Parthemores in Poland

A day after returning from Germany, we set off for our Slovakian ski vacation.  In Poland, the place to go skiing is Zakopane, the resort area south of Kraków, on the Slovakian border.  However, many Polish people have told us to not go there since it was always so crowded. 

We chose to only stay the night and explore the town, saving our skiing for later. 

Loyal readers may have been confused about our blog about buying cheese from a kiosk.  The cheese in question is oscypek, a smoked sheep’s milk cheese that is made in the highlands of Poland. 

Yes, that is all cheese.

It is impossible to go more than 10 feet in Zakopane without the chance to buy oscypek.  This includes the road into town, because people are out there selling it on the shoulder. 

While most stands just sell it fresh, the best way to eat it is off the grill.  It is really delicious. 

A person who lives in the highlands is called a góralnik.  This has the same connotation that “hillbilly” would have in English.  They also have their own regional dialect, but we aren’t advanced enough to be able to pick out the differences. 

Zakopane plays up the góralnik theme every chance it can: 

All the beautiful wood buildings

The sled rides with the driver in the traditional dress (hard to see under the non-traditional parka!)

And the wool vest and slipper market:

The part about it being crowded was true.  There were almost no foreigners, leading us to believe that this is the Polish family vacation place.  With games and lots of vendors selling toys, the pedestrian zone had a carnival-like atmosphere. 

I like the random assortment of things:  a pony, a Saint Bernard, and a fake polar bear that looks like it’s melting.

While the drive from Zakopane to our resort in Slovakia wasn’t long, it certainly was interesting. 

On our way out of town, we saw this lawsuit-waiting-to-happen:

(I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but ski jumping is the second most popular sport in Poland, behind soccer.  Seriously.  It’s on TV in primetime here.)

There are a few interesting points about this next photo:

First, this is actual border between two countries.  It’s a little anti-climactic.  Second, you may notice the quality of the road.  We never truly determined if the brownish-gray substance visible in the middle was pavement or ice.  I won’t say the road was plowed – “tamped down snow” may be a better description.

One this trip, we determined that our Skoda is a little mountain goat.  Thanks to traction control, ABS, and winter tires, we were unstoppable! 

The drive was very scenic and mostly backroads.  This was a friendly reminder of the peril involved:

Whoa!

Fortunately, we arrived at Jasná safely.  The lobby of our hotel featured a huge iguana in a terrarium.

We rented our skis and went night skiing the first evening.  The next day, we arrived fairly early and enjoyed some great snow and clear weather.

The resort hasn’t had a lot of snow this year, so the top part of the mountain was closed.  Most of the open runs had the man-made snow, and were really nice until the early afternoon.  By then it had gotten a little crowded, so we stopped skiing with the agreement that we were going to be at the resort when the lifts opened the next day.

The next day, we arrived and found the snow falling sideways due to the wind.  I told myself that I was just being a wimp, and we got on the chairlift that would take us to the next set of lifts.  It was then that we saw this:

The chairlift we rode was the only one open on the entire mountain.  Luckily, there were a few poma lifts open, so we headed over to ski on the two runs accessible. 

To get there, we had to take this crazy traverse run through the woods. 

Of course, they don’t make any snow on this run, so it soon turned into rock skiing.  (Good thing we had rentals!)

Even the poma lift was looking pretty sad.  It was a challenge to negotiate the bumps and avoid the trees. 

But only the way up was bad – going down was great!

Even with the bad weather, we still had a lot of fun, and we’re considering going back next year.  Hopefully there’ll be more snow!