Poland - Part Three

POLAND - part three

Poland is a little larger than Italy but has 20 million fewer inhabitants. Moreover it is flat, with no mountains except in the southern part bordering Slovakia and Ukraine. There are various national parks in Poland, one of which is interesting in the north on the Baltic Sea to the left of Gdansk, where the sand dunes reach the sea. Then in the north-east there is the MASURIAN lake and canal area, which is an extreme beauty of the country with hundreds of lakes surrounded by woods and much frequented by Polish tourists. Nearby there is another famous park because the only surviving European bison lives there. The Tatra mountains south of Krakow, on the other hand, are 80% in Slovakia, including the highest peak, Mount Lonmin, about 2600 m high, which I went to see on a day trip from Zakopane.

But let's take things in order: Zakopane is the Polish Cortina d'Ampezzo, a town of about 30,000 inhabitants, very very beautiful, in a very green valley stretching lengthwise, with high mountains on one side and lower ones on the other, which you go up by a comfortable cable car. After about 20 minutes you arrive on the ridge of this low range, where there is a profusion of bars, restaurants and above all sellers of sheepskins, fur hats, traditional slippers, local cheeses, plus a whole series of attractions like go-karting, high-rope climbing courses and walkways in suspension and various other attractions to fleece passing tourists, who take a stroll along this mountain ridge that leads after half an hour to the chairlift that takes you back down into the valley.

The place has the merit of being very scenic both at the top and during the descent by chairlift, which passes among the wooden chalets built along the mountain slopes. The only flaw is that when you are down at the bottom you have to take a horse-drawn carriage for a fee, wait for the rare public buses passing by, or walk back, as I did, covering the road in about 40 minutes.

ZAKOPANE has a pedestrian main street full of restaurants, bars and shops where you eat very well while listening to folk groups performing very lovely traditional Polish music. They sing well in chorus and generally the group consists of an accordionist, two violinists and a double bass. You eat a lot of grilled pork, shank or cutlets, or excellent and tasty sausages accompanied by baked potatoes and plenty of vegetables based on cabbage, carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers. Naturally all washed down with excellent local beer in half-litre pints. For a lunch like this you spend about 8-12 euros, beer included. In Zakopane there is even a water park with enormous thermal-water pools and three very high slides for shooting down at speed until you land in the same pool. I had a crazy good time competing with the surprised Polish kids, little used to finding an old man underfoot.

The journey between Krakow and Zakopane by excellent coach lasts about 4 hours and costs about 10 euros. I stayed in a chalet hotel a little outside the centre and reachable in a 15-minute easy walk, passing a pretty little wooden church, a small cemetery and lots of fine villas with strange shapes and well-tended gardens. They gave me an excellent, very well-kept room with a private bathroom, TV and fridge, which cost me 22 euros per night, breakfast included, full of homemade jams made by the very friendly landlady, who gave me all the tips for local excursions. You can also go to a branch of the Danube and cross it on a raft as far as a waterfall, or go to the largest WATER PARK in Eastern Europe, a sort of aquatic Gardaland. I chose instead the excursion in Slovakia to Mount Lonmin and borrowed the hiking boots from the kind landlady.

I found myself in a cheerful group of young Poles, with a witty elderly guide who spoke only Polish, but at a certain point they went off to walk in a park elsewhere while the rest of the group, about ten people, was dropped off at the starting base of a cable car that leads to a little lake and another station. From here you could choose whether to go up by cable car to the top of Mount Lonmin paying the fine sum of 36 EUROS!!!! since the euro has arrived in Slovakia and everything is more expensive, I preferred to go around the very pretty little lake with various signs illustrating the fauna and flora of the park and then go back down to the starting point along a path through the woods, sometimes interrupted by works in progress for the laying of enormous underground pipes going up the mountain.

The walk was pleasant and scenic, and once I reached the base I chatted amiably with the owner of a sports shop that was very very expensive but sophisticated, with all the international brands. After a while the group arrived, dissatisfied because after forking out 36 euros each they had suffered the cold and seen nothing because the summit was surrounded by clouds, which I had immediately noticed and which had made me give up, as well as for the steep price. We then took a little electric train and arrived in a pretty Slovak town, STARY SMOKOVEC, very green with a luxurious big hotel, lots of chalets with a particular architecture and another cable car that leads to the surrounding mountains.

While we waited, since it was raining, I refreshed myself with roasted corn on the cob, a hot wurstel and an excellent beer, after buying a small bottle of Slovak vodka and some local sweets in the shop next door. In short, a lovely trip that ended on arrival in Zakopane with singing in the centre on the pedestrian street with a group of young Poles with a guitar intoning beautiful songs by two of their stars of the 1980s, Lady Punk and Perfect, whose CDs I forgot to buy. I hope to find them on Youtube. That's the effect of the communist school, fortunately gone. This one was left without toys for his whole youth and now he lets loose with these gadgets. Fortunately then a young guy arrived, speaking excellent English, and we talked about our respective countries.

When we arrived in Wroclaw he accompanied me to the nearby Hostel Avanguard that I had booked on the internet, excellent with a nice little room without a private bathroom but with one in the corridor for 20 euros. After the kilometre-long walks in Krakow that had given me blisters on my feet, I got smart and decided to rent a bicycle directly from the hostel for only 10 euros a day. So I saw the beautiful Silesian city, founded and inhabited for centuries by the Germans who after the war left en masse, leaving the city to Poles who arrived from other areas.ound even more churches than Krakow, too many in my opinion, and in any case all beautiful and majestic. Wroclaw is a young city because it is a university city, therefore full of pubs, little restaurants and nightclubs. Its RYNEK, that is the central market square, is a little smaller than that of Krakow