Poland 2017, part 9 (Bialowieza)
My next destination was the village of Bialowieza next to the National Park of the same name. But, one had to get there. First I took a local train to get to Bialystok and there I transferred to a coach. This day, too, was intended for travelling with minimal sightseeing.
Although the travelling bit was quite long, it was not boring. From the train I could enjoy in fantastic scenery: more beautiful nature, seemingly endless grain fields, meadows crisscrossed by streams, forests with dominant high pines and birches, rolling terrain, as well as storks and lakes... The railroad passes through the lake district, but to the north and the north-east of Mikolajki.
In the train I met a lovely, young student of percussions at the Music Academy in Poznan. We chatted nicely and she eventually invited me to come again to Bialystok in September, since she would have a concert then. Needless to say, I could not return to Poland so quickly, but I did appreciate the invitation. When we reached Bialystok, she also showed me how to get to the “coach terminal.” Namely, the real one was in the middle of thorough reconstruction, so I had to catch my ride at a different place.
After a couple of hours I arrived in Bialowieza and there I had booked a nice and comfortable boarding house, but it was at the very end of the village. So much at the end, that I eventually remained the only passenger on the coach. The driver asked me about the address (the boarding house belonged to the main street) and then he started to drive extremely slowly looking at the numbers of the houses in order to leave me right where it would be ideal. In other words, it was as if I had a private coach. It was fun.
Although the boarding house was a little too far from the centre, it was good that its owner spoke excellent English and was exceptionally forthcoming and helpful. Thanks to him, right after my arrival I managed to book a place for the tour visiting the strictly protected parts of the forest with a group that had an English speaking guide. Since a heavy burden was lifted off, I went on foot to the “centre” of the village in order to see where exactly I was to come the next morning and that was near the tourist office that is located on the edge of a large park.
I also took the opportunity to eat something. I was not very hungry and opted for dumplings with game meat. It was interesting that in addition to venison, they also had a couple of dishes with bison meat. In one of the versions of my plan for the day after, I thought of going for a serious meal and I have to say that it did occur to me to try bison meat, but somehow I found it a little too morbid – here I was, coming here to see them as a rare and protected species, and I’m thinking of eating them! The following day, though, the guide explained to us that bisons are not hunted in the strictly protected area, but that they certainly roam around other parts of the forest which do not enjoy the same level of protection and that there is even legally permitted hunting, as well as purchase of the meat by authorized companies. On the other hand, the following day I was too busy visiting to be bothered with food and, in my opinion, waste precious time at some restaurant waiting for food to be served to me when there was so much to be seen.
That evening I walked around the park for a while, enjoying the experience, and then I slowly returned to the boarding house in order to have a good rest.
Still, before going to bed, while I was sitting on the terrace in front of the boarding house, enjoying the fabulous evening, I heard some sound coming from “above.” I looked up and there I saw a stork that was, like me, getting ready for the night’s sleep.
To start with, in the morning I walked over to the centre and first made a round in the Palace Park. Namely, in the 19th century the Bialowieza forest was the hunting ground of the Russian tsars and there was an imperial palace here, as well as a number of other structures (the palace was destroyed by Germans in 1944 during their retreat). Little has survived and what has survived yearns to be renovated, although it still appears beautiful. That large park around the former palace also has a couple of ponds and there is a small river, too. Even just a walk in this part is enough for one to enjoy nice scenery.
When the group gathered, we first passed through the Palace Park and then reached a large clearing that separates the park and the Bialowieza National Park.
When one reaches the entrance into the National Park, there is a check point there to see whether all who want to enter the forest are a part of a group. Namely, it is not allowed to go for individual visits, because in this way it is possible to control the number of visitors, the routes which they take, as well as the behaviour. The Bialowieza forest is the largest natural forest in Europe and it constitutes an example of what forests in this part of the continent used to look like in the distant past. The forest is divided between Poland and Belarus, and the largest part actually belongs to Belarus (both sections are in the UNESCO’s World Heritage List). If I had stayed a day or two longer, I would have certainly hopped over to Belarus, since there is a border crossing just a few kilometres away from Bialowieza.
And what can I say now? In order to enjoy, you really have to love trees, for that is basically all you can see here. Also an insect or two, or a bird that usually quickly flies away. What characterizes this strictly protected area is that only a very small portion of the National Park is accessible to tourists and only in the company of a guide. It is prohibited to get off the trails. Visits to the rest of the forest are allowed only for scientific and research purposes. Another specificity of the area is that human interventions are brought down to an absolute minimum. It means that frees are left to their own devices. They sprout, grow, live and then die, coming down thus providing space for the growth of other trees, while the dead one decompose and in this way provide nutrients for the new generations of flora and fauna.
There we saw: oaks, linden trees, elms, hornbeams, spruces, etc. The biggest deciduous trees are elms that may grow up to 46 m, while oaks grow to around 44 m. It is interesting that oaks in these dense forests have quite a different shape from those growing where there is more space. Namely, those here are not broad and they grow more upwards for they have to fight their way to the sunlight, which makes their trunk tall and straight, and only towards the top there are branches and the treetop. But, the tallest trees are confers – Norway spruce – which may reach the height of around 50 m.
