[Sunday, June 23]
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After the Gate 1 tour, we had two days remaining in our stay in Poland. We had left these days open-ended, essentially unplanned, but had booked two extra nights in Kraków through Gate 1 in the same hotel room we'd had the previous nights using their group rate. Some possibilities for us were to rent a car and take a side trip to towns near Kraków where some of my ancestors had come from, and to take a side trip to Zakopane, a town in the Tatra Mountains south of Kraków. After some thought, we decided to nix the trip to visit my ancestral home towns. At this stage of the trip, it was a bit more hassling with car rental, driving, etc, than we wanted to do. I don't have any known relatives in these towns anymore. (In one case, that of my maternal grandfather who was born near Auschwitz, all the Poles in that area were removed by the Nazis in World War II!). And I just couldn't muster the interest in going to see small towns that I have little real connection to anymore.
Zakopane, on the other hand, had held some interest. Zakopane is a small resort town at the foot of the Tatra Mountains (part of the Carpathian chain). Though Silesia (where Wrocław, Częstachowa, and towns west of Kraków are located) is hilly, the Tatras are the only mountains in Poland. The Tatras quickly rise to between 6000 and close to 9000 feet above sea level, several thousand feet above the town center, and some still had winter snow near the peaks. We had watched some tourism videos about Zakopane on YouTube, and Vicky once made a fabulous dish of that area, placki po bojnicku ("rebel's pancakes", basically beef bourguignon over potato pancakes with sour cream). So the combination of seeing a different side of Poland, and trying the local food, was what sold us on taking a day trip to Zakopane.
We booked a train to Zakopane for Sunday morning. We had just enough time to go to a Polish Mass at St. Mary's Basilica before heading to the train. The Mass was an experience. It was a small congregation (7 AM Mass), and the service was of course entirely in Polish. It wasn't the first time we'd gone to a Polish Mass (we'd even been to one in Buffalo, New York). I'd say if you're a practicing Catholic, it's not hard to figure out where you are in the order of service, but unless you're more fluent in Polish than I am, you really can't respond and participate. And forget about following the sermon. It was obvious we were polite tourists. After Mass we had just enough time to get back to the hotel, pack a day bag, and walk over to the train station.
It was another beautiful day. The two-hour ride to Zakopane was very pleasant. The landscape changed from urban to rolling farmland and then slowly rose as we headed south. As we got closer to Zakopane, chalet type vacation housing appeared and we could see ski slopes from our train window.
The train station in Zakopane is small, with no attached mall. None is needed. Immediately outside the station area, tour buses and restaurants announced that we were in a tourist/resort town. We walked south the half-mile or so into town (uphill all the way) along a tree-lined street which was lined with more and more clubs, restaurants, bistros, and souvenir stands the closer we got to the center of town.
Train station in Zakopane
General Kościuszko and Nobel winning author Henryk Sienkewicz are honored on a street corner
Uphill avenue leading to the center of town from the train station
The Tatra Mountains
Once we got near the center of town, we started seeing something quite frequently: cheese stands. Sheep are raised in the nearby mountain villages. The cheese produced from the sheep's milk is formed into wafer sized pieces or larger cylindrical rolls, and then lightly smoked. It makes a pleasant snack. Other food stands offering locally produced honey, jams and jellies also abounded.
Zakopane is in a region of Poland that can be described as somewhat similar to Appalachia: originally inhabited by independent-minded "mountain people" scraping out a living in the uplands, people who have their own rustic cuisine, attire, folk art, and music. Every souvenir shop sold the vests, felt hats, and replicas of the hand axes used by the mountain men. Now, I don't know exactly how much of the way of life hinted at here still holds true in the areas outside of Zakopane, but in the town itself, there was plenty folk art on display, as well as a few bands of roving musicians, dressed in regional costume, and playing, singing, and dancing to the local brand of folk music. It sounds Polish, but also strange, definitely not like the polkas and mazurkas we heard played by folk troupes in the bigger cities.
Being a ski resort and tourist area, Zakopane also reminded me somewhat of
Jackson, Wyoming, where we visited during our trip west in 2022. I liked the natural beauty surrounding Jackson much more than the town itself. There's a lot of money in Jackson, and it's very expensive to live there, but the main streets are teeming with tourists and the attendant tourist industry is pretty crass. There's also a lot of money Zakopane (though nothing like Jackson), but the tourist crush there is just a little easier to take than that in Wyoming.
