Poland: Bison & Legend

I visited Poland in 2016 courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. On previous visits for Lonely Planet, I paid all my own expenses.

In May this year, I had the privilege of walking through the Strictly Protected Area of Białowieża National Park in eastern Poland.

You can read the resulting story at Lonely Planet's website here.

This surviving fragment of the great forests which once covered northern Europe is special for many reasons - not least of which is being the home of the last wild European bison.

Here's a photo of one I snapped close up in winter 2006, in the European Bison Show Reserve near the park:

Impressive, isn't it? They can weigh as much as 900kg.

It's hard to see them within the forest itself, as they tend to avoid humans. But the beautiful greenery is fair compensation.

And, as timeless as this forest seems, it holds stories. My guide on this year's tour, Łukasz Ławrysz, called this massive trunk lying on the forest floor ‘The Tree of Legends’.

According to local folklore, in 1409 King Władysław II Jagiełło rested beneath this oak before heading off to fight the Teutonic Knights.

Ławrysz said the evident age of the trunk means the story was unlikely to be true; but that hasn’t stopped the legend enduring.

Sadly, near the end of the walk we came across a memorial to local people killed by the German military occupiers here between 1941 and 1944:

  
That's Poland – both myth and history are never far away. Even in the oldest, deepest forest.

You can learn more about Białowieża National Park at its website: bpn.com.pl.

Hajnówka, Poland: Lunch off the Beaten Track

Even when researching for Lonely Planet, it's rare that I'll visit a place without already knowing something about it. 

When updating for LP, I always have the previous text about that town to refer to, and maybe a map. Like Newton, though on a less serious topic, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants... er, well, on the shoulders of colleagues who've been there before me.

This was not the case last Tuesday when I visited Hajnówka, a town of 20,000 or so in the far east of Poland. I was on my way to back to Warsaw from Białowieża, a village on the Belarus border which is the focal point for the national park which bears its name (and contains wild bison).

Though Białowieża is an attractive place, it's notoriously fiddly to get to and from by public transport. In this case, I had to catch a minibus to Hajnówka, from where I would get a mid-afternoon train to Siedlce, from where I would catch a final train to Warsaw.

I already knew that Hajnówka's train station was slightly out of town and had no cafes or restaurants where I could kill time before the train. So instead of hanging about my hotel in Białowieża, I decided to take an earlier bus to Hajnówka and have lunch there.

The minibus dropped me off on ul 3 Maja, a long commercial street near an old church. I recognised the street as I'd changed buses there a few days before on my way to Białowieża from the city of Białystok; they sometimes terminated there rather than at the lonely train station. And I knew from walking up and down it that day, that it had few or no restaurants.

So I was back to basics. I'd noticed on Google Maps that there was a shopping complex, prefixed with "Galeria" nearby, so I walked to that. In bigger Polish cities this woud be a full-blown mall with cafes. Here, it turned out to be one of those "big box" centres you find at the edge of country towns, specialising in furniture and hardware and not much else.

So I walked on with my eyes open, completing a triangle by following a cross street back toward the old church. And it was here that I found the Restauracja Starówka:

Judging from its signage, this was one of those Polish restaurants that specialise in regional dishes, which was fine with me. I could tell though, that they didn't have many - if any - international visitors at their tables. 

For a start, the waitress seemed a little startled to have a non-Polish speaker to serve, though we got on all right with my basic Polish. It was lucky I had that and a translate facility on my phone, because the menu was entirely in Polish:

To make things even more challenging, I was trying to order vegetarian. But that's not as hard as it sounds - if you point at the menu and politely ask "Który jest wegetariański?" (note: bad grammar), the waiter can help you out.

So I ended up having this soup, which translated as "Lentil soup with red lentils. The base is the tomatoes, onion, vegetarian. Aromatic, dense, garlic, thyme. Served with sour cream":

It was delicious, as was my main course - pierogi, the classic Polish dumplings. If you want a vegetarian main in a formal restaurant, this will often be the only vegetarian thing on the menu. 

Luckily, they're great. These were pierogi ruskie, a common variant to find on a Polish menu, translated here as "Potato dumplings topped with cheese sauce with butter." Sometimes they have bacon bits scattered over the top, but that was optional here:

For dessert, I selected something which translated prosaically as "Chocolate cake with a scoop of ice cream." But what arrived was this:

It was quite spectacular.

Adding a coffee to that, the bill came to a total of 44 złoty, about A$15 at current rates. For an excellent three-course lunch in the middle of nowhere, this seemed great value.

