The question that runs every Polish queue
You walk into a clinic waiting room, or a small pharmacy, or a butcher's counter at the market. Half a dozen people are sitting, standing, looking at their phones. There is no obvious line. So who is next? In Krakow you find out by asking one question out loud: kto ostatni? (kto os-TAT-nyee), meaning "who is last?"
Someone will look up and say "ja" (me). That person is now the one you follow. When your turn arrives, you go after them, and the next person who walks in will ask you the same thing. Nobody keeps a physical line. They keep a mental one, and it is remarkably accurate. Older Poles in particular treat this as sacred, and skipping it, even by accident, will get you a sharp word.
This matters most in places with no ticket machine: neighbourhood pharmacies, the clinic (przychodnia), small post office branches, market stalls, and the counter at a deli. If you sit down without asking, you have effectively removed yourself from the queue, because nobody knows where you belong in it. Ask the question, remember your person, and you are fine. If the room is silent when you ask, congratulations, you are first.
One more habit worth copying. People often step away from the counter and wait against the wall rather than crowding the person being served. The queue still exists even when everyone looks scattered. Do not read the physical positions as the order.
Where you take a number instead
Bigger institutions replaced the spoken queue with a ticket dispenser, and this trips up visitors constantly because the machine is not always by the door. At banks, the post office, insurers, and city offices (urząd), look for a biletomat kolejkowy (a queue-ticket machine), usually a small screen on a stand near the entrance.
You press the category that matches what you need, and it prints a slip with a letter and number, like B045. Screens around the room then call each number and tell you which desk (stanowisko) to go to. Miss your number and you usually have to take a new ticket, so watch the board.
At the main post office, Poczta Główna at Westerplatte 20, the categories are in Polish only, so if you are just sending a parcel or buying stamps, pick the general option (often labelled "nadawanie" or "przesyłki"). Banks split business and personal, cash and advice. When in doubt, choose the broadest option rather than guessing at a specialist one and losing your place. Hold onto the slip until you are done. Some machines are switched off in the last half hour before closing, so if you arrive late and see no ticket printing, that is why.
Ordering at the deli counter in deka
Krakow's real food shopping happens at the markets, and the counters there run on the spoken queue plus a unit of measurement most visitors have never used. At Stary Kleparz (STAH-ry KLEH-pash), the covered market at Rynek Kleparski, and at Hala Targowa on the eastern edge of the Old Town, cheese, ham and sausage are sold by the deka.
A deka (DEH-ka) is ten grams. So when you want 200 grams of ham, you ask for "dwadzieścia deka" (twenty deka). Cheese, cold cuts, olives, all of it works this way. The vendor will often hold up a slice and check with a raised eyebrow before weighing, and you nod or say "tak" (yes). If you have no Polish, point at what you want and hold up fingers, then say the number of deka. Half a kilo is "pięćdziesiąt deka" (fifty deka), which sounds enormous but is normal.
Stalls open early, roughly from 7am, and start winding down by mid to late afternoon, with Sundays much quieter or closed depending on the vendor. Cards are increasingly accepted at the produce and cheese stalls, but the person selling three kinds of pickle from a bucket almost certainly wants cash, so carry coins and small notes. There is no haggling on food. There is, sometimes, a better price near closing time on bread and pastries, and vendors will occasionally round down or throw in an extra piece if you are a regular or simply friendly. Do not expect it, and do not ask for it.
The pharmacy: a counter, a queue, and free advice you should use
The Polish pharmacy, or apteka (ap-TEH-ka), works differently from a British Boots or an American drugstore, and understanding it saves you a doctor's appointment. Many everyday medicines that sit on open shelves elsewhere are kept behind the counter here, so you ask for them rather than browsing.
Inside, one person stands at the window (okienko, o-KYEN-ko) and everyone else waits back. This is another spoken queue, so ask "kto ostatni?" if it is unclear. When it is your turn, you can describe a symptom and the pharmacist will recommend something, which they are trained and legally allowed to do. For a cold, a headache, hay fever, a blister, an upset stomach, this is genuinely the fastest and cheapest route. Antibiotics and stronger drugs need a prescription (recepta), but a lot does not.
Bring the actual name of anything you take regularly, because brand names differ across Europe and the pharmacist may need the active ingredient. If you fall ill at night, look for an apteka całodobowa (a 24-hour pharmacy). There is usually one on rotation, and central options exist around the main railway station and Galeria Krakowska, though the specific late-night duty pharmacy changes, so check a maps search for "apteka całodobowa" before trekking across town. After hours you often knock at a small hatch and are served through it rather than walking in.
Please, thank you, and paying without the awkward pause
Three words carry almost every counter transaction in Krakow, and using them marks you instantly as someone making an effort rather than a tourist barking English. Proszę (PROH-sheh) covers "please," "here you go," and "go ahead." Dziękuję (jen-KOO-yeh) is thank you. Przepraszam (psheh-PRAH-sham) means both "sorry" and "excuse me," and it is how you get someone's attention or squeeze past in a queue.
Paying is nearly always contactless. Tap works almost everywhere, including market stalls and trams, and you rarely need cash beyond the pickle-bucket exception above. If the cashier asks "kartą?" (KAR-tom), they are asking whether you are paying by card, and you answer "tak." When a machine offers to charge you in your home currency instead of złoty, always decline and choose złoty (PLN). The exchange rate on that home-currency option is consistently worse, and it appears on ATMs and card terminals alike.
One phrase saves confusion when you are with someone: "razem czy osobno" (RAH-zem chih o-SOB-no) means "together or separately." You will hear it at cafés and shops when two of you approach the till. Answer with one word and the cashier sorts it out. And when you leave a small shop, bakery or market stall, a quick "dziękuję, do widzenia" (thanks, goodbye) is standard even for a single obwarzanek. Silence reads as rude here in a way it might not at home.
When the spoken queue and the ticket queue collide
The genuinely confusing situations are the hybrids, and central Krakow has plenty. A pharmacy near the Rynek might have both a ticket machine and people who ignored it and formed a spoken queue anyway. A clinic reception might call numbers for registration but run a spoken queue for the doctor's door down the corridor. When both systems seem to be running, take a ticket if a machine exists, but also ask "kto ostatni?" so you are covered either way. Nobody minds you checking. They mind you jumping.
Watch what the locals actually do rather than what the signs say. If everyone is holding a slip, take one. If everyone is sitting and glancing at a single door, it is a spoken queue and you need to find your person. The tell is body language: people in a number system look at the screen, people in a spoken queue look at each other and at whoever just walked in.
Here is the move that solves almost every version of this. Walk in, pause for two seconds, and say "kto ostatni?" clearly to the room. Either someone claims the position ahead of you and you have your place, or the room stays quiet and you know a machine is running the show, so you go find it. That one question, asked at the door before you sit down, keeps you out of every awkward standoff a Krakow counter can throw at you.
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