1. What is it?

It’s a stunning mountain range and Poland’s largest National Park with (mostly) unspoilt nature and some rare wild animals like wolves and brown bears.

2. Where is it?

You’d need to travel to the extreme south-east corner of Poland. The mountain range spans three countries (Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine)

3. Why bother?

It’s a hikers’ heaven and it’s wild. It’s not unusual to hear wolves at night, while brown bears roam free in the more remote parts of the mountains too. Plus the views are breath-taking.

4. And you don’t want to miss…

Apart from the nature, there are quite a few man-made structures you’ll see over and over again in Bieszczady. look out for the old road shrines and crosses, often well-maintained despite being in a remote location.

5. Want to know more?

There are more and more resources in English as people discover this remote part of Europe, try Destination360 or Stay Poland for more info, maps and images.

More travel tips

Bieszczady – image ©animisiewaz, via Flickr, used under Creative Commons licence

The Londoneer, quoted by me many times before on this very site, wrote a brief post on the Polish War Memorial in London.

Usually mentioned in traffic bulletins only (”heavy traffic on the A40 near the Polish War Memorial”), the monument commemorates the Polish airmen who fought for Britain during World War II.

Pete wonders why the memorial is so far out of town. He suggests it might be

because of a sense of shame at what befell Poland after the war. Perhaps our military leaders wouldn’t have been comfortable looking out over Whitehall and seeing it every day. I doubt we’ll ever know….

Answers on a postcard.

Read the whole post and see Pete’s pictures here.

If you watched the World Cup last month, and the matches where Germany played in particular, you probably noticed a German player called Lukas Podolski. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that the name sounds Polish and that he might in fact be Polish.

He is, well, he was. He was born as Łukasz Podolski  in Gliwice, Upper Silesia, where his family still lives. I know that as a Polish paper, Gazeta Wyborcza, got very excited last week as the 25-year old visited his Gran in Gliwice.

They followed him with a camera and took some pictures of him in his old neighbourhood. As you do.

But when you read his Wikipedia entry, that’s when it gets interesting. It would seem the history of his family – very similar to those of thousands of other Upper Silesian families – reflects the complexities of life on a territory with a strongly defined identity, but extremely turbulent and at times violent history.

In 1987, when Łukasz Podolski was two years old, his family emigrated from Poland to West Germany and was given Aussiedler status as a result of his paternal grandparents having German citizenship prior to WWII (Gliwice had until 1945 been a part of Germany as Gleiwitz).^[4] Podolski grew up in Bergheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, and later in Pulheim, both near Cologne.

Many people who were born and grew up in Upper Silesia took advantage of the fact they were entitled to another citizenship and left Poland at the height of the crisis in the 80s to settle in Germany (and beyond). Many did that in the 70s too, but after the martial law period of the early 80s many families simply didn’t see their future in a politically and economically unstable country.

There have been many heartbreaking stories of people abandoning their entire houses, flats, cars, whetever – and going on “one-way trips”. For most people these “trips” ended in temporary immigration camps in Germany, where they learned their new language, acquired some new skills and started new lives.

In most cases, these people eventually settled down and started new, happier lives. Even though in many cases it took ages to bring the entire family to Germany and get accepted in the new environment.

There have been many tragic stories too: people returning to Poland with absolutely nothing; young people unable to find themselves in the new reality, removed from their friends and unable to make new ones, drinking themselves to death; families torn by unfulfilled expectations etc.

Now many of those who left return to Upper Silesia to visit their relatives and friends, some decide to settle in Poland again or spend their retirement there.

Many however despair looking at how this once thriving and rich part of Poland struggles to catch up with the rest of the country now that the heavy industry – and a big chunk of its population -  is gone.

I wonder what Lukas made of his trip.

Just wanted to let you know about this brilliant comparison gallery the Daily Telegraph put together.

“The film posters that lost the plot” gallery focuses on how communist Poland attempted to create “something that would defeat [stereotypical] Western film posters”.

It’s a great gallery, but also a nice read. The Telegraph reveals how a state-owned film distributor in Poland invited artists to screenings and asked them for their own interpretation of Western movies.

With time the posters became collector’s items and I’m pretty sure that if I went through my dad’s cupboards, I’d find some lovely, but long-forgotten 80s posters…

Did you like them? Do you collect them? Do let me know.

Some things leave me speechless. Like this one. What you see in this picture is a newly-designed logo for Nowy Sacz, a city in the south of Poland.

You may like it or not, but would you ever think it promotes Satanism and homosexuality?

