Crack the city of Košice. New tourist guide City Cracker is released NOW
A new way to meet the city – City Cracker is an authorial, brief and unconventional guide for your free time in Košice. It talks the city’s peripheries, feel-good places, culture and bars, bizarre situations, a quick history of Košice or its Hungarian context. It is written for those proud of the city and those who want to crack its aura. The following article reveals a substantial portion of what you can find inside: snippets from the Local Alphabet, extra photo material, its idea, style – and, most importantly, where you can get it.
1. What is it and why should I have it?
City Cracker is a guide that offers an alternative and all-embracing view of Košice. It shows where for coffee in a gallery, wellness, yoga, souvenirs, coworking, exquisite food, underground bars. Even how to heal a broken heart. Or hungover. It sees the beauty in shabby buildings, cracked statues and often overlooked mosaics. City Cracker remarkably reminds of a magazine format – however, it differs from other guide books in terms of content, a large number of distinctive photography, informal text and its bold graphic design. This is a book that will make you understand the city, but also put it on the table among the rest of your stylish books.
This unconventional guide has emerged as a need to introduce the city through the eyes of the people who live here. It is precisely City Cracker, which brings the city from its nutshell so as to opens up opportunities for a far more intimate recognition. At the same time, the book tries to find a suitable and humorous solution to the emotion that a person can experience in the city. Although City Cracker certainly did not cover absolutely all the interesting places in Košice, it aims to draw its reader into the everyday life of the city as much as the local patriots know it.
2. How should I read it?
City Cracker is based on a completely new concept of looking at the city, and that via the Local Alphabet alphabetically sorting out the thoughts, moods and situations everyone is going through. In practice, this means that each letter in a book identifies a code (Adventure time, Bike or die) and refers to those places that create the true soul of the city. So make sure you don’t look for restaurants under R – for example, this chapter is called Remedy your hungover. Local Alphabet is also enriched with a brief but highlighted overview of Košice’s history presented by local guide legend Milan Kolcun.
In order to be able to move through Local Alphabet (even if you don’t speak it yet), you’ll need six hashtags which will easily navigate you along with the whole town: #meet, #see, #drink, #eat, #exercise, # relax. These actually describe what you can experience at a given address.
The second part of City Cracker, The Non-Guides, gives space to the voices of three young fellows on topics they understand the best: urbex, art and history. While Maroš describes the plot and character of individual neighbourhoods, Dominika explores the city’s gallery scene and Ivo tells tales about Hungarian Košice. In this way, you will get to know the city’s features not only situated on Main Street and around the city centre but also in its surrounding areas, often hidden deep inside (un)attractive suburbia. Inhale the stories Košice has to offer through individual locations and people who see well below its surface and continue to discover it. Such a chance doesn’t happen with any other book.
Yes, we know, this guide is written only in English – but no worries, you don’t have to be the smoothest speaker. Cracker is full of pictures that speak their own language. AND! Its slang plays with you, engages, brings about truly personal contact. Trying to find all the hidden literary, musical and historical references also contributes to universality of the book – crack its code as well as the city. City Cracker aspires to bring Košice as close to its reader as possible. Through advice, tips and ambiguities. As if to a fellow comrade, as if to your bestie.
Check out a few of these Local Alphabet examples:
C – Coffee
Authentic coffee gem: There’s nothing like perfectly skimmed milk that will make you raise a fist to the sky and howl. Just like Allen Ginsberg did. At Šálka kávy, literally translated to Cup of Coffee, baristas know how to boost your energy.
D – Date hard, break hearts
Heart-broken: Didn’t your dates work out just fine? Are you looking for some legal opiates? You need something sweet. Café de Paris has it all. The local Frenchman prepares the greatest selection of the finger-licking cakes that will make you forget your woes. At least for a while.
U – Underground
Collosseum: How hard-core are you? What are your deathcore limits? Collosseum embodies Košice’s utmost fiery core. You’ve got to feel it on your own.
3. What is so special about it again?
City Cracker is the second edition of the local guide of Košice powered by Creative Industry Košice and the author Barbara Rusnáková. With its final publication, we wish to express our greatest gratitude to everyone involved. Our goal was to capture unforgettable experiences into words and photos – to portray everyday life and adventure of the city’s citizens inside a book of a very bold and witty guide. An entertaining approach to discover a touristic destination. And a coffee table mag with full use of photos of Košice, which have never ever been published in any other guide.
The photographs were taken during the Foto Academy by CIKE x Woont program under the professional guidance of the Woont audiovisual studio. Every photo was selected according to the theme it represents in the city. You’ll find street photography, but also amateur photos and product pictures. Cracker also lists exclusive high-altitude shots – especially highlighted in Roam around with and suburb cruiser chapter on Košice’s neighborhood. Many thanks for having us visit the roofs of various of them, namely Jazero, Železníky, or Nová nemocnica (New Hospital) on Terasa. You won’t find any other city depicted in such manner elsewhere.
The graphic design of the Košice studio 436 complements the dynamics of the publication and the presented sites. It helps to reflect what local people consider the best, but not necessarily the most beautiful, in Košice. The broken blue umbrella on the envelope along with the distinctive yellow colour is no coincidence. By the way, who hasn’t broken any umbrella in Košice, doesn’t know which way the wind blows. (Literally.)
Uncovering City Cracker’s Local Alphabet means seeing and feeling the city just like the people who live in it. And love it – with the bottom of their hearts. Find their stories inside every single copy.
4. (So) where can I buy it?
There are more sale venues – so as to bring Cracker closer to anyone proud of Košice and visitors who want to really discover the city. Or those who just like nice design magazine-look books.
Right now, you can buy City Cracker for € 14.90 at these spots:
Kníhkupectvo ArtForum: Hlavná 87, 040 01 Staré Mesto
Information center – MiC KOŠICE: Hlavná 32, 040 01 Staré Mesto
Regional information point: Hlavná 48, 040 01 Staré Mesto
Visit Košice, Hlavná 59, 040 01 Staré Mesto
Pogo Urban Cafe, Hlavná 102/43, 040 01 Košice
And many more soon.
If you don’t have one of these places along your way, contact us at citycracker@cike.sk and we’ll get back to you with the conditions under which we can deliver the book or more copies directly to your address.
