Thoughts upon the Road, Eastern Poland

It's been a while since I was east of the Vistula by car, but the recent road trip and last week's return from Kazimierz Dolny has provided me with a decent glimpse of how much infrastructure has improved on the right bank of the Vistula, and how much eastern Poland has developed, over the past 20 years.

One positive indicator is the number of food outlets that have appeared in small-town Poland. Once you could breeze through one small town after another and find nothing. Today, be it a kebab shop, pizza place, patisserie, ice-cream parlour or café, an enterprising local person is likely to have invested not only in a place to eat, but a focus for the community. Below: the centre of Siemiatycze (pop. 14,500). The building in the picture boasts no fewer than four eateries including a sushi bar; however, we popped into a smoked-meat shop (wędliny) out of shot to the right, drawn by the most appetising scent that I shall never forget. Loads of kabanos, kiełbasa and boczek, some of it from wild boar. Wonderful stuff.

Reflections upon The Road...

Road accidents: in 2024, 1,896 people died on Poland's roads, compared to 3,202 in 2014 and 5,712 in 2004. The number of cars per 1,000 people in 2004 was 246; in 2014 was 520; today it's 723 (Poland currently has the highest car density of any EU member state). So upgraded road infrastructure and civilisational advance have made a significant difference. Most villages have pavements alongside the roads. Road signs, and speed radars, road junctions profiled for safety and safer cars all help. Behaviour too; in four days on the road, I did not witness a single example of egregious driving.

Four days on the road – a big thanks to Andy P. for the concept and the driving. Together with Roman P. we enjoyed erudite conversation, popular-culture trivia, a great soundtrack (including classic war-movie themes from the 1950 and '60s) and excellent food and drink wherever we stopped.

This time last year:
Britain changes course

This time two years go:
Lawn to meadow, meadow to forest
[two years on, the re-wilding has taken hold]

This time five years ago:
Town and country in summer

This time six years ago:
Across the Pilica to Strzyżyna

This time seven years ago:

West Ealing to Castlebar Park – waiting for Crossrail

This time eight years ago:
Trump flies into Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Making Poland's railways safer

This time 18 years ago:
Lublin and the Road

Zamość the Magnificent

Day three of the road trip brings in Zamość; I've been here before a few times, it's a fantastic place to visit. (An introduction to it here.)

Stunningly beautiful, unique in Poland in its scale and splendour, Zamość was designed as the ideal Renaissance city. Ain't it beautiful? Just as Edinburgh or Prague are best visited on gloomy days in late November or early February's perpetual dusk with street lights reflecting off the wet cobblestones, so Zamość, Sandomierz and Portmeirion should be visited on cloudless blue-sky days that suggest the Mediterranean. Below: the town hall dominates the northern side of the market square.

Below: the square of the Great Market (Rynek wielki), around which Zamość was planned in 1580, is flanked by merchants' houses with colonnaded arcades. 

Beauty overload. Down every side street a new vista.

A walk through the historic centre of Zamość is so rewarding. Italy has been brought north by Paduan architect Bernardo Morando, commissioned by Jan Zamoyski to design a Renaissance 'ideal city', the only one in Central Europe.

Below: classical perfection, proportioned with the humanist ideals of the Renaissance in mind. The Great Market is popularly said to be exactly 100m by 100m although the metre was not being defined for another two hundred years as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris. And yet a quick check with the 'measure distance' tool on Google Maps shows that it's pretty damned close!

Below: not just streets, but courtyards and communal gardens set back from the thoroughfares. Pop through this arch, and enter a more private space.

Below: over three hundred years before Ebenezer Howard came up with the concept of the garden city, Zamość was providing its citizens with a quality of life that Victorian Britons would have envied.

Church architecture fits in perfectly. The Baroque Franciscan church dates back to the late 17th century.

Whilst I have bewailed the overtouristed nature of destinations such as Prague, Kraków, Sandomierz and Kazimierz Dolny, Zamość as yet has to fall victim to its own attractiveness. The holiday season is in full swing, yet the crowds are not here. There are plenty of places to sit down and eat, and the side streets are not choked with throngs of gormless folk grazing on ice cream and fizzy drinks.

It's quiet and peaceful, and I love it. The optimal tourist/attraction ratio.

As night falls, the sky remains immaculate, the town remains peace with itself. 

