.” This is a reference that implies service in Argentina is very different. And it is!

We meet a fellow tangero at the bus stop. He lives here in Kraków and in Northern California. In our small world, we find we share many friends in tango.

We shall see him again at the Crakow Tango Marathon that begins shortly.

Once again, we are stuck with how small our world of traveling and tango actually is.

We love it!!!

More on tango in Krakow as we have two festivals here. This weekend, Crakow Tango Festival and next weekend with Quiero Verte Tango Festival. But all starts tonight with an appearance at a local club of Marisol Martínez  with Andariega Orchestra from Buenos Aires.  Another small world coincidence as we met her at El Beso.