Kraków

Kraków is Polish at its most photogenic: a UNESCO market square that's been in continuous use for 700 years, twenty-thousand-strong Jagiellonian University (founded 1364), and an old-town café scene where you can study at the same table for four hours and the waiter politely refills your tea, in Polish, every time.

Polish has a reputation for difficulty (seven cases, three genders, consonant clusters that look impossible — szczęście, chrząszcz) but Kraków is the gentlest place to face it. The Jagiellonian's Polish-for-foreigners centre is one of the best in Europe, milk-bar (bar mleczny) menus give you a 100-word real-life vocabulary at €3 a meal, and the steady stream of Erasmus students means there's a ready-made tandem pool that turns over every semester.

Beyond the postcard centre is where the real Polish lives. Kazimierz at midnight (post-stag-do, post-tourist), Podgórze on a quiet Sunday morning, the trams winding out to Nowa Huta — each one is a different register of Polish, and your ear adjusts to consonant clusters faster than you'd believe. Stretch four to six months and the language permanently uncramps.