Travelfood

In the early 90s I had a summer job at the Polish Army Museum, Muzeum Wojska Polskiego and I got acquainted with Poland during that summer. I stayed in Warsaw, which was a grey concrete city with one beautiful green area, the Lazienki Park. My trips to other parts of Poland contained more beautiful cities and sights, though: the Baltic city Gdansk, the red knights castle Malbork and the religious center Czestochowa.

After that museum summer I have travelled to for instance Krakow, which is much more interesting than Warsaw. The old city Stare Mesto, the Jewish Kaszimierz blocks and the Wavel castle are classical sights but the concrete suburb of Nowa Huta is also as interesting as it is ugly. From Krakow we travelled by bus to Zakopane, a ski resort in the Tatra mountains. It was nevertheless more difficult to find good trekking routes with stunning mountain scenery in Zakopane than on the Slovak side of the Tatras.

My prejudgment concerning Polish food contained cabbage, red-beet and heavy meat dishes. There are a lot more to be found! During my stay in Warsaw I learned to like cucumber soup and for main course there was often breaded meat for choice. I also tasted pierogi, which is a kind of meat ravioli with roasted onion, but I would also like to recommend pork cutlets with plums and horseradish sauce. On the streets of Zakopane there are often big smoked oszupa cheese discs for sale, but unfortunately they would not let us buy small pieces of that cheese.

The Poles I encountered where extremely hospitable. They invited me home for Sunday supper and they wanted to know about me and my homeland. They told me how they have learnt to save money in their ordinary life, because their salaries are not big enough to make a living. Especially in big acquisitions they save a lot by buying a lot at a time, so that everyone involved in the purchase can get their share for a cheaper price than if they had organized each purchase on their own. It is also easy to agree that Poland is perhaps the most Catholic country in Europe, since the face of the former pope is everywhere and he has apparently had a big influence on the Polish modern identity.

Europe, food, Poland, travel, travel experiences