Social travel without the tech: The human side of Krakow

"I am going to take you to my friend's studio. It's quite unusual. I think you'll like it," says Ewa, my unofficial guide to Kraków, in one of the biggest understatements of the trip. Leaving the city far below, she leads me up a hillside to an old military bunker tucked away in the leafy suburbs. It looks abandoned at first glance, but then we are greeted by a man who, with his grey beard and sheepskin waistcoat, has the look of an ageing rocker. Hans, a sculptor, has turned this forgotten lookout point into his year-round home. There is no electricity; the inside is lit only by candles. Outside there's an 8ft-high carved totem pole and the remains of a bonfire from his last all-night party. What follows is one of those surreal travel experiences, where one new friend introduces you to another and another. Before long we've set off through Kraków's artistic underground. As a CouchSurfer, I am used to finding golden opportunities through strangers, but the unusual thing about this connection is that it came about after I tried to resurrect a 20-year-old tourism project that was, in many ways, the precursor to modern social networking. Back in the late 1980s, US-born Jim Haynes, a former bookshop owner and renowned supporter of counter-culture arts, had an idea. Convinced that the best travel experiences come from the people you meet, he set himself a goal: he would match inquisitive travellers with gracious hosts by creating an alternative guidebook. Commercial gain was not a priority, so he started in a country with no travel industry