Sadly, that’s exactly what the local pastoral ministry thinks. It expressed its outrage last week as in its representatives’ eyes the new logo – based on the human palm-shaped layout of Nowy Sacz’s old town, with the black spot denoting the location of the town hall – is a symbol of Satanism and palmistry. Neither of which are obviously supported by the Catholic Church. And neither is homosexuality, which allegedly is also promoted through this brightly-coloured sign, according to the same ministry.

The mayor is doing his best to apply common sense:

“An open right hand is the international symbol of goodwill and agreement, and the rainbow colouring of the hand is a sign of the town’s multiculturalism.”

Such ‘incidents’ and other ridiculous knee-jerk reactions are not exclusively Polish phenomena, but many people in Poland will tell you they are. They have their reasons to believe that – we, as a nation, for decades have been exposed to dodgy political deals, still largely don’t trust our leaders and public institutions and are generally unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It’ll take a long while to overcome this – if at all – but in the meantime it would be good if we learned not to find conspiracy theories in everything or at least not to publicise and blow out of proportion minor incidents, which can and do happen everywhere in the world.
Source: thenews.pl

This is an interesting initiative. Polish manufacturers from Wisła, a tourist resort in Beskidy, south of Poland, have had enough of cheap ‘local’ souvenirs mass-produced in China with little or no relevance to locally produced goods.

From now on they want to promote local souvenirs, food and other products and, to distinguish them from cheap, irrelevant tat, they plan to add stickers with a special logo and a “Made in Wisła” slogan to all goods produced locally.

“Tourists will be able to recognise sausages from Wisła, local cakes, spring water, wooden toys, local souvenirs or wooden houses. They can take home nice local cakes and not a ciupaga [Highlander's axe] made in China”

Pawel Bragiel, the chair of Wisła Friends Association told Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza.

He also claims Wisła is the first town in Poland to introduce such logo and such initiative.

I think it’s brilliant people begin to recognise and support what they know best. I do hope others will follow.

When I say fresh here, I mean new – new to me at least. I’ve discovered  Michał by accident when someone posted a link to this lovely video.

Michał talks about his music (in Polish, but with English subtitles) and the clip is illustrated with his fantastic acoustic jazz.

According to his site, his debut album, The Worlds, “was considered by music journalists to be an exceptional debut”.

Now feast your eyes on this great video by Patryk Kizny and enjoy Michał’s music.

Perfect for a hot summer evening.

I noticed today that Poland’s once biggest bank had opened a branch in central London.

PKO Bank Polski has a nice shiny branch in Shaftesbury Avenue. Weird location if you ask me, but maybe there are more branches in other parts of London.

As it’s Sunday, I couldn’t go inside and check what’s on offer, but I’ll investigate and report back.

I’ve recently introduced you to a new Polish cultural site aimed at the English-speaking world, and here we have another one.

This time it’s all about the latest news.

thenews.pl is run by Poland’s equivalent of the BBC World Service, Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy. It’s published entirely in English and is mainly focused on Poland or Poland-related issues.

You can also listen to English-language bulletins there and the site also offers Polish press reviews translated into English.

If you are really into all things Polish, you’ll find their micro-site on the upcoming presidential election particularly useful.

I found the new site particularly useful during the recent floods. While the BBC and most British media outlets completely ignored the disaster (American and Middle Eastern news outlets seemed to be more interested), thenews.pl had regular updates on the situation.

And just out of curiosity: HOW MANY of you are actually interested in daily news about Poland in English and is the existence of such service justified? I’d love to read what you have to say.

“You Poles are so, so…, erm, cultured! Yes, that’s the word, cultured!”

My English musician friend used to tell me that whenever we used to meet in a pub years ago to talk all things Polish (for his benefit) and all thing British (for mine).

What he meant was probably this: most Poles are not afraid of so-called high culture, they see it as an important part of their lives. And I suppose that’s still the case nowadays when Polish TV schedules overflow with numerous variants of Britain’s Got Talent and Dancing on Ice. Being an intellectual (not always synonymous with ‘cultured’, mind) is, unlike in Britain, not a sign of snobbery. It’s a sign of much-admired sophistication. Of being ‘cultured’.

Now those of you who are more interested in poetry, art, literature, non-commercial music etc. from Poland have a great source of the latest cultural news.

Biweekly is a great, recently launched website in English (with a Polish version too) and I like how they justify their existence:

We came upon such a sentence: ‘culture is not an obligation, one can do very well without it’ (Kot Jeleński). And we do not dare to state otherwise.

Yet, there are those, who, for some reason, do not want to live without it. Maybe they do remember Witold Gombrowicz and, just like him, they desire culture without all this juvenility and senile atrophy, butterflies and rainbows, dust and exaltation, patriotic and pseudo-intellectual demands.

The site has great content, very well written and well translated. Its eclectic collection of contributors makes it quite addictive.

Highly recommended. If you like feeling cultured, that is.