A beautiful town that has maintained its soul. The atmosphere takes on a dreamlike quality, real and surreal in equal measure, like a Giorgio de Chirico painting.

Morning calls for another circuit of the old town; an exploration of the fortifications which ring Zamość from the south and east.

Below: Zamość skyline from the top of the defensive wall.

The Franciscan church, this time from the back, this time in the morning.

Another visit is in order; but the weather must be like this to get the vibe right.

This time last year:
Assessing the passage of time while asleep

This time two years ago:
Summertime dreamland

This time four years ago:
Getting our heads around UFOs

This time seven years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time eight years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time 14 years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 15 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 16 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 17 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Przemyśl, and a reminder of Putin's presence

The second leg of the road trip, from Białowieża to Przemyśl, was a stark reminder of the evil that lurks beyond Poland's eastern borders. I got the impression that things had greatly changed around the Polish-Belarusian border since my bicycle journeys to these parts in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The clampdown is in place. Traffic is light. Quiet stretches of river border are monitored by banks of cameras mounted on high masts. No-entry signs proliferate on forest roads that lead to newly fortified border. Military and border-guard vehicles are much in evidence. This is not an area one wants to hang about in.

South of Włodawa, however, the Polish-Belarusian border gives way to the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the atmosphere of quiet threat subsides. The front line between democracy and dictatorship now lies over 1,100km (800 miles) further east, where each day Ukrainian soldiers face down Putin's army that threatens us all. 

Simon Davies is a Liverpudlian business owner who decided after Russia began its full-scale invasion to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine. We met him as he was on his way to make what would be his 13th delivery. With a Transit van and trailer packed with clothing, food and medical supplies, Simon parked up for the night to stay at the same hotel that we were in. We chatted a long time over beers. Today, he crossed over the border into Ukraine. 

Listening to his stories filled me with amazement at how much change for good a single-minded person acting consistently can make. One snapshot. In the van was a large bundle of drill-bits used for brain surgery. These are made of titanium and diamond, and cost £1,200 a pop. The surgeon who donated them to Simon said that with proper sterilisation they can be used indefinitely; the NHS, however, mandates that they be single-use. For emergency front-line surgery, such niceties can be overlooked.

Simon's Facebook page says he made it OK to Orikhiv after unexpected hassle at the border. Orikhiv is in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, on the southern front. According to The Economist, (10 March 2024) "Orikhiv is a ghost town. Every single building has been damaged or destroyed. Soldiers say there may be 1,000 civilians left out of a pre-invasion population of almost 14,000. There is no gas, electricity or mains water. Air-launched glide bombs have left huge craters in the streets or collapsed whole sections of blocks of flats. In the street in front of a bombed-out pharmacy, orange crocuses are making a defiant appearance." Most of Orkhiv's residents are too old or poor to leave. For them, a delivery of humanitarian aid such as that which Simon has brought all the way over from Liverpool makes a vast difference.

If you'd like to contribute to Simon's superhuman efforts to bring aid to people whose lives have been blighted by Putin's aggression, here's the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukrainian-aid-delivery.

This time two years ago:
The four-day working week

This time four years ago:
First half 2021 health

This time six years ago:
Classic Volgas, Ealing and Ursynów

This time seven years ago:
Memory and Me

This time nine years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time ten years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

This time 12 years ago:
Serious cycling

This time 14 years ago:
Outlets for creativity

This time 15 years ago:
The day I stopped commuting to work by car

This time 17 years ago:
Look up at the Towers of London

This time 18 years ago:
Wild deer in the Las Kabacki forest

Białowieża – more than bison

Let me start with acknowledgements. Thanks to Andy P for suggesting, organising and executing a four-day road trip through eastern Poland with his brother Roman and myself, taking in Białowieża, Przemyśl and Zamość. And thanks to my children for popping over to the działka to look after Wenusia and her kittens (all are doing fine).

Below: this is what Białowieża is associated with – Bison bonasus, in the European Bison Show Reserve (Rezerwat Pokazowy Żubrów). The European bison had been hunted to near-extinction in the early 20th century before being saved here. Bred in captivity and released into the wild, bison are no longer under threat of dying off, with over 2,600 counted, all but 200 of them living free. At this time of year, the bison have shed nearly all of their winter coats.

