Now it’s time to leave Kraków behind and head south to the mountains.

Yes, Poland has mountains! Its reputation is for being an overwhelmingly flat country, and that is mostly true, but its far southern border, which it shares with Slovakia, is marked by a particularly jagged section of the Carpathians known as the Tatra Mountains. Although they are much smaller than other European mountain ranges—such as the Alps, Pyrenees, and Caucasus—they are extremely dense, rugged, and beautiful.

In fact, they are SO beautiful that—although they only stretch about 57 km (35 miles)—the Polish and Slovakian sides receive a combined ~8.5 million visitors per year, skewed toward the Polish side. That makes them the most intensely visited mountain landscape per square kilometer in Europe. And yet, I’d never even heard of them before this trip!

Here’s the map to give you a sense of the geography of what you are about to see…

We came here to visit friends in the house they own down here, so I hadn’t done any research prior to my arrival; I went in with zero expectations. We were here for social purposes, not for the sake of ~TrAv3L* so I didn’t even think I’d take many photographs. Clearly, I was mistaken.

Big thanks to Monika and Krzysiek for having me in their home, and for everybody else who made me feel so welcomed here over the course of this weekend!

Driving from Kraków to the Tatra Mountains

The drive south out of Kraków is not a scenic one… at first. What begins as brutalist apartment blocks, weathered retail strips, forlorn office parks, faceless warehouses, and commuter suburbs, soon gives way to rural Poland, which is a very different world. Ribbon villages stretch along small roads with detached family homes, roadside chapels, and small businesses. Church spires can be seen standing tall from a great distance, drawing attention to far-off towns that dot the rolling hills. It was a fascinating glimpse into what life looks like out here. I wanted to pull off the highway and explore… but fortunately/unfortunately, I was not the one behind the wheel.

However, as the road continues southward, natural beauty soon began to eclipse every other point of intrigue. Our destination was a small town called Bukowina Tatrzańska. In Polish, the letter ‘W’ makes the ‘V’ sound, so you should read this as “Bukovina”. Here it is on the map for you…

By the time we pulled into the parking lot of a small grocery store on the edge of town, the once-distant snow-capped peaks were now towering majestically over endless pine forests. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. This level of natural beauty caught me completely by surprise. As we turned off the main road and drove through the rolling hills to the house where we’d be staying, these mountains seemed to reveal new details about themselves with every twist and turn in the road. Check out these views from the road…

And in the middle of all this, our lovely hosts had built a house! It was about 80% done, so it was missing a few features—such as a soon-to-be-built deck overlooking this view… and a few bathroom doors 😂—but it was already very nice and cozy. I was undoubtedly lucky to have been taken in! Here are a few snaps looking out toward the mountains from the house.

So what is there to do out here? Well, all the usual outdoors-y mountain stuff I suppose! There’s tons of hiking, mountaineering, camping, skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, camping, etc (depending on the season). In the winter, the snow out here can be pretty intense so it’s a real hub for snowboarding and skiing. This trip was in mid-March, so interpreted the melting snow as a sign of spring’s arrival in the Tatra mountains, but just a week after our visit this area was once again engulfed in a blizzard so intense that Bukowina was in near white-out conditions! So, if you’re planning a season-dependent trip to this region, there’s a lil data-point for you.

I don’t think I’d quite realized how incredible the skiing and snowboarding out here was until one of our hosts—Bruno—showed me his Instagram. Check out these videos that he shot in the mountains here!

Putting aside my newly-discovered goal of actually going up into these mountains…

We were not dressed for this kind of expedition on this trip, so our own forray into the natural enviornment here was quite a bit more limited. We opted for an easy hike along a river that was almost exactly on the Poland-Slovakia border. I regret that we did not actually cross into Slovakia… but I’m sure I’ll be back to add it to the Eastern Europe index before too much longer. Here are a few snaps from that hike…

As the sun was setting over the Bukowina and the Tatra Mountains, my knight in shining armor, Bruno, offered to let me ride along up to a ridge for a sunset photoshoot. MASSIVE thank you to him for the following views! This was the moment I knew that Bukowina had to get its own stand-alone article. This sunset was absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t tell you exactly where I was, but there were a few different ski lifts here that seemed to be winding down for the season sitting up here.

As the sun slide lower in the sky, casting this breathtaking landscape in strong golden hues, I walked around with my camera taking it all in. Nearby, there was a fully-equipped camper van, with a warmly-dressed man and woman sitting in foldable chairs together taking in the view. Having heard me speaking a few minutes earlier, the man struck up a conversation with me when I passed by their van. It turns out that they’d done FIVE extended roadtrips around the Mountain West of the United States (think Utah, Colorado, etc.) His English was perfect too.

Here’s an excerpt from my previous post on Kraków…

Adding to this surreal sensation of familiarity were the people I interacted with here… I have no idea if this group can be considered a “representative sample”, but I was super surprised at how small the cultural gap between us seemed to be. In some countries—even in Western Europe—it’s always abundantly clear that there is a LONG list of things separating me from the locals besides just language. But here, I often had the sense that (controlling for language), the gap was shockingly small. Any other Americans care to weigh in on this? I’d be interested to see if anybody shares this sentiment.

Maybe it’s just that I have a lot of outdoorsmen for friends, but this is where I first really started thinking along these lines. And of course this sentiment would only grow stronger as I moved through the remainder of my time in Bukowina and ultimately returned to Kraków. I’m sure I will be in Poland many more times in my life, so I look forward getting to know this people and culture more. But for now, let’s just take in the views. The narrow stone shrine you will see below is for Pope John Paul II, who was Polish!

As night fell back at the house, we roasted Kielbasa over an open fire out back. They were absolutely delicious, but the chef’s talents were not limited only to these magical sausages. They had also prepared some home-made lemon-infused vodka, in the style of a typical Polish drink called Soplica Cytrynówka. Since this was essentially Polish moonshine, it’s hard to say what exactly the percentage alcohol would have been, but after being (lovingly) peer-pressured into drinking quite a lot of it… let’s just say I had an early night. 😂