Kraków is crows, but it is also parkour, the fine art of moving from point k to point z as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Imagine walking into a cukiernia in deepest summer and ordering a paczek z marmolada. Your order, it would seem, has disturbed a cluster of wasps who were feasting on the pastry, and through jelly-covered eyes they scowl at you, the enemy. You suddenly need to gain the most ground possible in the shortest period of time. You flap your arms, willing your shoulder blades to transform into wings and break through the skin of your back.
These are the things of fairy tales. Parkour is not.
You zoom out of the cukiernia and past the milk bar on Grodzka Street, and you perform a Cat Pass over an old woman selling cloves of garlic from a basket. Strive for the speed of sound. You have no time to waste, not with angry stingers coming to get you. The fence surrounding the Franciscan Church is no match for you and your Dash Vault. You tread lightly over the old bones in the cemetery.
The specialized parkour terminology doesn’t matter, nor would a face full of wasp venom, in the end. What matters is that you’re a free spirit, that you conquer the landscape of your city. This discipline— not sport, not sport—that has slowly leaked out of France and into the streets of Kraków will teach you to turn any physical or mental obstacle to ash.
Mind your language. Parkour is not “freerunning,” the same way that Nintendo is not Sega and zupa ziemniaczana is not toilet water.
Race north along Bracka. Flip not, for
this is no performance and there are no spectators. You’re only
trying to better yourself. Left on Goł
bia at full tilt and
prepare for your Jagiello
ski University Dyno. Sneakers rap
against the classroom windows before you drop, thud, and roll. A
young woman stares through the glass, her startle melting to a
smile. This passe muraille will not splinter your kneecaps
because you have learned to absorb, transfer, give in. You have
learned to turn on a grosz, and the soles of your feet have
memorized the warp and woof of the cobblestone.
You are one with the city.
Run fast enough, and you can jump over a herd of crows before they fly away.
Someone told me it’s called a “murder” of crows, but that sounds like an urban legend.
If parkour were an Olympic sport,
Kraków bagel carts would be standard equipment. You turn right on
Szczepaska Street, and you spot, a hundred metres ahead,
one of those steaming metal contraptions with fogged-up glass.
Burnt sesame seeds roast in the open air. There is always a bit of
smoke in Kraków.
But the vendor sees you coming and opens his retractable umbrella, giving your hurdle another two metres of height. At the very last second, you switch targets to a parked Polonez with a rusty roof.
There’s only one move that can get you over safely, the Kash Vault: Kong Vault + Dash Vault. Don’t get tripped up in semantics. Just make sure you push off with your hands at the beginning and at the end, and then keep-the-fuck running.
You’re amazed at all the szopka lying around. Who creates these random nativity scenes, in front yards and tree hollows and windowsills, ornate little dioramas on street corners and littering the Rynek Główny? It can be very confusing to traceurs—parkour fanatics like you and I—to run past Bethlehem so many times in one day. If time has stopped in Kraków, then parkour has frozen it.
Interesting. Every time you jump a wall, you feel the crumble of plaster or the chipping of wood. There’s not enough cement in old cities to protect them from an all-out fire. At least you know how to run.
You have long since lost the wasps, and you did it thirteen seconds quicker than your previous record. To a traceur, this can represent a lifetime of improvement. Gratulacje.
But you never did get that donut.
You’ve done well if you’re back on Grodzka Street. Ground rule: responsible traceurs can always get back to where they started.
And remember, you’re not Wonder Woman, you’re just repeating equations:
The flying squirrel can’t fly but can glide up to twenty-five metres by controlling its patagium, a furry skin parachute stretched from wrist to ankle. Its tail is an airfoil that stops it from smashing into treetops.
In the deserts of the southwestern United States, the Crotalus cerastes sidewinds over the dunes, leaving a trail of perfect letter Js in the sand. Snakes are wigged-out locomotives.
The mother-of-pearl moth caterpillar is a self-propelled wheel, touching its head to its tail and spinning downhill at 300 revolutions per minute, forty times its normal speed. Backward. Catch this pupa if you can.
Parkour, you see, has stolen from the best.
Now, sprint south to the greatest challenge of all, the Zamek Wawelski. You are approaching a medieval fantasy, a royal castle on a slice of land jutting into the lazily flowing strip of crystal known as the Wisła River. The Zamek is the centrepiece of Kraków. A reminder that this is one of the only large Polish cities that wasn’t demolished in World War II.
But you can’t see the Wisła. Between you and the water is a stone wall almost 700 years old, covered in pillowy, slippery ivy leaves, only a few metres tall in places. An evacuation slide, if you dare to use it. You’ll land on grass, and your kneecaps will be fine.
But you never know. I’m a dabbler, not a professional—I just do it to impress the guys. In general, I avoid obstacles taller than three feet because I have a bum knee and I’m as graceful as a rhino.
Besides, I have no idea how to apply parkour philosophies in my life, the sign of a true practitioner. Être et durer: to be and to last. Most days, this seems like an impossible task.