A Journey to the Far East... of Poland!
Presented by Mags Korczak, "Polskie Radio SA", May 20, 2008
Living in the city has its merits. Things to do any day of the week if you so wish, different leisure and entertainment options and better employment opportunities, not to mention a couple of million people for possible company.
By consensus the problem with cities, however, is their general lack of community feel, the fact that people are too busy competing in arrogance and salary without much thought for anything or anybody else. Having lived in London and been a daily participant in the mass struggle to get to work in the mornings and back home in the evening, living in Warsaw is a welcome break since life here is by and large a lot quieter, slower and less stressful; to me it’s akin to living in a big town. The feeling of space is overwhelming but very comforting and there are a lot less people fighting for the same square metre of space. Space is something Warsaw is not yet lacking in.
At risk of offending the 1.7 million inhabitants of this city, I have come to hold the opinion that a huge majority of Varsovians are dragged up rather than brought up, manners seemingly being an antiquated set of rules left somewhere in the dusty confines of an etiquette manual never to see the light of modern day interaction. Here you kindly hold the door open for somebody behind you and they shove passed as if it was your occupation rather than a gesture. Often I ponder the thought that I am actually a figment of my own imagination (and now yours for that matter), for the amount of times people have tried to walk through me rather than around me. I’ve even experienced recently standing in what could be described as an empty field at an outdoor concert, the nearest person standing next to me being a javelin’s throw away and then some where folk still felt the urge to step on my aura rather than leave a respectful and proportional ten metres between our DNAs. If you are brave enough to enquire of a shelf-stacker in a supermarket the location of a particular product, then don’t be surprised with the barrage of abuse that follows for daring to think that somebody who refills the shelves would know where items are kept in the building. Sometimes I feel that my very existence in this city is insulting to the locals, that my desire to breathe the same air, to use the same transport or tread the same pavements is offensive. Such is Warsaw city life.
There comes a time when you need to get away from this misery (and particularly the people) and have a change of scenery, to get back to nature if you will This weekend I made a trip to the far east of Poland, to the Podlaskie region which borders Belarus. Although I swore several months ago that I would never dare to head east again (after a horrendous 27 hour wait on the Ukranian border trying to return to Poland in November) I thought the fact that I wasn’t actually leaving the country would assuage my initial concerns. And it did. For four days, my friend and I floated through the countryside in search of Whisperers, helped by the generosity and knowledge of locals that I have yet to witness in six months living in the capital; the kind of generosity that I had read with envy in travel blogs and guidebooks but which I believed to be myth rather than reality.
The Podlaskie region is predominately of the Russian Orthodox faith and sustenance living is the main way of life. Like most backwaters of Poland there is relative poverty and very little industry. Employment is scarce and it is from these kinds of places that the young people escape as soon as they finish high school in search of jobs in the UK and other countries since their hometowns offer very little prospect for their future. It is a sad state of affairs, life is almost hopeless with very little in the way of cultural entertainment to occupy locals. However, the countryside is beautiful and the wooden architecture a joy to behold. The lack of consumerism in these parts seems to make people a little more open; the fact they don’t have much makes them more willing to share.
Our journey to the Podlaskie region was to see us journey from Bialystok to Bielsk Podlaski, to the holy site of Grabarka to Hajnowka to our final destination on the very edge of Poland, Bialowieza. From the moment we arrived in Bialystok, the capital of the region, to the moment we returned there before our onward journey back to Warsaw we were greeted with good fortune and friendliness. Perhaps people were kind to us because they had already exhausted everybody else in their 20 kilometre locale and interaction with strangers breaks up the monotony of village life. Instead of just directing us to places when we asked, we were actually taken there, we were looked after and made to feel welcome. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Our presence was never a nuisance. Over four days we floated through several little villages which we otherwise wouldn’t have seen, of general little significance but a picture of tranquillity nonetheless. We were given free beer, free lifts and free local knowledge. The only person who was slightly offish with us was a Whisperer, suspicious of our intentions but that’s a whole different story. Oh and the bison in the nature reserve, the Zubr of Zubrowka vodka fame. I found them a bit distant and unwilling to come close enough to take a decent photograph, what prima donnas.
Whilst the locals are very friendly, the insects are not. I am now covered in no less than 83 mosquito bites after walking and cycling through the woodland and national parks of Bialowieza, famous especially for its primeval forest. If you do decide to venture to these eastern parts, which I strongly recommend you do, a Varsovian attitude may be more than enough to repel the local human population but I advise bringing a hefty supply of mosquito repellent unless you want to look like a city dweller dragged through a hedge backwards as I currently do.
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