Great Plains…

One week following the eastern border of Poland until we got close to one of the border crossings with Ukraine. We discovered the primary forests and the European bisons, and also the Great Plains of Central Europe and their endless fields……

Ok, let’s face it, after this “long” three-day weekend in the forest, it was a bit difficult to find the motivation to get back on the road… Especially since we were very well, in our forest, protected from the heat wave of the weekend (32°C on Sunday), surrounded by chanterelles and giant trees that were still waving like wheat ears in the wind. The curious thing is that, throughout the forest, the anthills were surrounded by a wooden barrier. We didn’t quite understand why, whether it was to protect the ants from the hikers or, on the contrary, the hikers from the ants…

Motivation… (26/08/2024)

And that morning we had to get back on the road. We still had about fifty kilometres to go to reach Poland, and a little more on the other side of the border to reach Augustów, the city of nine lakes, all linked by canals. To say that the landscapes are not really different on this side of the border would be an understatement. Fields, fields and… more fields…

What did surprise us, however, was how “western” everything here seemed. The first advertising panels we saw when crossing the border were Castorama and Leroy Merlin, and the two banks we passed by in Augustów were a BNP-Baribas and a Crédit Agricole. Needless to say, exoticism was somewhat affected by crossing the border, and so was our morale, because everything seemed to confirm this feeling that our journey was coming to an end and that the most interesting countries were already behind us…

After a few photos of Augustów and a coffee on a terrace, we settled down in the forest near the neighbouring town of Lipsk. Before starting work, we decided to take a short walk through the woods. The place is supposed to be a primeval forest, of which there are still some in Poland (and Belarus). A small reserve was even created around a monument in honour of the insurgents of the January 1863 revolt, when a small group of rebels rose up against Russian power, without much success…

And as we were strolling back towards Marvin, right on the dirt track, under some trees that made a sort of roof, we saw in the distance a large dark mass wagging its tail. It was hard to make out clearly against the backlight of the sun, but we thought it was probably a horse drinking from one of the puddles on the track. Except that as we got a little closer, the shape in question looked less and less like a horse, and more and more like something we never thought we’d see around here: a European bison!

After a moment of panic, thinking about what to do (it was in the middle of the track and there was no way to get around it), wondering if, like for a bear, we should run or climb a tree in case of attack, we finally opted to wave our arms and try to make some noise (not too much so as not to stress it) until it turned its head in our direction. It looked at us for a moment, seemed to wonder what ridiculous animal was waving its arms in the middle of a dirt track while making noise, and then took a few steps, without hurrying, to go back to the forest… Needless to say, after that, our motivation is back to 100%! If the rest of Poland is like this first encounter, we are going to spend a lot of time in the country! 🤣

Endangered species… (27/08/2024)

There are places that spark your imagination as soon as you mention their name. For any biologist, conservationist or naturalist, Białowieża is certainly one of those places. Whether it’s the evocation of one of the last (and by far the largest) old-growth forests in Europe or the story of the successful rescue of the European bison, brought back from extinction to a healthy and growing population, Białowieża is a mythical place, on par with the Galapagos Islands for an evolutionary biologist (or a Darwin enthusiast 🤓).

But let’s go back a little, as our journey today took us first to the village of Kruszyniany, which, together with its neighbour Bohoniki, are the last places where Tatars can still be found in Poland. The Tatars are an ethnic group whose origins date back to the 11th century and are descendants of the Mongol tribes who fought with Genghis Khan. A Turkic branch of the Tatars reached Europe, and if today Tatars are found in most Central Asian countries and even China, in Europe they are only a very small minority, mainly in Lithuania and Poland (where there are only less than 2.000 left). Initially animist, the Tatars of Turkic origin eventually became Muslim, which allowed the village of Kruszyniany to have a beautiful green wooden mosque, which, by the way, is one of the oldest buildings in Poland. Far from any prejudice, the Tatars and other inhabitants of Kruszyniany are an example for the rest of the world, as Muslims, Orthodox and Catholics live peacefully together in a village of less than 1.000 inhabitants. At the entrance to the village, there are even two crosses (one Catholic and one Orthodox), erected there as a sign of perfect cohesion… The Tatars of Poland (and of Europe) are, however, an endangered species, as their numbers continue to decrease. We can only hope that someone will still take care of the green mosque in Kruszyniany, once the last Tatar will have disappeared…

And from one endangered species to another, since we are in Białowieża, one of the last (and largest) old-growth forests in Europe, which extends over more than 140.000 ha between Poland and Belarus. It was here that the last European bison was hunted in 1921, leading to the species being classified as “Extinct in the wild”. A reintroduction programme was then launched with specimens from zoos and the European bison was reintroduced in the same place where the last specimens had been exterminated: in the Białowieża Forest. The results were so positive that in 1996 the IUCN revised the threat category of the species from “Extinct in the wild” to “Critically Endangered”, and then progressively to “Vulnerable” and up to “Near Threatened” today.

