http://talkingbear.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/stag_parties_in.htmlThis week I'll be taking a look at bar tourism in Kraków, Poland's southern party capital, where every week-end beer and culture come together in the same sentence, and tourists and residents alike go out on the town.
Moving back to Poland, stag parties are creating havoc for bartenders around the country. Or are they? The reactions in Kraków have been mixed to the onslaught of drunk Englishmen, but not everyone's complaining all the time, as a visit to some of Kraków's bars showed.
“They come in tours, they come every week, they visit us starting Friday and finishing Sunday. They take, I call it ‘tourism drinking’, because they start Friday evening, they visit pub by pub, restaurant by restaurant, but generally, they come here, because we are a kind of pub, this is not a restaurant, this is a place to drink.”
“They come here to have fun in Kraków, I think, they are young people, they got free week-ends and they need to do something with it. There were years when Prague was very popular, there were years when Budapest was popular, right now it’s Kraków, it’s normal, so they are coming here to have fun, so I think they are very happy, actually.”
“I don’t want to use hard words, but they don’t behave here, they are not very polite, I think that they come here to have a nice party, but they do a little bit of a mess. They want to make signs on the doors that Englishmen are not allowed, because they don’t want to serve beer and other strong alcohol for them because after a couple of shots and a couple of beers, they behave like animals. They are drunk all the time, and then they go back to their place, that’s all. And I don’t like such types of tourists coming to Kraków.”
“Well, I was sitting next to one of the members of the stag parties itself, and I have to say he seemed the most affable of gentlemen, and he seemed to be coming to a country with more than the intention of drinking himself silly.”
Others expats living in Kraków mention that they feel embarrassed about the situation, thinking that the Brits that come here give them a bad name.
11 pm and the Rynek is packed with drinkers. Amongst them is a group of Brits on a stag party – the main culprit is wearing nothing but a pair of leather shorts, saying that he is in Poland to be punished…
I have posted one of my favourite pictures. ;-)

finaly not all tourists are behaving like ... some are here to see something or learn something.