„Kraków knows freedom; it absorbs it from others, draws on it and multiplies it,” writes Ivan Radyk in a column published in the latest issue of Kraków Culture.
I think in anachronisms, inconsistently with the zeitgeist. Perhaps even inconsistently with the logic of the current political culture. I think of the city as a stronghold. I never thought like this before. It’s not difficult to guess that the war has changed everything. For me, although not for everyone. In any case, it shouldn’t change everything for everyone, and I hope it won’t.
I struggle to describe the city where I live as my own city. I never know when this breakthrough happens, when I am no longer a stranger; the moment when I can fully identify with the new city. You usually need to earn it – as Camus has it, “to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die”. It was different with Kraków. The in statu nascendi period of my identity, the time I spent waiting for an “invitation” – I think of it in similar terms to flirting – was very short.
I arrived in Kraków on 15 March 2020, on the day the COVID lockdown started and the borders closed. I explored empty Kraków, without the usual hustle and bustle so characteristic of the Main Market Square and without crowds of tourists. And since the city is empty of tourists, perhaps I’m also not a tourist? I agree that this is rather enigmatic logic. But there is something in it – to stay in a city everyone else is leaving to find less busy places.
Art-Piknik in Kraków 2022 | photo courtesy of the organisers
Still, the temporary hiatus in Kraków’s usual lively atmosphere didn’t actually force the city to stop altogether. Online concerts, literary meetings, festivals, exhibitions and spectacles became a natural simulacra of normality and a way of building the city’s cultural immunity. I felt welcomed and obliged to join in. I had the time to learn Kraków’s rhythm, I had the opportunity to adapt to the city’s amorous ethos (I can prove that it exists!), and on 24 February 2022 I lost an important part of myself. I thus fulfilled all requirements set by Camus.
In the wake of the COVID-enforced break, history decided to overcompensate for the two years of human absence in a highly undesirable way. The drifting icebergs of pandemic restrictions evolved into a new threat driven by Russia’s invasion on Ukraine – a situation which required extraordinary courage and a swift response. The city and its inhabitants were forced to choose a welcoming strategy, albeit not without a degree of risk: “when freedom comes knocking, the door stays firmly closed”. Yet Kraków’s door was thrown wide open.
History knows no situations – or at least I know of no such situation in history – when keys to the city were offered to all new arrivals without expecting something in return. Yet this is exactly what we saw over a year ago: keys to the city were given out at railway stations with food parcels, kids were given smaller versions in prams donated by local mothers to arriving Ukrainian mums, and all the refugees found them in pockets of donated clothes.
The European term of being given keys to the city is expressed in English as “freedom of the city”. Thus, freedom of the city requires its residents to fulfil certain responsibilities (noblesse oblige). Trust meets loyalty. Vast challenges are met by mass responses.
Kraków knows freedom; it absorbs it from others, draws on it and multiplies it.
After more than three years, I can call Kraków my city. Just like I call all four hundred and sixty one cities in Ukraine.