As for the Białowieża Forest, it is still considered to be a primeval forest, meaning a forest with no human activity or presence. In the case of Białowieża, this is considered to have been the case for 400 years (apart from, of course, the passage of some Russian, German or Polish soldiers at different times). Access to the forest is strictly prohibited, and only four or five paths (equipped with raised wooden walkways) have been made available so that the curious can see a primeval forest up close. After a walk of about ten kilometres, we did not see any bison, but we had the feeling of being in an almost entirely untouched place, where everything seems so peaceful that one could spend hours listening to the rustling of the leaves or observing the dozens of species of mushrooms growing on the moss-covered trunks, and this more than makes up for the absence of bisons. After all, we will have plenty of time tomorrow to try our luck with bisons again… 😉

Bison futé… (28/08/2024)

The goal of the day was to see some more bisons (after the one from the other day). Our initial idea was to enter the National Park and start looking there, but access to the Białowieża National Park is prohibited without a licensed guide, and only on a few well-defined trails. This seems quite logical, since otherwise the Białowieża Forest would quickly cease to be very primary… 🤔

But what the park doesn’t say is that most of the bisons are actually outside of the park! There are around 2.500 bisons in Poland, of which only 200 live inside the park. The maths are quickly done… And the others? They graze peacefully in the fields surrounding the few villages located outside the park or, as two days ago, they wander through another forest, 150 km away…

So we started the day with a “safari” through the fields surrounding the villages, and it probably wasn’t a bad idea as we ended up seeing four bisons and a deer!… Well, okay, okay… We’re not going to lie… To be sure of seeing bisons, we went to the recovery centre/animal park/zoo located not far from the village of Białowieża. The park is home to four bisons, as well as a few other species recovered here and there, such as the lynx Paula, which, after losing a leg, would have had a hard time surviving in the wild… A small exhibition also explains the differences between European and American bisons, as well as the evolution of the populations and of the forests that once covered Europe. Needless to say, there is a certain correlation between the expansion of agriculture (and therefore the disappearance of forests) and the drastic reduction of bison populations until their extinction at the beginning of the 20th century…

After that, we made a few last kilometres in the forest (the morning ride through the fields was true…), until we reached the nearby “big” town of Hajnówka, where we finally found a truck wash for Marvin to get some colors back (he needed it! 😁).

We then headed for Drohiczyn, a little further south, where we spent the night on the banks of the Bug River. On the way we made a “spiritual” pause on the sacred mount of Grabarka, a kind of hill of crosses like the one in Lithuania, but with two beautiful wooden churches, one of which literally covered with paintings of saints and virgins inside. The place is actually a convent, and is a bit like the Mecca of Orthodox pilgrims in Poland (or their Vatican, if you prefer)…

Everything would be perfect in the best of all possible worlds if temperatures did not reach record levels these days… We are above 30ºC and the temperature should still rise for two or three days, hence the orange alert from the national meteorological service. Fortunately, the nights are more or less cooler (17ºC on average), but if it continues like this, we will have to rush to the south of the country to regain some altitude in the Carpathian!…

The truth is out there… (29/08/2024)

Some places on the planet are not exactly exciting, aesthetically speaking. This is the case for most of the central states of the United States or Canada, for example, and it is also the case for Poland (virtually all of it)… 🤓 On the other hand, you cannot be the breadbasket of Europe and have forested or snowy landscapes… Today’s journey took us out of the slightly more forested part of the country towards… the Great Plains of Central Europe (which couldn’t have a better name). And apparently, until we reach the Carpathian, in the south, things won’t change much…

However, fields are not always as boring as we think. Our journey today took us to the small town of Emilcin, surrounded by all kinds of fields. And it turns out that it was precisely towards one of these fields that Jan Wolski (May 29, 1907 – January 8, 1990) was driving a horse-drawn cart in the early morning of 10 May 1978, when he said he was suddenly attacked by two “small humanoid entities with green faces” about 1.5 m tall. The two beings jumped into the cart and, according to Wolski, sat next to him and began speaking in a strange language. At first, he mistook them for foreigners because of their “slanted eyes and prominent cheekbones.” Wolski drove his cart, with the two beings on board, to a clearing where, he said, a large object was floating.

