Zakopane, Poland
This little mountain town in the very south of Poland, with its beautiful Tatra National Park bordering right on the Northern tip of Slovakia, is simply stunning. Four days is not enough to appreciate the sheer splendidness of it. We drove two hours by car from Krakow to reach the remote village we were staying in. I highly recommend taking a car, though the bus (Polskibus) also takes you to Zakopane directly from Berlin. However, to be flexible in the vast landscape that this region offers, a car would really be recommended. Public transport is not really available, nor reliable, especially if you don’t speak any Polish.
The first day, we stayed in our little cabin just outside of Zakopane and discovered our surroundings on foot. You should try the local cheese that is made from sheep’s milk (sheep are the no. 1 regional animal, you see them everywhere and every souvenir shop has them in all sorts and forms). This special cheese is fried over an open fire and served with borowka (cranberries). It is very chewy and very salty, but so good, I promise you will come back for it! The second day, we drove into Zakopane and wandered around the inner town. With the backdrop of the Tatra mountains - and their snowcapped tops - we suffered a good 30 degrees in the streets. Drink a local beer to cool off, order the specialty mountain sausage with it. There you have the perfect day! Try a lody swiderki (smietankowe!) from one of the many booths advertising it and be amazed. It’s sweet and sticky and tastes like my childhood.
The Tatra National Park was our entire third day. Once parked in the nearby parking lot, it’s still a 9,5km (read: 2,5 hrs) walk uphill to get to the jewel of the park: the glacier lake Morskie Oko. When we first arrived, we didn’t know this. None of our guides mentioned that, so my father was the first one to suggest just going back to the car. There are traditional horse carriages that carry you up, and to be honest, for people that are not as fit anymore, suffer from chronic pain or any of the like, that’s a pretty good alternative. I can still feel my sore muscles from walking the entire distance, even now, sitting here and writing this four days after. What you get to see pays in full though: loud, thrashing downhill streams, with their water crystal clear and ice cold. We filled our bottles back up whenever we encountered one, amazed at how ‘just water’ can taste that good. We watched deer resting on the green grass less than 10 meters from us, we listened to birds chirping all around us all the time. Finally, we arrived at the lake. It was an eerie sight, with the clouds hanging low over the mountain tops and us almost being the only ones there (we had not picked the perfect weather to go up). But it was gorgeous nonetheless. It was raw and it was deep and it made me feel something I still can’t quite put my finger on.