Past bridge-building, billboards and wooden churches to Zakopane.

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Day 3

'The Sudetes and Carpathian mountain ranges are located on either side of Poland's southern border from west to east. The rugged form of the Sudeten range derives from the geological shifts that formed the later Carpathian uplift. The Carpathians (The Tatra Mountains) in Poland, formed as a discrete topographical unit in the relatively recent Tertiary Era, are the highest mountains in the country. They are the northernmost edge of a much larger horse shoe range that extends north from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, then south in an arc to Ukraine, Hungary, and Romania.’



1943, Hugh, my Dad, was transported to the Sudetes on a cattle lorry from Chieti on the North Italian coast past Rome, Florence, Bologna and Verona to the Bremner Pass. Then through Bolzano, the Tyrol and Innsbruck to Moosburg near Augsburg. After three weeks in spartan conditions at a transit camp they finally travelled through Nuernberg and Dresden to Lamsdorf, Silesia, Sudetenland.



2018, in contrast, we are taking a tiny white Suzuki hire car from Kraków down busy roads, constantly negotiating road works where massive engineering work is underway. And at each section the European Union is billed as the main funder, proving a new motorway to link Poland’s second city to Zakopane and Slovakia in the south…….less arduous than a cattle truck and with a better view…



The view: nearing the Tatra Mountains the panorama of the giant geology in green and granite is complimented by endless large roadside billboards advertising a whole range of essentials to life: cosmetic surgery, roof tiles, wood pellet stoves, skis, body building supplements and pizza.

A tiny bit like France, but the relatively minuscule ‘panneaux’ advertising the proximity of Mr Bed, M. Bricolage and Auchun on the approach to towns are nothing compared the poke and placement of the Polish billboards. ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ … this more like 'Continuous Billboarding from Kraków to Zakepane’.



We stopped for lunch outside a fine wooden church at Rabka-Zdrój.

It’s been unconsecrated and is now museum of crafts and folklore. It’s famous for the human teeth found crammed in the fissures between the giant logs of its construction.

At Easter, giant ‘palms’ are made in a contest for the most colourful bundles of box branches, wheat stalks and paper flowers tied to wands, totemic, some are 5m or more in length.

In the museum there were also photos of ‘hoss’-like figure trotting beneath a paper sun, a Saracen and various other masked folk, as fiddlers play in Rabka’s annual celebrations. Very Padstow.

There was a room devoted to the gentle art of pottery. From clay in the ground to the ceramicist’s wizardry on a foot-kicked wooden wheel and in wood-fired kiln.



Our lunchtime sandwiches were immense and plied with pickle. I like the Polish desire to ferment cabbage, beetroot and peppers.





More mountain talk in the next instalment ........

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