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Triumph of the Polish will Krakow remains a medieval Polish showpiece for all modern visitors to relish and enjoy. By TOM COCKREM Miracles do happen. Most Polish people would attest avidly to this. And for evidence, they need only cite their own backyard. For in the southern part of Poland there exists the town of Krakow. Like its historic sister cities – Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk and others – it dates back a thousand years. But unlike them, its precious centre has survived almost intact, despite numerous attempts to bring it down. It remains a medieval Polish showpiece for all us...

Travel: The mosaic of East Poland By : SANTHA OORJITHAM The Tartar Trail in Poland is off the beaten track, even for locals. SANTHA OORJITHAM meets the descendants of the nomads from the tablelands. “THIS is the end of the world,” says Dzenneta Bogdanowicz as she surveys her rustic restaurant, horses in the paddock and traditional Tartar “jurta” hut in which tourists can stay. Kruszyniany in northeastern Poland, 16km from the Russian border, is not a village you “pass through on your way to somewhere else”. But during the “Sabantuj” harvest festival in June, the bubbly Tartar entrepreneur attracted some...

Seven Wonders of Poland 21.09.2007 Rzeczpospolita, one of the major Polish newspapers, has published results of an Internet survey for the most valuable and recognizable historic monuments in the country. The list titled The Seven Wonders of Poland shows the Wieliczka salt mine at the top, slightly ahead of the Old Town complex in Torun and the medieval castle of the Teutonic knights in Malbork and the royal Wawel castle in Krakow. Next came the Ostrodzko-Elblaski Channel linking hundreds of lakes of north-eastern Poland, the renaissance town of Zamosc and the Main Market Square and Old Town in Krakow. The...

Knights fight at tournaments in old castles 26.05.2007 Fans of Mediaeval tournaments of knights are meeting this weekend at ancient castles in Poland. The 11th international contest, with the participation of teams from Poland, the Czech republic and Slovakia, has been staged at Krzyztopor Castle in mid-central Poland. The program envisages recreated fights for an ancient saber and a game of live chess. About 300 representatives of knights’ brotherhoods from Poland and abroad are meeting at the Ogrodzieniec castle in southern Poland to recreate mediaeval contests between knights on horseback.

Poland’s Second City Is First Choice for the Young TO find Pauza, an artsy pub in the medieval heart of Krakow, slip past the rowdy British lads at the greasy kebab stands, step over the inebriated young woman splayed on the shiny cobblestones, and wait. A clique of trendy young Poles will clear a path to a soot-stained building on Ulica Florianska; follow them up a dark stairwell and open the unmarked wooden door. The thumping electronic music may sound vaguely familiar, and the swirling psychedelic lights and photographic art are not exactly avant-garde. But if you came to Krakow...

Poland: Scenic and somber Contrasting sites open visitors’ eyes By Nathan Saunders, Special to Stars and Stripes Stripes European Travel, Thursday, March 22, 2007 The nine-hour bus ride from Berlin to the Polish city of Gdansk included bumpy cobblestone roads, sharp turns and an Adam Sandler film with a lifeless Polish voiceover. I got sick somewhere between Gdynia and Sopot, and — it should probably go without saying — it was humiliating. My weeklong journey to Poland late last year started lamentably. “I want to go home,” I whined to my pillow after crashing on the hotel bed. “Why did...

Want low-cost skiing? Try Poland Winter Sports Travel Insurance - Click Here for a Quote A staple complaint amongst skiers and snowboarders is that good resorts, such as the ones in France and Switzerland, have become inordinately expensive and crowded. While eastern Europe might not immediately spring to mind as a skiing mecca, for those sick of the glitzy, expensive and almost always crammed full resorts of western Europe, it may be worth a try. And the Zakopane resort in Poland is one of the jewels in the crown of eastern European skiing. Nestled in a mid-mountain valley in the...

Touring Nowa Huta in Crazy Mike's Trabants 6.10.2006 - John Beauchamp The southern polish city of Krakow attracts visitors from all over the world - to its churches, narrow streets and great central square. And now there's another tourist attraction - retro communism. You can joins some Crazy Guides on a Trabant ride round Nowa Huta, a model communist city designed in the 1950s. This report by John Beauchamp: Crazy Mike has souped-up his Trabants and he's going to be taking us around Nowa Huta. 'Nowa who?' I hear you say. Well, far from the crowds of tourists that pack...

A revolution in the city of solidarity Shipyards were the hard face of industrial Gdansk, but now Tom Lappin finds a city revelling in its hotchpotch of old and new culture, architectural splendour and retro bars So where is Anna’s crane? That’s one of several questions that spring to mind when you gaze on the site of the erstwhile Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, even if the area is now just another European postindustrial wasteland waiting for the funds to turn it into an office and leisure development. Back in July 1980, the dismissal of a crane operator called Anna Walentynowicz...

