I served in Krakow as a US public diplomacy dip (more properly put, had the privilege of sharing ideas and stimulating conversations at meals (yes, served avec Polish vodka) with exceptional people in that unique city, 1986-1990.
My favorite anecdote from that cultivated "not-a-capital" town -- once, in times past, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- home of one of the oldest universities in Europe, and sadly a victim of 20th-century nazi/communist totalitarianism, including soviet-style "industrialisation" -- and horrid USSR-style pollution (think Nova Huta, the Soviet-era steal [sorry, meant steel] factory town).
Here's the joke (not quite in its original form); is not humor not one of the best defenses against totalitarianism?
Atomic War. Eastern Europe is devastated by misguided Soviet missiles. A reliable communist party man from Krakow stumbles along in the ruined fields/homes of southern Poland.
He has survived due to a special gov-issued "space suit" that protects the faithful believers in Stalin from radiation. He ambles along devastated fields, destroyed homes, you name the horror.
Then he reaches a hill -- on the top of which three men, dressed in the most conservative English-style, proper dinner-party attire are enjoying a game of bridge.
The space-suited Krakow chinovnik, less out of sympathy than surprise, asks the Krakovians: "How did you survive the nuclear war"?
In unison, they answer: "We're from Krakow." :)
[AH, that pollution from the steal mill -- Are not proper manners, if properly used, the perfect protection from totalitarianism?]