Zakopane & Tatras
Tatras Mountains near Zakopane
September 27, 2004
Last Friday Magnus and I headed down to Zakopane and the Tatras Mountains with our
grad school class. Apparently they hired a local folk band to join us for the trip,
but they were pretty late, however tried to make up for their tardiness with a song
before we had even gotten out of Krakow. Along with the singing came drinking and
by noon the band had drank 5 bottles of homemade vodka between the four of them.
We started off at Orawski Park Etnograficzny and saw the way people in the mountains
lived from hundreds to as soon as 50 years ago. For a demonstration on how people
live today we simply looked at the back of the bus and hoped they weren't representative.
At the museum we saw a few houses and learned how they made oil and lived daily
life. It wasn’t the most exciting place ever, but we learned a lot and were told
a famous Polish movie, “Fire and Sword” was filmed here. On our way out, a woman
was selling a goat, which we considered buying for only 500 zloty, but don't
really have room in our apartment to raise a goat.
The band sings and plays in a style very similar to this area, Orawski and they
played all the way to our next stop, Debno to see the St. Michael Archangel church,
a wooden church built in the 1500’s. The church seems almost modern in that its
simple design can be from any time period. Once we entered however the age became
apparent since the walls are painted in such painstaking detail, it would be rare
to find anyone in this age of "now" to take the time to complete such
work.
Our next stop was Nowy Targ, at which there was a market selling motorcycle parts,
suits, cheese, goats, and furniture all within about a 2 minute walk.
Our whirlwind tour next stopped at a castle at Niedzica. As we arrived Mateuz woke
the passed out band and they immediately started playing as if they’d been awake
and discussed what song was next. The castle is on a hill, which overlooks the lake/river,
where there is another castle.
The views of this region from any hilltop are beautiful, but the time in the hills
even nicer. We stopped to relax and enjoy the views of the mountains as our band
began to play and dance. Many others joined in and soon it was a party led by crazy
drunks in the middle of no where mid-afternoon.
We soon made it to our chalet in Kacwin. We settled down and had dinner at which
point, as Polish tradition the bottles of vodka came out. We also started a fire
and the experimental Polish dining experiment began: bread with lard, goat's
blood soup, and all sorts of meats. I mostly stuck with the best kielbasa I've
ever had though.
Our drunken band was playing, but primarily drinking as we watched them in awe of
their tolerance. At midnight they sang "sto lat" (100 years) to me for
my name day and I was forced to give a speech.
Wooden church in the Tatras Mountains near Zakopane
Village in the Tatras Mountains near Zakopane
The next morning everyone woke a couple of whom actually stayed up nearly the entire
night drinking and woke drunk so just continued drinking with the band.
We took a river cruise on the river between Poland and Slovakia surrounded on both
sides by beautiful rising hills and occasionally a hidden valley hosting a village.
The cruise is led by a man in traditional mountain clothing rowing the boat with
the current. The cruise included a tour of what we were seeing, but we had no one
in our boat who spoke Polish so we simple watched the scenery.
The cruise ended in a small town, where we had lunch and caught our bus to Zakopane.
This trip mostly consisted of everyone trying to avoid the couple people still drinking,
which was a game we continued to play until they passed out after our stop in Zakopane.
We made it to Zakopane and I broke free from the drunks to climb to the top of the
mountain, well "climbed" by a gondola. The view was great and we immediately
went on what is essentially a skateboard with breaks going down a metal luge track.
After making it back down into town, the rest of the stop in Zakopane consisted
of avoiding drunks and wandering the streets, which are filled with small shops
and remind me of a ski village in the Colorado Rockies.
The trip back was excellent...the drunks were passed out.
Tatras Mountains near Zakopane