Vicky and I had a nice lunch at a brookside bistro that served the local brew. I tried some kwasnica, a pork and sauerkraut soup. Vicky had some potato pancakes. The atmosphere there reminded us of one of our local pubs, the Axemann Brewery, where the babbling stream flowing right by the place acoustically isolates you from both outside noise and conversations from other tables.
Smoked sheep cheese in decorative forms is sold by numerous street vendors
The streets got more touristy and crowded as we headed in to town
Streamside bistro
Kwaznica, a saurkraut soup
Mountain-style potato pancakes
Nice beer stein. I didn't have room for it in my luggage
Chalet style restaurant and gift store with carved bears
Tourist centers, unless there are a lot interesting churches, museums, or civic or architectural marvels, quickly bore me. Tourist traps are not all that Zakopane has to offer, but we were not there to ski, and not there to go on a long trek in the mountains, go kayaking, or take a cable car to the Slovak border. It was just a day trip to sample the area. We talked for a bit about taking an earlier train back, but decided to stay until the evening and try to find a place that served placki po bojnicku for dinner. We'd need to work up an appetite, so we decided to hike to the edge of town and walk up a trail into the mountains.
Fancy hotel closer to the mountains
This property, at the very edge of town, looked like the developer ran into some investor problems: it was unfinished and seemingly abandoned
Residential area away from the tourist section
Hiking in the pines at the base of the Tatras
Dog cooling off in a trailside mountain stream
When we finally reached the park border, we saw a large group of school aged kids, dressed in scouting type attire, and their adult chaperons about to enter the park. There was a ranger stand at the trailhead charging a fee to enter the park. It wasn't much, but we weren't planning to walk much farther anyway, so we decided to start heading back to town. But first, a quick ice cream cone from a small stand at the park entrance that we ate as we rested. We were probably less than 4 miles from Slovakia, but it would have been a very rugged uphill walk if we'd wanted to get there!
Entering Tatra National Park
Broomrape, a plant that is parasitic on other plants because it has no chlorophyl
We like walking in the woods
Follow this stream up the hill a few miles and you're in Slovakia
We walked back toward the center of town and it was refreshing to be going downhill! Ahead of us, we spotted a dog, a little Jack Russell Terrier, all by himself, walking like a dog on a mission. He walked for several blocks on sidewalks crowded with tourists, crossing busy streets (always at the crosswalk!). In the end, we couldn't keep up with him, but were left wondering just what his mission was.
We started looking for a place to have dinner, but despite having walked in the hills for a couple of hours, we weren't all that hungry. Must have been the ice cream break. There were a couple of places in town where we could have gotten the rebel's pancakes, but we decided to go for lighter fare. Vicky had some chicken soup and I had a sample plate of small sausages with pierogi. Sorry, food fans, no pictures this time!
Another mountain backdrop, taken from the middle of town
After dinner, we did a little more souvenir shopping, then walked back toward the train station. We passed by a chalet-style restaurant and gift store with some of the most beautifully cared-for roses we'd ever seen in a row in front of it. And there were still plenty of temptations: shops selling more ice cream and sweet baked goods. But we were done eating for the day. Well, there was one more sweet thing: As we walked down the tree-line boulevard, an elderly gentleman (yes, older than us) said to Vicky as he passed by "Piękny kapelusz". My meager Polish vocabulary allowed me to translate. I told Vicky he had just said "Beautiful hat". That was good for a smile and "Dziękuję" from Vicky to the nice man.
Piękny kapelusz
We caught the train back a little after 8 in the evening. For some reason, the train took about a half an hour longer to get back to Kraków, so we arrived at around 11. It was a mini-Odyssey to get back to the hotel: the exit layout of the station brought us out into an unfamiliar street and Google maps got confusing. We didn't have to hop any tracks (except trolly tracks) or fences, but it took us an extra 15 minutes or so to find our way back to the square by the hotel. We decided to lengthen the day a little more with a nightcap. No hurry to get up the next day, our last full day in Poland.
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