Below: wolf and I, eye to eye. Canis lupus, from which the dog was domesticated some 14,000 years ago. The current wolf population of Poland is believed to be around 5,000 individuals, with the north-east of Poland seeing the greatest concentration. 

Wending our way by road through the last and the largest remaining part of this immense primeval forest. The puszcza is dense; from the road, you cannot see more than a few metres in.

Below: the memorial to the Polish forestry workers and their families deported into the depth of the USSR in February 1940. This was also the story of my grandfather and his family, including my mother (then aged 12), although they lived 230km south-east of here.

Below: the Soviet repressions against Polish citizens that began in September 1939 continued with the return of the Red Army in 1944, with further waves of deportations.

Below: the former Białowieża Towarowa station (closed to passenger and freight traffic in the 1990s) is now a hotel, where guests can sleep in pre-revolutionary Russian railway carriages. The station building hosts a restaurant.

Lovely atmosphere, approaching that of British heritage railways.

Below: though steam engines no longer move trains around, there is one form of motive power that still moves passengers along these rails – human legs. A draisine powered by up to four cyclists goes up and down the track on three routes (4km, 7km, 14km). Cost depends on distance, up to 200zł. An excellent way of seeing the forest.

Below: biała wieża (white tower) – though not the one after which the town (or more accurately village) of Białowieża was named. Burnt down by the Russians in 1915 and bombed by the Germans in 1939, Białowieża experienced no fewer than nine different national administrations in the 30 years between the outbreak of WW1 and the end of WW2. [Imperial Russia, Imperial Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Bolshevik Russia, Poland, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Polish People's Republic.]

A taster trip to Białowieża that has convinced me of the necessity to return for a longer stay (at least two-three whole days), to capture the experience more fully!

This time last year:
TriCity miscellany

This time two years ago:
Footpath between Widok and Chynów station is opened

This time three years ago:
Summertime, and the living is lazy

This time four years ago:
Thoughts occasioned by the picking of fruit

This time six years ago:
First half of 2019 - health in numbers

This time seven years ago:
Key Performance Indicators - health - first half 2018

This time eight years ago:
Three and half years of health and fitness data

This time nine years ago:
First half of 2016 health & fitness in numbers

This time ten years ago:
Venus, Jupiter – auspices

This time 11 years ago:
Down the line from York

This time 12 years ago:
Cider – at last available in Poland

This time 13 years ago:
Despondency on Puławska

This time 14 years ago:
Stalking the stork

This time 16 years ago:
Late-June lightning

Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (V)

What do you want? What do you need? Can you tell apart wanting something from needing something? It's a hot day, you're on a long walk. You are thirsty. Dehydration can be dangerous. You need water. But you want a sparkling, fruit-flavoured soft drink. The carbonated sugary drink is twice as expensive. And it’s bad for you. Water is the cheapest thing in the shop, and it's literally what your body needs. What's going on in your brain that makes you reach for that tin of fizzy pop? A sense of reward or entitlement maybe?

All around you, corporations – big businesses – are telling you that your wants are actually your needs. That you can justify giving in to your wants. "It's me time!" "Go on – indulge yourself!" “Retail therapy!” Throughout my childhood, I was bombarded with advertisements for confectionery from all angles. Ad breaks on TV. Eat sweets. Chocolates. Biscuits. All for pennies. Full-page ads in my comics. Billboards. Eating large amounts of sweets was as natural for children as chain-smoking was for adults. The result? Bad teeth. Dental decay, regular (and painful) visits to the dentist. Accretion of fatty tissues around internal organs. Heart problems in later life.

Was that sugar needed? Not at all. The sugar that makes eating fruit pleasurable is a biological adaptation; it’s a signal from the taste-buds to the brain that the fruit you are eating has reached its maximum vitamin value, and needs to be picked and eaten. Eat it, and build up your Vitamin C reserves before the winter. But eating sweets? There’s no benefit whatsoever. The energy that sugar delivers comes in the form of a brief spike that burns as quickly as old newspapers on a bonfire, a sugar rush, and in any case your liver cannot transform all that sugar into useful energy, the bulk of it just turning into body fat.

And so it is with so many of our wants; they have negative long-term consequences that are unintended or unexpected at the time of consumption. New clothes, big cars, exotic holidays… do we really need these things? Tot up the money that the average person spends on needs, and how much they spend on wants, and the difference between the two over a lifetime can be huge. The difference between living a comfortable old age and doing so in poverty and discomfort.