The shrill, thin whistle of the train; the rattling wooden boxcars filled with moaning, miserable people; the tracks leading from the West and ending in a single track entering into the horror of Birkenau are memories emblazoned into the collective memory of the civilized world. I was one of the lucky ones to have escaped all that, and now I was retracing a train voyage in the opposite direction: from Krakow through Silesia to Wroclaw (long known by its German name, Breslau), through what was East Germany, into Berlin and Potsdam, ending in Munich. The journey of a group of...

Travels With Lonely Planet: Exploring the riches of Wroclaw Poland's Silesian state capital straddles 12 distinct islands and retains a medieval charm By Tom Parkinson Eastern Europe is opening up at a dizzying pace, and nowhere more so than Poland. Ever since the fall of communism in 1989, the country has been modernizing rapidly, and in 2004 it finally joined the European Union, cementing its crucial position at the corner of the continent. Around the same time, the budget-airline boom reached the major Polish cities, connecting them to London and a host of other European airports at laughably low prices....

Warsaw teems with flowers, nightlife, friendly people By John Bordsen Charlotte (N.C.) Observer What's it like to live in a far-off place most of us see only on a vacation? Foreign Correspondence is an interview with someone who lives in a spot you may want to visit. Brendan Ian Burke is Executive English Editor of The Warsaw Voice newspaper. The New Jersey native, 35, has lived in Poland five years. Q. We've read stories and seen footage about how terrible this winter has been in Eastern Europe. What's your take on it? A. In the past, winters were pretty mild...

Tourists head for Krakow 24.08.2005 In the wake of more assertive campaigning from the Polish Tourist Board, Krakow, the historic city in the south of the country, is experiencing a boom in the number of tourists who visit there. Statistics say that more than 52 % of Poles consider Krakow the most people-friendly city in the country. Last year the number of visitors to the city increased by 20%, to around 6.5 million tourists. This year, 8mln tourists are expected according to the Promotion Department of the City of Krakow. And that’s no accident, as it’s a city wrapped in...

Mat Schulz goes hunting for the endangered bison in a primeval corner of Poland. For most people, Poland is connected with images of factories, coalmines and shipyards. But between the industrial landscapes there are mountains, lakes and sea. Most surprisingly, on the border with Belarus, Poland also has mainland Europe's last primeval forest - 8000 years old and 1250 square kilometres in size. The Bialowieza Forest still exists because Polish and Lithuanian royalty used it for hunting from the 14th century. When, in the 19th century, the land became part of Russia, the tsar reserved it for the same purpose....

Bialowieza and Podlasie If you want to escape the bustling city life, there is no better place in Poland to go than to Białowieża Forest in the eastern Polish region of Podlesia. By Gabriel Stille Known as the home of the Zubr, the European bison, The Bialowieza National Park protects a rare remnant of the primeval lowland forest that once covered most of Eastern Europe. And Podlesia, a region who cherishes its age-old ties to the east, is an interesting place in itself. The Polish part of the Białowieża forest comprises of over 10,000 hectares of land, of which almost...

Kraków a crown for Poland 02:30 PM CDT on Friday, June 16, 2006 By RICK STEVES / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News The top stop in Poland is Kraków. And enjoying a drink on its marvelous main market square, you’ll know why. The biggest square in medieval Europe remains one of Europe’s most gasp-worthy public spaces. Knowing this is one of Europe’s least expensive countries, I choose the fanciest cafe on Kraków’s fanciest piece of real estate and order without even considering the price. Sinking deep into my chair and sipping deep into my drink, I ponder the...

Pumped in Poland Article by Thomas Lundy, Grey and impoverished, a downtrodden land inhabited by dour cynics. This was my perception of Poland prior to going there. I had been asking fellow travelers for years about Poland and all had unequivocally recommended Cracow. So, Cracow it was: Poland's third largest city of under one million inhabitants and also its best preserved (unlike Warsaw, Cracow wasn't annhilated by bombings during World War II). I took a direct flight from Amsterdam to Cracow on SkyEurope, a low-budget airline specialising in Eastern European destinations. Upon landing I was overjoyed at the sight before...

Warsaw looks back, ahead Polish city proves vibrant, affordable By Beth D'Addono, Globe Correspondent | March 8, 2006 WARSAW -- When Danuta Mieloch wants an upscale, energetic getaway from her busy Rescue Rittenhouse spa business in Philadelphia, she doesn't jet off to London or Paris. She heads to Warsaw, the capital of her native Poland. ''It's the most happening place in Eastern Europe, and Americans don't really know about it," said Mieloch, who came to America 15 years ago. ''The bars and restaurants are fabulous, the shopping is great, and the city is very young and vibrant. And best of...

Heaven and Hel Is Hel nicer than Magaluf? Can Odessa outparty Ibiza? As eastern Europeans flock to the Med, Tim Bryan goes beachcombing in the opposite direction Saturday July 15, 2006 The Guardian They are signs of the times. Across eastern Europe, the travel agents offer cheap self-catering holidays from Mallorca to Corfu. Rich Russians and Ukrainians are now sojourning on the Med, Czechs and Poles sunbathing in Greece or Cyprus, and the Baltic peoples head anywhere south, and hot. But where did they used to go? And is there anyone left in these former workers' playgrounds? More pertinently, can...