Ward Goes to Poland, Overview

 Ward is going to be doing a few posts about his recent trip to Poland. Here is his first.

As you may know, recently I took a trip to Poland with my brother and sister-in-law. The motivation for the trip was to see where my great-grandfather immigrated from. After much consideration, we hired a guide for the entire trip. That way, we could personalize what we wanted to visit and make it to the remote town of my ancestors. That was one of the best decisions we made. Jarek, our guide, was great. He drove us everywhere and arranged all of the tours and contacts for what we saw. 

Jarek, our guide, and the van he drove us around in. He kept it spotless.

If you're like me before the trip, you may not know much about Poland. Here is a bit of background information.

--How big is Poland? Poland is larger than the UK or Italy. If it were part of the United States, Poland would be the fifth-largest state, bigger than New Mexico but slightly smaller than Montana. Poland is the fifth most populous member of the European Union.

--Bordering countries - Germany lies to the west, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia border Poland to the south. Ukraine and Belarus border to the east, with the Baltic Sea, Lithuania, and a small bit of Russia (the Kaliningrad Enclave) to the north.

--Northern and central Poland is relatively flat, while the southern portion is hilly and mountainous. These are part of the Carpathian Mountains, locally known as the Tatra Mountains, which are a major outdoor recreation area for skiing, hiking, and other activities.

We hiked in the Tatra Mountains one day.

--Polish uses the Latin alphabet with 9 extra letters we don't use in English (these extras are English letters with diacritical marks). Some of the letters may look the same as ours, but they make different sounds - for example, W sounds like V, and Ł sounds like a W. I found that very confusing. Once again, I am so happy we had our guide.

-- Poland has a long and complicated history with many wars and boundary changes over the last thousand years. One thing I noted from the various histories I saw was that the country was very tolerant of different religions (Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish communities coexisted peacefully, except when the country was ruled by outside powers).

Driving east from Wroclaw to Boleslawiec.

--Overall, my impressions of Poland were very positive. The cities and countryside were very clean, with no litter. People were polite and friendly. It seems to be a modern country with superhighways, windmills, and cellphone coverage everywhere, etc.

Until next time...