You will often be upsold to; a salesperson will turn your need (cheap) into a want (expensive). A more powerful engine. Alloy wheels. Metallic paint. The difference between the base model and the top of the range with all the extras can be double the price. When you’re in this situation, you are vulnerable. If you know where your needs end and your wants begin, you are in a better bargaining position; the salesperson can’t twist your arm.

Addressing your needs means ironing out discomfort – thirst, hunger, cold, illness; you need shelter – ideally your own home, not a rented one. It needn't be fancy, but it should be comfortable, cosy, and yours. In the same way as being able to define the border between wants and needs, you need to be able to define the border between comfort and luxury. Luxury isn't merely about luxuriating; it is principally showing off. It assumes that other people are easily impressed by the trappings of wealth. Do you want to impress? Does this count in life?

This time five years ago:
Garden pub for the działka

This time six years ago:

Down the line to Warka

This time 11 years ago
Down the line from York

This time 12 years ago:
Czester and his sister

This time 14 years ago:
The Cold Weather Guys - a short story

This time 15 years ago:
Bike ride along the banks of the Vistula

This time 16 years ago:
Three hill walks around Dobra

This time 17 years ago:
90th Anniversary of the Polish Navy

This time 18 years ago:
Memory and comfort

Winding down or growing up?

 All around us, the battle between entropy (everything breaking down, winding down, decline, contraction, things coming to and end) and syntropy (creation, expansion, birth, growth). Old friends get ill, things that were once good turn less good, then bad, then disappear altogether. At the same time, babies are born, new ideas arise, things become more complex, systems organise – either spontaneously or with human intervention – and a purpose appears to be fulfilled. 

Entropy is a measure of the disorder, randomness, or uncertainty within a system. The core principle associated with entropy is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of an  system can only increase over time. Everything turns to shit, literally and metaphorically. Our food gets pooped out, strawberries left on a plate for a few days turn to slime, hot drinks cool, cold drinks warm up, atoms decay. 

Entropy marks the direction of time; from low entropy to high entropy, the only way it can go. A drop of ink disperses in water, but inky water never recoalesces itself back into the drop. A melted ice cube on a kitchen table will never regain its form. Time marks the direction of movement from a state of lower entropy (more order, concentrated energy) to higher entropy (more disorder, dispersed energy). The implication of the Second Law is that the universe as a whole is moving towards a state of maximum entropy, (the so-called heat death, at which point the last atom in the cosmos ceases to vibrate).

Our lives are part of that. Accept entropy with openness. You cannot defeat it in the material realm.

While we all observe entropy, reality is not all a one-way slide into oblivion. 

The concept of syntropy was proposed in 1941 by Italian mathematician Luigi Fantappiè as a complementary force to entropy. He posited that negative entropy has qualities associated with life: the cause of processes driven by negative energy lies in the future, in the same way that living beings work for a better day tomorrow. Fantappiè defined syntropy as the tendency towards energy concentration, increasing order, organisation, and complexity. Syntropy can be described as a 'converging' energy, as opposed to entropy's 'diverging' nature.

You can see it in biological system. Life itself seems to defy entropy. I am witnessing this in the form of Wenusia's kittens; living organisms that 11 weeks ago were a bunch of unfertilised eggs in her womb, that now have internal order, and grow and develop, and contradict the general tendency towards disorder. Syntropy suggests a 'pull' from future attractors or final causes – teleology; purpose; causality.

At first glance, the universe seems to be a battle between between entropy and syntropy, in which one is trying to dominate the other. Rather, it is about a dynamic balance between the two. Entropy and syntropy are essential – universal complementary behaviours of energy in space-time. Entropy pushes systems towards decay and disorder, while syntropy pulls them towards organisation and complexity.

Living systems are examples of this. They are constantly battling entropy by using energy to build and maintain their complex structures and functions (syntropy). However, this localised increase in order always comes at the cost of an even greater increase in entropy in their surroundings (cat food gets turned to cat milk, which gets turned into kitten mass, while the empty cat food tins pile up outside).

I would argue that syntropy strays into the metaphysical realm, beyond classical physics into the phenomenon of consciousness. And this, now, is a question of belief, an unfalsifiable proposition that consciousness is the fundamental property of the universe.

Syntropy is linked to consciousness in the opposite way to how entropy is linked to matter, energy and spacetime.

