Tango in Krakau Das Epos!

Who would have suspected that staying in Krakow to see family would allow us to attend two tango events?

I have visited Krakow twice before, but in those days, I didn’t dance tango. In the past when flying I never checked in a bag either. Times do change. As now we travel with a mid size bag and a carry on, besides Tita which is Máximo’ s 100 year old Bandion.

Tango in Krakow is very much alive, and has its own particular vibe. The city and it’s people are welcoming and very helpful. Public transportation is very well  organized and easy to use in Kraków. Here it is okay to be walking around at midnight, as is a pretty safe city.

The Crakow Tango Marathon was started in  2015 and is currently hosted at the Hotel Galaxy. This hotel is a modern space close to the river Vistula. The hotel is a bit off the beaten track for the trams, but taxis are very inexpensive in Krakow. The average price from old town Krakow to the Hotel Galaxy is about 20 zloty or 5$ US.

The festival accepts about 200 people mostly from Poland and the surrounding area but we did see people we had met previosly in Italy, Turkey, and Germany. We even met an Argentino living in Poland too.

The quality of dancing is mixed though mostly seasoned dancers who are practiced in their dance. The styles of dancing again range from open embrace to closed embrace and everything in between.

Not quite the flavor of Buenos Aires, but European felt like some milongas in Barcelona.

People were very amiable [Spanish for friendly, kind, or nice]. All of which apply.

The event room is large with a good wooden floor, with seating sections on the left and right sides, while along the narrow walls is a single line of chairs. The ever-filled snack table is located on the same side as the clothing vendor.

The snack offerings range from meat rolls ups to vegetarian options with fresh grapes and little chocolate candies. The water station has all selections from coffee to teas and, of course, cold water.

The DJs were from Poland, Chile, Cyprus, and Italy.
The schedule was an afternoon Milonga, then a couple-hour break. The evening milonga began at 21, and most nights closed down at 3 or so.
Friday and Saturday nights started at 21, and there was hot food provided for the dancers; perogies and soup were available in the upstairs restaurant available from 22 until finished.

The pre – and post-milongas were held at a small tango club bar close to the Kazimierz district and easily accessible on the trams. This pub, Zaraz Wracum Tu, is home to the ongoing Milonga Loca hosted and organized by the DJ Roman Halek, who is also one of the organizers of the Crakow Tango Marathon. With my conversations with Roman I found him to be a very warm organizer. He tried to dance with every woman who attended the milonga. Generosity of spirit is wonderful trait especially in a tango organizer.

Now we get to the Quiero Verte Tango Festival, which was held the following weekend.

On Thursday night, the pre-opening Milonga was held in a sweet location on the main old town square up on the second floor with wooden floors. It is a club called All That Jazz. There was a wonderful DJ from Poland with a great selection of old tango orchestras. Even with two dance floors, most dancers were unaware of this instead, choosing to dance on the crowded floor. There was complimentary wine but no food.

Then the festival began on Thursday night with a milonga at this beautiful old gymnasium building complete with inlay ceiling and parquet floor.
The room is rectangular with the bar and the DJ booth on the same back side of the room. There are rectangular tables around the floor and a continuous row of folding chairs against the exterior wall.

That afternoon, there was a really good DJ while there were some navigation issues on the floor as the festival accepted 400 dancers.

To me, the average age was mid-40s, and the dancers don’t appear as experienced here as they would like us to think. There seemed to be a lot more open embrace on the floor.

Again, I observed some dancers listening and dancing to the music while others danced to the music in their heads.

On a crowded floor, there is no space to dance with your feet flying through the air for fear of injuring another dancer, but some dancers insist on doing this anyway.

We returned on Friday at 15 in the afternoon to dance again. Another good DJ played away the afternoon, and we danced for hours, enjoying the space and the music. Here, no food is provided for the milongas or beverages except water was available.

After dancing the afternoon away we met a friend for dinner in Kazimierz and it had started to rain. While we had dinner, the light rain became a torrential storm.

After dinner, we tried to get a taxi back to our home base in the old town, as we wanted to return to the Friday evening Milonga but in different clothes.

We waited and waited, finally deciding to take the tram. We waited for the tram in a small protected area but still got soaked to the core. Jackets, pants, and shoes. Walking from the station to our place in record time.

When we finally got back to our home base, we were rain-soaked. We had no dry shoes to wear.  It was still raining. Many areas of the city were flooding, and large lakes of water were affecting the city’s transportation sections. We decided to stay in.

Drying off our clothes was challenging, but overnight, many items dried as we turned up the heat. The next day, the shoes were still wet. We decided to try the hair dryer on them. It worked. Wahoo. Wet shoes are so yucky.

The next day, Saturday, we looked outside, no rain. Gray and overcast but no rain.
We returned to the gymnasium, and I met Maria Kubick, the organizer of the festival. We chatted a bit about the history of the event, which started in 2019. Her intent in creating the festival was to create a space where, in her words, “We strive for perfection.
With our DJs and our maestros drawing from all over Europe.”

As we were traveling to Helsinki, we were unable to attend the 2 milongas on Sunday and the after Milonga on Monday.

Overall, we had a good time in Krakow. How lucky were we to attend two tango festivals back to back in such a beautiful old city? The weather cooperated for most of our two-week stay, but as it is early September, the fall season has begun. The weather is shifting as the planet changes seasons.

The 2025 dates for both festivals can be found on Facebook or the web.

I encourage you to dance in Krakow anytime as not only is it a beautiful city that has great food, but it is a city with a big heart and soul!!!