After that, I walked off some of the calories on the 15-minute stroll to the train station, where this was waiting for me:

I enjoyed my brief culinary foray into Hajnówka. 

It reminded me that, no matter how useful are guidebooks and online travel resources (and I use both all the time), it's good to maintain your own travel skills and go off the beaten track from time to time. 

The little personal discoveries make your visits to the big, well-known sights even sweeter.  

Note: I paid for my own travel while researching for Lonely Planet in Poland. If you're ever passing through Hajnówka, you can find the Restauracja Starówka at ul Wierobieja 21.

The Unicycle Diaries 7: The Bison That Time Forgot

After my first Lonely Planet assignment in Poland in winter 2006, I pitched this bison-related story idea to a number of publications. Nothing came of it, but I thought it'd make a good backbone for a picture story here...

I’ve never felt much like Little Red Riding Hood... until this very moment.

Having left the minibus at the turn-off from the road to Białowieża, a small village near Poland’s border with Belarus, I’m trudging along a road caked with thick snow. My footsteps are the only thing audible, though even they are muffled by the crunchy white layer beneath my feet.

It’s the middle of the day, but the sky is a strange muted grey and the bare spindly trees look like extras from The Blair Witch Project. And I know there are wolves in these woods. And I know the European Bison Reserve must be just a kilometre or so ahead. But my hindbrain isn’t so sure this is a good idea...

On my first Lonely Planet assignment in Poland in the midst of winter in 2006, I journeyed through the snowy forest to see the last wild European bison in a reserve near a tiny eastern town. What I discovered was snow, bison, wolves, tarpans and the village that time forgot.

The Unicycle Diaries is an occasional series wherein I use excerpts from diary entries or story pitches to create a snapshot of a past journey. For previous instalments, click on the Unicycle Diaries topic tag below, then scroll down.

Poland 4: Beauty and the Beast

I've just made my latest visit to Białowieża, in Poland's east, and came away with the same confusion I always feel about how the place is marketed to the visitor.

Its famous herds of wild European bison are the focus of tourism to this remote village - but should they presented as a miracle of nature or as the traditional target of the hunter?

To me, the answer seems obvious. To understand why, you need to know a little of the story of this part of Poland.

The Puszcza Białowieska (Białowieża Forest) is the last remnant of the great primeval forest which once covered most of Europe. Nowadays it's split between Poland and Belarus, but for centuries it lay entirely within the Kingdom of Poland.

It was also packed with wildlife, including bison, the cousins of the buffalos we all know from Hollywood Westerns. So Polish kings built hunting lodges here for a bit of sport, and they were followed by the Russian tsars after eastern Poland was swallowed up by the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century.

These monarchs made some some effort to protect the dwindling bison population even as they hunted them, but in World War I the German army occupied the forest and hunted down nearly all of of the remnant population. By 1919, they were extinct outside zoos.

A sad end for these mighty beasts in their native environment. Impressively though, a conservation program started reintroducing the creatures to the wild in the 1950s, and there are now several hundred bison in the forest. Visitors can enter the Strict Nature Reserve accompanied by a guide, with the chance of spotting bison in their natural state. As a result, Białowieża is a popular destination for tourists year-round.

You would assume, therefore, that the theme of the place would be animal conservation and the harm that hunting and other human activity has done to the natural environment over the centuries.

To some extent it is, and visitors marvel at the forest and the life within it. However, the hotels and restaurants of the village are generally themed in quite a different way. Decked out as mock hunting lodges, decorated with fake bison heads, animal skulls and other hunting memorabila, they seem to glorify the hunting that caused so much harm to the local fauna in the first place.

In one way they're just drawing on history, referencing the Tsar's hunting lodge which was burned down by German troops retreating from the Soviet army in the next world war.

However, it does seem a jarring choice of decor in a 21st century world that's far more sensitive to the harm that humans have done to the environment around them. Also considering that many people are less tolerant of hunting nowadays, seeing it as unnecessarily cruel (while, perhaps hypocritically, remaining tolerant of the breeding and killing of animals in controlled conditions for use as food).

Maybe I'm missing something here; but either way, I always cringe a little when I see the antlers, skulls and heads hanging on the walls of Białowieża venues, right above the animal skin rugs on the wall.

Am I too sensitive? Hypocritical? Misinterpreting some important aspect of the local cultural heritage? Or is the happy juxtaposition of hunting and conservation in Bialowieza just a little bit odd?