Syntropy gives us cause for hope. It simply isn't true to say "everything is turning to shit".

This time last year:
Tadeusz Lesisz – the exhibition

This time six years ago:
Jakubowizna in high summer

This time seven years ago:
Warsaw's Raffles Hotel opens

This time 10 years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time 11 years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 16 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 17 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 18 years ago:
The Road beckons

Kittens on their 12th Day

Growing so beautifully! I am full of gratitude for Creation, the way that Wenusia so diligently cares for her brood. I am so thankful that at this stage everything's going so well. She is starting to go out more (she caught a mouse yesterday), but always returns within the hour to her babies. Her sense of responsibility is outstanding. While she's away, the kittens huddle up to each other for body warmth. Their birthing box is kept in the shadows, but the temperature is nicely over 22°C day and night (this is the optimal time to have kittens).

Wenusia is eating like a lion, more frequently and larger portions, turning all that cat food into cat milk. As a result, the kittens are growing impressively, adding between 5% and 8% in body mass every day, with the smallest at birth growing the fastest. Weight range today is between 227g and 263g (at birth it was 78g and 109g). Czestuś the ginger tom still the only one with a name. Four out of five likely to be male, one possibly female, but testicles aren't fully visible until six weeks.

Despite the birthing box being open at the front, the kittens have not yet started wandering out. It's still more than a week away from the moment they start to walk. As of now, they only crawl around in circles. Only Czestuś's eyes are fully open, and temporarily bright blue. This fades with age. Ears are starting to take on definition. Once again, it's so helpful having such a wide range of informative material available online, from AI to YouTube videos.

The Miracle of Life! I cherish it, I find deep spiritual joy in it.

UPDATE Sunday 29 June: three days later, I weigh them for what's possibly the last time; they are bigger than the scale and move around too much to catch a stable reading. Weight range is between 261g and 310g, so tripling in mass over 15 days. Healthy!

This time last year:
A new path to Krężel

This time two years ago:
Mutineers march on Moscow

This time six years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador

This time eight years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time nine years ago:
Zamość – the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time ten years ago:
Voting closes in citizens' participatory budget 

This time 11 years ago:
Beginning of the end of PO [Civic Platform]

This time 12 years ago:
Where's the beef? Fillet steak in Warsaw

This time 13 years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia spruced up for the football, W-wa Stadion reopened

This time 15 years ago:
Literature and biology

This time 17 years ago:
Old Nysa van spotted in Grabów

This time 18 years ago:
The oats in the neighbouring field rise high

Jewish traces in and around Kazimierz Dolny

The long and tragic history of Poland's Jews can be seen in a microcosm in Kazimierz Dolny. From the edict of King Kazimierz III allowing Jews to settle and trade freely, his Jewish mistress Esterka (whose name graces the restaurant of the architecturally marvellous Król Kazimierz hotel), the Jewish shtetl that grew up around the riverside wheat granaries, to the utter horror of the Holocaust – this town saw it all. 

In 1939, the German occupiers began the systematic persecution and mass destruction of the region's Jews. The Jewish cemetery was desecrated; headstones used by the Germans to pave local roads. After the war, these were recovered and formed into a monument to the 3,000 Jews from the Kazimierz Dolny ghetto who perished in the Holocaust. The monument takes the form of a broken wall (fragment below). Through the crack we see a path leading up a steep hill through a wood, at the top of which grow fields of berries.

 

Below: a close-up of the wall of headstones. Note the stones and scraps of paper with prayers that have been left in the interstices.

Below: on the road from the ferry to Janowiec, there's what remains of another, smaller, Jewish cemetery, again marked with a monument – a raw iron slab flanked by stones. As at Kazimierz Dolny, headstones were also used by the Germans for construction purposes; unlike Kazimierz Dolny, none survived the war in a recognisable state.

Below: affixed to the back of the iron slab, the largest fragment that remains from the Jewish cemetery of Janowiec.

Kazimierz Dolny's scenery and atmosphere attracted many artists in the interwar years, Poles and Jews alike, making it an important artistic colony, similar in national importance to Zakopane. Along with the painters and potters came photographers, eager to document the town and its inhabitants and to capture its essence. The Jewish quarter, around the small market square and synagogue, came to represent the stereotypical shtetl, and was used as a filming location for Yiddish films such as The Dybbuk (1937). [Referred to in the opening sequence of my favourite film of all time ever, the Coen brothers' A Serious Man.] 

