British Tabloids Panic About Kraków

This week, British newspaper the Daily Star wins the award for Most Outrageously Misleading Stories about Poland. More specifically, these stories are all about Kraków, since that's where the England team will be staying when they aren't losing matches.

The Hejnał, as all Poles and anyone who has been to Kraków knows, is a gentle, soothing tune played on the hour, every hour, over the sleeping and waking rooftops of Poland's former capital.

The Daily Star sees it slightly differently: "England's Euro 2012 team hotel has an ear-splitting bugler in a church tower right next door. His deafening din blasts out over the streets of the ancient Polish city…"

In my experience, the only way to be woken up by the Hejnał would be if the trumpeter came into your bedroom and played it directly and repeatedly into your ear. This is easily avoided by leaving a polite note on your door reading: "No Hejnał tonight, thanks."

Another way of avoiding the horror of occasionally hearing the soft melody of the city's comforting theme tune would be, perhaps, to stay in a Kamienica with metre-thick stone walls and windows that close – something like Kraków's Hotel Stary, where the England team will be staying.

Your mental image of Krakow probably includes renaissance architecture, museums, students having fun and a generous population of nuns and monks. Sorry, you're wrong. The Daily Star has been there and has the following to report: "the team’s Polish HQ is surrounded by brothels, strip clubs and street hookers." This is the same hotel, by the way, that it also reported has: "a church tower right next door."

A glance at Google maps confirms that 'the team’s Polish HQ' is actually 'surrounded' by a shop that sells soap bubble mixture, two branches of the Historical Museum of Kraków and a sushi restaurant. Unless the Historical Museum of Kraków had adopted some unusual methods of generating income, the proximity of sexual services seems to have been slightly exaggerated.

Krakow does have brothels and strip clubs, but it's not like walking through any door will take you directly into a den of whores and sadomasochism. If fact, there are almost certainly far fewer dens of whores and sadomasochism than can be found in any of the cities where England's football players live full time.

It's not all bad news. The paper also quotes a 'guide' as saying: “They are students or lawyers and teachers earning extra money. They are all highly educated women who are very good at their jobs in the sex trade," so there is something to be proud of.

The Daily Star has also discovered ticks. Rather than going the boring, sensible route of pointing out to readers that they should be careful in heavily wooded areas because its possible to catch a disease with a 1–2 percent mortality rate, they decided to go with: "Experts say potentially fatal Tick Borne Encephalitis is rife in Poland… The affected region Silesia includes Krakow…They bite the warmest parts of the body which doctors say are groins or armpits."

Since there are few strip clubs in forests, I think our players are safe. That is, unless they are forced to hide in the forests to escape the terrible sound of the Hejnał, or they end up in Silesia because that's where they think Kraków is.

Jamie Stokes