Wolski claims that he was then taken aboard the craft along with two other entities that he met near the flying object. He was then ordered to remove his clothes. There were about eight or ten benches around the craft, each about the size of a seated person. There were crows outside the door, which moved their legs and wings but seemed to be immobilized. Wolski claims that he was then examined with a tool that looked like two plates or “saucers”. After that, he was ordered to get dressed, and that was when he noticed that there were no lights or windows in the craft, only daylight coming in through the door of the craft. The entities ate and offered him something like ice cubes but he refused. He was then taken to the door. He turned and bowed to the entities, who politely bowed back. He exited the craft, after which the craft door closed, it levitated and flew away.

Wolski explained these memories in an interview conducted in July 1978, two months after the incident. The audio of the interview was kept in a private archive for a long time before being made public. In 2005, the Warsaw-based Nautilus Foundation installed a monument at the exact location of Wolski’s alleged abduction, as well as a time capsule that cannot be opened until the year 3011. The text on the monument, in Polish, reads: “On 10 May 1978 a UFO landed in Emilcin. The truth will surprise us in the future”.

Our journey today was certainly in the style of the X-Files series, as our initial goal was not the Wolski monument but the historic village of Kazimierz Dolny, not far from there. But when we got close to the village, we found ourselves in a Kafkaesque situation where all roads leading into or out of the village were forbidden to vehicles over 3,5T (including the one we had arrived on, which also had a weight limit but, apparently, only in one direction…). After a few kilometres of wandering around trying to find a solution to this problem, we finally decided to give up on the idea of ​​visiting Kazimierz Dolny and instead went to the UFO site. Maybe we were abducted by aliens too!… 😱

So, back to more earthly pursuits, we spent that night in the vineyards of the Sienkiewicz family, who produces about 700 bottles a year of a wine that, surprisingly, is not bad at all! And because the Sienkiewiczs are so friendly, they let us use a field, right at the end of a vineyard. What more could you ask for?

And for those of you who (unlike us) would be familiar with the name Sienkiewicz, yes, this is the family of the writer and literature Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz (the author of Quo Vadis)…

Hot and cold (30/08/2024)

A day between cold and hot today, as the heat wave continues. We reached 39°C on Marvin’s thermometer, with a felt temperature of 41.7°C, according to the road signs we passed. No need to say that the country is on alert, with public misting devices installed in all cities. It must be said that, although at night temperatures drop a little, during the day it is difficult to bear the sun…

We started the day in Lublin, the country’s beautiful ninth city, with its historic centre of cobbled streets and its cathedral where there is probably not a square centimetre left without a painted fresco on the wall or ceiling. The first impression, when entering, is quite… dazzling!

While in Lublin we took the opportunity to visit the former Nazi concentration camp of Majdanek, right next to the city. What can be said? Even in spite of the heat wave, the place is chilling… It is difficult to remain indifferent to the various wooden barracks where the prisoners were housed (mainly Jews, but not only…), the showers where they were washed and sorted upon arrival at the camp, the gassing room, right next door, where those who were not fit for work went directly, or the crematorium where some 78.000 people ended up (more than 150,000 prisoners passed through the camp)…

The most touching thing is certainly not seeing all these windowless barracks, the sinister gassing room with its triple-locked metal door, the autopsy room right next to the crematorium, where gold teeth and other prostheses of any value were removed before the bodies were burned, or barrack 42, filled from floor to ceiling with shoes from prisoners who died at Majdanek, but the few testimonies of survivors that the Polish authorities took care to record on video, so that all this would never be forgotten…

The place is chilling, and this heavy atmosphere was reinforced today by the extreme heat, which made even the crows remain grounded, silent, seeking the shade of the watchtowers or the smallest post of the double barbed wire fence. The camp is located in the middle of the city, with a large avenue next to it, but curiously there is a heavy silence, as if time had stopped here on a certain day in 1944, when they left the camp in a hurry, without even taking the time to destroy it (like many others) to cover their tracks…

The testimonies are obviously atrocious, like that of this grandmother who explains that one day the Germans began to broadcast waltzes and other military marches through the camp’s loudspeakers, to drown out the noise of the machine guns which, for 12 hours straight, eliminated 18.000 prisoners… The ray of hope in all this darkness, like an echo to the quote by George Santayana displayed in one of the barracks: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, is probably this young man of about twenty years old whom we crossed during our visit and who, apparently, had taken the initiative to come alone to visit the site…

Finally, we ended the day (and probably the week) in Zamość, a small and pretty fortified town, a few kilometers from the border with Ukraine and the city of Lviv, which the press has talked about a lot since the beginning of the war. Eighty years later, it seems that history is stuttering in Europe… 😔

Ludlin

Majdanek

Zamość

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In Lithuania, as in Poland, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.