Below: the former synagogue currently houses an exhibition of photographs of the town taken between the wars by the Jewish photographer Benedykt Jerzy Dorys, one of the founding members of the Polish fine-art photography association set up in 1929. Dorys had a studio in Warsaw, and would often visit Kazimierz Dolny. He escaped from the Ghetto in 1942 and was hidden from the Nazis by his former housekeeper and three Polish families. After the war Dorys resumed his photographic business and died in 1990 at the age of 89. The photographs document the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz Dolny, showing the people and the place, capturing the essence of pre-Holocaust life. A must-see exhibition.

And to cap the day; back at the apartment, the wifi wasn't working. So what's on telly? TVP Kultura had just started airing The Woman in Gold, a 2015 British film about the legal fight for Gustav Klimt's

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which had been stolen from her family by the Nazis after the Anschluss of Austria. The film portrays in flashbacks the country's sudden anti-Semitic turn; how people could behave with such savagery towards their neighbours was all the more upsetting in the context of today's toxic populism. Never again.

This time last year:
Mindfulness, exercise, diet and health

This time two years ago:
Blasted!

This time seven years ago:
My new used laptop
[Six years on, it's still fine albeit without a battery; I can no longer source a new one; it still works fine when connected to the mains.]

This time ten years ago:
Face to face with Mr Hare

This time 12 years ago:
Central Warsaw vistas

This time 13 years ago:
Future of urban motoring?
[Sadly not. It proved to be V8-powered two-tonne SUVs for dragging lazy lard-arses into town]

This time 15 years ago:
On foot to Limanowa

This time 17 years ago:
Crumbling neo-classicism in Grabów
[Now the possession of friends from London!]

This time 18 years ago:
Bike ride into deepest Mazovia

Janowiec and Mięćmierz

Crossing the Vistula from Kazimierz to Janowiec entails taking a ferry; not cheap (14 złotys, or about £2.80 per person) each way for the ten-minute journey. The vessel can take up to eight cars plus foot passengers and cyclists. The traffic tends to be east-west in the mornings and west-east in the afternoons; the ferry sails between 08:00 and 18:00 in season.

Below: reminding me of the famous scene in  Fitzcarraldo. On the Kazimierz Dolny side – a riverboat, the Tina, stands motionless on the bank (online I read that the owners need to upgrade the mooring facilities before permission is given to resume sailing up and down the Vistula).

Across the river and up the hill; Janowiec castle (just like the castle in Kazimierz Dolny, destroyed by the Swedes). The castle and museum next door are covered by one ticket. Worth making the effort to come out to see.

A view from Janowiec castle's krużganki (cloisters) on the second floor of the castle ruins.

Polish viticulture is flourishing, not least because of climate change. The wines of Andrzej Dymek are available for sampling (and purchase) in the castle grounds. Having sampled his wares, I can heartily recommend his Chardonnay. Too far south for varietals such as Riesling or Hibernal, the climate around Kazimierz Dolny allows for more mainstream grapes. The Dymek vineyard is some 10km east of Kazimierz Dolny; Andrzej is the fifth generation to be making wine from the family. I was impressed by his professional approach (samples sent to lab to measure acidity; expert-level awareness of soil and climate, and to the knowledgeable client). 

At the other end of the scale are the local vineyards that produce a generic red and a generic white, who offer no possibility of sampling; this is aimed at the less-discerning tourist who merely requires a bottle of something local to take home after visiting.

Below: Dwór z Moniak (the manor house from Moniaki), an 18th century building that had been moved plank by plank in 1974 and rebuilt in the skansen (open-air folk museum) next to the castle in Janowiec. The ground floor is open to visitors as part of the museum; the first floor houses guest rooms that serve as hotel accommodation.

Below: time travel; like going back 50 or 60 years. Authenticity served here. The village of Mięćmierz lies less than 4km from the market square in Kazimierz, but the mainstream tourist does not get this far. People who buy property here are artists, pioneers, individualists. There is one karczma serving traditional food. A steep climb to a hilltop is rewarded by marvellous views over the Vistula gorge.

Below: view of Janowiec castle across the river, from the hill overlooking Mięćmierz.

