The Guardian.co.uk: Poland is overtaking Britain on the road to Europe - and to the euro - Timothy Garton Ash

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Poland is overtaking Britain on the road to Europe - and to the euro - Timothy Garton Ash

In Krakow, Poland's Oxford, the Brits don't have a good reputation. They pile in with easyJet for drunken hen, stag and thug weekends, carousing loudly, half-naked, through the cobbled streets of this conservative, Catholic city. And they call it "kraking". In some bars, I was told, there are signs saying No Brits Allowed. Even the Germans are more welcome. So much has changed since I first came to Krakow, nearly 30 years ago, just after the newly elected Polish pope, John Paul II, had spoken straight to the hearts of two million people in his beloved city - "in which every stone and every brick is dear to me" - and left a country and, soon enough, a Europe transformed.