Within the forest, there are also a few broader paths/dirt roads that have remained from the times when the Russian Tsar used to hunt here when they served to facilitate transportation of the kill. The animals hunted were not only bisons, but also red deer and roe deer. Those paths continue to be maintained even today in order for the authorized personnel to have easier access to the farther sections of the forest.
Still, we did not see any bison in the forest. In order to see possibly them in the nature, one needs either to get up at the crack of dawn or to go for a night tour when special binoculars are used, but neither guarantees that the animals are indeed going to be seen.
I did not bother about this, since I had already planned to go to the European Bison Reservation which is some 3-4 km away from the village. For the purpose I rented a bike again and although this was not as bad as the one at the Masurian lakes, I still had to work extra hard in the beginning until I had grasped the details. Oh, how I missed by bike from Belgrade! Generally speaking, a significant number of tourists here travel by bicycles and there are also a lot of those who put their two-wheelers on their four-wheelers and travel that way. So, I rented a bike (there are several places for that in the very centre of Bialowieza) and I soon reached the reservation.
The European Bison Reservation is in fact a spacious zoo with several fenced-off sections in which bisons and deer spend their days in peace. The whole point with the European bison is that it is the largest mammal which inhabits Europe. It always mostly lived in this part of the continent, but because of the hunting it was brought to the brink of extinction. Then in 1929, they brought here a few of these animals from European zoos and then they started with a slow recovery of the species. The first bisons were returned to the Bialowieza Forest in 1952 and nowadays it is estimated that a total of around 750 live in the forest (both in the Polish and the Belorussian sections) and this is the only place in the world where they live in nature. As I’ve mentioned, there are also those that live in the surrounding forests, but they do not enjoy the same degree of protection. The people leading this project want to expand the borders of the National Park and consequently of the protection, but politicians (Hmm, it’s them again! I knew they would appear sooner or later, but interestingly enough always in a negative context), both local and national, see serious business in logging and therefore it seems that the destiny of the European bison is somehow sliding down the list of priorities.
I walked around for a while, visiting a few places where bisons mostly grazed peacefully and then I returned to the centre of the village.
Since I still had the time, I returned the bike and decided to walk to a trail for which our guide told us that internally people working there think that not visiting that trail would be the same “as if you went to Egypt without seeing the pyramids.” So, I went to the trail that leads through the forest and it was nice, but I have nothing else to report. It is probably necessary that you REALLY know your trees in order to appreciate fully what is around you. On the other hand, it is also possible to reach the European Bison Reservation following this trail (I rode my bicycle on the main road, as I was not sure how good the bike was for this type of ground).
What I found interesting along this road between the village and the Zebra zubra trail was that there is an Open-Air Museum of wooden houses. The sign above the entrance was in Cyrillic and the museum shows how Ruthenians, an old Slavic people, used to live. I did not have the time to visit the museum, but it was really nice seeing these picturesque structures.
And talking about picturesque houses made of wood, let me mention those that in different versions may be seen in quite a number of locations.
Those that have colourful shutters and ornaments that go along the edge of the roof stand out in particular. They seem like proper houses from fairy-tales. But, let me be clear, not from a fairy-tale like Hansel and Gretel. Namely, this particular fairy-tale was recorded by Brothers Grimm and therefore the mean old hag, i.e., the witch from the fairy-tale was a German and Germans have always been financially better off than their neighbours to the east, so they could afford making houses out of sweets. Those poor eastern neighbours had to be inventive and build cute houses which by their imaginative appearance could possibly attract children and all those who in fairy-tales need to go in.
There are such picturesque houses in Bialowieza as well, but perhaps there they are mostly a part of the touristic decoration. In the village of Trzescianka, between Bialystok and Bialowieza, houses like this may be seen in a much higher concentration and they appear more authentic, and there is also an exceptionally picturesque church with wood coating painted in bright green, with white details and golden domes.
Returning to the village from my walk, I followed the bank of the small river Narewka passing along the edge of the Palace park and enjoyed the scenery.
And then I finished this wonderful day in the best possible manner – relaxing in the company of a local beer. By the way, zubr means bison.
The following day it started to rain again, but I was going back home to the embrace of 40 degrees Celsius, so I was not too upset, although I couldn’t help thinking how lucky I was – how significantly worse my previous day in Bialowieza would have been if it had rained then.
During this journey I walked a lot, visited museums, castles and palaces, made gingerbread, listened to a piano concert in the open and a pipe organ concert in a cathedral, walked along sand beaches and a kind of a desert, visited two countries, ate, drank, remembered WWII and the height of the power of Teutonic knights, visited two national parks and four properties from the UNESCO’s World Heritage List, rode bicycle through wonderful landscapes of a lake district, walked through primordial forest and watched European bisons... and all of this is easily possible and feasible within two weeks that I spend in fantastic Poland (with a brief visit to a small part of the great Russia).
Approximate route of my travel around Poland and Russia