If you're up for long walks, everything in and around Kazimierz Dolny and Janowiec is walking distance; over three days my health app shows 22k, 29k and 28k paces respectively; doable. 

This time last year:
Big Walk to Zalesie Górne

This time five years ago:
My return to central Warsaw after lockdown

This time six years ago:

From Peace of Mind to State of Elation

This time seven years ago
Last summer before S7 works begin

This time eight years ago
Nostalgia, ideology, aesthetics, emotions

This time nine years ago:
Civilisation and barbarism – how the former deals with the latter

This time 11 years ago:
Ahead of the opening of Jeziorki's Biedronka

This time 12 years ago:
New views of Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Motorway finally links (the outskirts of) Łódź and (the outskirts of) Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
Kraków Air Museum

This time 17 years ago:
Quintessential Jeziorki

This time 18 years ago: 
Little boxes, Mysiadło 

Kazimierz Dolny holds its own

I have reported how over-tourism is becoming a serious plague for any attractive destination, from Sandomierz to Prague. Kazimierz Dolny, a historic town on the Vistula, has bucked the trend, largely by channelling the ice-cream-and-cake crowd in and around the tiny market square, while the more distant parts remain attractive. Much attention is paid to the town's architecture; new houses are being built all over the place but they have a common look.

Below: view from the riverbank looking up the escarpment, with the castle and tower upon it. The town's location on the steeply sloped Vistula gorge. The castle, like so many others I've visited in  Poland (Czersk, Chęciny, Ciechanów to name but three beginning with 'C') had been destroyed by the Swedes during the course of their invasion of Poland (1648-67). According to Wikipedia, the Swedes destroyed 188 towns and cities, 186 villages, 136 churches, 89 palaces, and 81 castles at that time. 

Below: Kazimierz Dolny was an important wheat trading centre in the Middle Ages, a staging post between Kraków and the agriculture of Małopolska, and Warsaw, Gdańsk and the Baltic beyond. At the height of its importance, there were 60 of these granaries along the waterfront in Kazimierz. Those that survived today serve as hotels, apartments or private residences – as well as inspiring generations of architects.

Below: view of the Vistula Gorge from the castle turret. Across the river in the distance, Janowiec (for tomorrow's blog post).

Below: similar view from the Three Crosses Hill, further back and higher up.

Below: ruins of the castle. Damn Charles X Gustav of Sweden.

Below: stunning views from the top. Which to choose for the blog? All of them!

Below: modern houses are above all, tasteful. I suspect the local heritage conservator has a great deal of say as to what gets built and how it all looks. Lots of white- or cream-coloured stone facings, wood and local building material, and a style that strongly reflects the historic architecture of the region. 

Below: new house, old style. There are many such dwellings dotted around the outskirts of Kazimierz Dolny; each individual, and yet conforming with a local traditional architecture. Love it!

One interesting observation: menus in cafés and restaurants are exclusively in Polish; in four days I saw two cars on German plates, one Austrian registration and a motorbike from Finland. Kazimierz Dolny is neither much known nor much frequented by foreign guests, despite being well-known and loved by all of Poland.

Below: a nice bit of old-school photo challenge. Architecture and automobile in sync.

Below: four nuns out on the town.

Below: a herd of goats, and a stall from where absolutely delicious goats' cheese can be bought. Recommended – the one with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic was excellent. Eaten in one go, despite my best intentions to save some for later.

Below: brilliant busking from a youthful six-piece brass ensemble, Calidum, inspired by New York Metro buskers Lucky Chops. Highlight for me was the former's cover of the latter's Funky Town/I Feel Good.

  

Also of note musically was a violinist whose pitch was on the riverside promenade; her renditions of traditional Irish music from the Chieftains and bluegrass in the Down from the Mountains style also drew an appreciative crowd.

More tomorrow.

This time two years ago:
Legnica, south-west Poland

This time three years ago:
Warsaw, midsummer's day, midsummer's night

This time five years ago:
Rural rights of way

This time six years ago:
Not a whole lot going on...

This time ten years ago:
Dreamtime supernatural

This time 12 years ago:
Baszta – local legend round these parts

This time 14 years ago:
Downhill all the way to December

This time 15 years ago:
What do I want for Poland

This time 16 years ago:
Summer holiday starts drizzly

This time 17 years ago:
Israeli Air Force Boeing 707 visits Okęcie