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Sightseeing in Poland

Rumour has it that some years ago, deep under the cover of the EU night, I snuck (that’s right, snuck, not sneaked, snook or sneakered) across the border from Central Europe into the deep dark East. Poland to be precise. Like a secret double agent, only single and not so secret, I made straight for the nearest front of the old frontier between glorious communist past and triumphant capitalist future. Things are a little blurrier these days, and the Poland of old has also snuck under the charm of the consumer future, but little pockets of gold still sit in tidy deposits when you care to gaze dreamily beneath the surface.

Since coming under the curtain of the EU in 2003 its been a little easier to move between its eastern neighbor, Germany, and Poland. A mate with a business that had to drive between the Poland’s south over to Frankfurt for regular deliveries regaled me with tales of waiting in the car in a queue at the border checkpoints for up to 18 hours, slowly inching towards Germany with no chance to sleep or pause lest he lose his place in the wait to drive west. Now its as easy as driving straight through and should you be lucky enough to be a dinky-di Aussie like me, you can have your passport passed around the border guards as the laugh and point at the kangaroos on the cover. Ain’t life sweet.

If it’s not the slow rolling landscape that gets you it’ll be the language and its beautiful soft zzssshhhhs and washes of tongue against places in the mouth unknown to western palates. And if it’s not language that you fall in love with fellas, it’ll be the strongly spoken yet gentle on the eyes ladies that live in a country as friendly as it is foreign. There’s many ways to endear yourself to these lovely people and learning a few words of the local lingo will have them tripping over themselves to hear you say “dziekuje” (thank you - pronounced jin koy a) just once more.

Poland, like Australia with its kangaroos hopping down every street, is full of bison. These bison either work freelance or in huge factories manufacturing vodka (and sometimes beer) which is then exported to other countries or drunk on the spot. I don’t know this for sure or not, but judging from the signs I saw in most places in the cities, bison also run most of the banks and some of the local businesses. Although there are dangerous animals like bears, lynxes and beavers in Poland, the bison, while tame and often domesticated (having their own housing tenements and social services) will attack especially when they are drunk. So unless you have your official Crocodile Hunter certificate of “Braveness without Forethought” with you, it’s probably best to just to lay low any time you see a sign with a bison on it.

On the subject of vodka, Poland has been strong in embracing this delicious and refreshing drink, with or without the help of the bison. It’s said that if you share a bottle of vodka with a man then you are brothers, or friends of some sort. This being the case, its also been said that the entirety of Poland is like one big family as vodka has been shared been all and sundry much to the benefit of local relations.

Andy Warhol Statue in Poland

A fact you may not know is Andy Warhol is from Poland. Born deep down in the most southeasterly corner, in a little place called Wetlina (not Pittsburgh, don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, if you did then they have you thinking that it doesn’t get down to -22 Celsius in winter sometimes, which it can). Wetlina is at the edge of the Polish, Slovak and Ukraine borders and if you are good at climbing mountains you could visit all three places in an afternoon. Australia’s tallest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko (prounced Kozsh oosh ko) is named after a Polish insurgent that did lots of stuff in Poland down these parts too…

Other natural stuff in Poland includes the mighty Wisla River (the little “l” there has a slopey line through it and is prounced as a double-u, while the W is pronounced as a V - got it?). The Wisla winds its way across and around Poland, starting from a stream in the Carpathian Mountains in the south and then making its windy way up through towns like Krakow, Sandomierz, Warchau and on to Gdansk. Sort of like a drunken tourist trying to take in as many towns as possible, except this is a river and full of water. More importantly it used to be one of the most important trade routes through the country until they invented and made available on a massive scale things like trucks and cars and boats too big to fit down little rivers, but I’ll tell you more about those machines another time.

Should you be traveling by canoe and find yourself in Krakow you will notice that like a river there are not very many right-angles going on there. It’s a bit of a mad-woman’s breakfast of acutely stationed buildings climaxing in roads best not taken at speed for the sake of their angular meanderings, Krakow has a vibrant underground scene boasting many great clubs, nice Polish beers plus more authentically friendly Polish people.

Wisla by Boat

If you had the cunning and the strength to paddle down the Wisla River from Krakow you’d be in for unscheduled appointments so many towns that time forgot. Like a throwback to an era passed-by, witness villages with chickens running the streets, old ladies with the traditional triangular scarf folded upon their stoic heads and old men in horse-drawn carts travelling across the river on ferries driven by little more than the flow of the river’s current. The wide green open spaces will have you believing that it’s not all internet, ipods and mobiles all over the world – that some small places have survived the mainstream flow of change for its own sake. Up a few rungs on the sophistication scale but no less old and well preserved, the town of Sandomierz, with its 1600 year old city walls and open town squares, makes it clear the hare and tortoise race is still played joyfully across the eastern Europe’s far-flung borders.

Way down deep in the south by the Tatras and Carpathians (mountains not football teams) lies more quiet little gems like Jelenia Gora and Mirsk. Marvel at Jelenia Gora’s wacky stilted architecture (like on stilts, not a building with a speech impediment) and as you’d expect from a Catholic nation, as you roll through the green to the smaller towns, you can always see the church spire peeking from a distance. Why not tarry a while at one of the top-notch cabins out by the forests in little villages of 40 houses, like in Gajowka. And in the winter months these quiet retreats are not more than an hour from the mountains for some skiing and snowball throwing if you’re not instantly addicted to the round-the-town fun of fifteen sleds with kids pulled round behind a van bringing wintry squeals to the chill night air. Nothing quite like being on a sled trailed by twenty kids as you whirl round snow-covered and frozen street corners – and the fun only starts there…

-Jack Brown

Planning a trip? Browse Viator’s Poland tours and things to do in Poland, from tours in Krakow to Warsaw tours and activities.