Signs and Portents: Poland 1

Looking through my photos, I've noticed that I love taking shots of strange and quirky signs. They're often quite irrelevant to a story I'm pursuing, and therefore won't get published, but they are a lot of fun and tell you much about the local culture. And make you scratch your head in puzzlememnt. Or at least give you a good chuckle.

So without further ado, here's the first in an irregular series of quirky signs I've encountered along the way. First up, that champion of bizarre posters and curious signs, Poland! This set of images was taken in February 2006, during my first Lonely Planet assignment in Polska.

Pedro was so going to sue his travel agent when he'd saved enough to return to Acapulco.

This pic was taken in the middle of a very cold winter in Kraków. This poor guy was charged with advertising the charms of a Mexican restaurant by standing outside in minus-5 degree weather. Yes, that is a pile of snow behind the bin. And no, I don't know why there were swings in the garden or who would use them in winter. Or why you would use them in summer, for that matter.

The management couldn't understand the drop-off in trade since they'd erected the new sign - had they chosen the wrong type of cola?

A somewhat unfortunate sign outside a cafe within Kraków's main train station. You might expect the food provided by Gastro Wars to set off an unpleasant sequence of intestinal events once eaten, but it's all just a horrible misunderstanding. The company that runs the place has simply added the "gastro" from gastronomy to its own company name, Wars (pronounced "vars"). Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Tomasz couldn't help thinking he'd created a better-shaped heart than Pawel.

It may not have been celebrated in Poland until after the fall of communism, but Valentine's Day now seems as popular there as anywhere else. Before its arrival, male Poles marked International Women's Day on 8 March by giving romantic gifts to the ladies, making it both an officially serious and unofficially whimsical occasion. This was taken on the main street of Łódź on 14 February.

For some reason, Władysław was dying for some fries.

You can't escape the big M! This gigantic drink cup was placed next to one of the statues commemorating famous locals along Łódź's main drag, ulica Piotrkowska. The gentleman depicted here is Władysław Reymont (1867-1925), writer and Nobel prize winner. Look carefully at the straw on the cup - it's shaped like an ice hockey stick in reference to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

Roman wondered if it was finally time to launch his celebrity dumpling chain restaurant concept.

And finally, one of the stars on the Walk of Fame along ulica Piotrkowska in Łódź. Poland's second-largest city is also its film-making hub, as the National Film School was established here after WWII when Warsaw lay in ruins. These stars commemorate numerous stars and production people, though the only three likely to be known to people outside Poland are Roman Polański (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Three Colours trilogy), and Andrzej Wajda (whose 1981 Man of Iron won the Palme d’Or at Cannes).

Stay tuned for more curious pics! And if you have any odd or amusing signs you've encountered on your travel, feel free to email them to me at tim@iwriter.com.au, to be featured in a future posting.

Poland 2: Hooray for Hollywoodge!

I'm typing this in the breakfast room of the Hotel Savoy in Łódź, Poland. But don't get too excited - it's a far cry from the Savoy in London (this place is two-star).

Łódź is a bit off the tourist trail but is actually a good looking town, and very different in appearance from all the other Polish cities I've visited. That's because it's essentially an early 19th century city, bulked up by a profusion of factories as the local authorities welcomed in the Industrial Revolution.

So instead of an Old Town around the core of a medieval market square, Łódź's hub is ul Piotrkowska, a long street lined by attractive Art Nouveau buildings (interrupted by the odd concrete monstrosity for contrast).

But what's really interesting here is the National Film School, established in 1948 in Łódź (Poland's second-largest city) when Warsaw was still lying in ruins from WWII. As a result, Łódź became Poland's film centre. And as Łódź is pronounced 'woodge', there's been no end of puns about Holly-woodge.

The school is a famous institution that's turned out numerous successful actors and directors. Some have gone on to international fame, notably directors Roman Polański and Krzysztof Kieślowski.

They like the film connection here; there's a 'walk of stars' in the pavement on the main street, with famous Polish directors and actors. Also, extending beyond the cinematic, other famous Łódź creative types are immortalised along ul Piotrkowska in the form of life-size statues.

The most prominent is that of Artur Rubenstein, the famous 20th century pianist. His statue is accompanied by a full-size grand piano! (though the image above is actually from my 2006 visit to Łódź during winter; I haven't had a chance to load my latest photos to my laptop yet).

Łódź is a fine example of how a city can reinvent itself. Once only known as a manufacturing centre, it's embraced the creative, and given itself a new lease of life.