Roadtrippin' during EURO 2012

When on the road for soccer tournament in the coming up European Championships try to get lost in the Subcarpathian Region. The narrower the street will get, the more it will disappear underneath the tires of your car, the more exciting the surroundings will get. You just need to pay attention to certain elements of the landscape that are typical for this very rural voivodeship of Poland.

First of all, the village churches are something unique. They are made out of wood and a few centuries old. You will find powerful colors on their inside, wonderful mix of international art and local folkloristic motifs in the sacral decoration. The special thing about them is that they are witnesses of the times before the World War II when a mix of religions and confessions coexisted in these villages: these churches have been used for orthodox, catholic and sometimes protestant services.

Another thing are traditional houses of a population of Lemki who used to live on this territory until the war. They most often fall apart nowadays but still very often they serve as home for the villagers. The houses are not anymore being used as they were designed though. The original purpose of a part of the building was the housing for animals. Today animals live in separate barns. Back then, there were numerous advantages to have animals within the house: specially for the warmth being produced and kept in the house in the winter.

Some other houses are designed in the tradition of Polish ethnic group Gorale like the one below. Many of them serve as hostels for tourists. In the middle of nowhere.

And some buildings are brand new and stylized in a retro way, sometimes using a Wild West romantisicm. In a way Subcarpathian Region is a Wild East of Poland. In the communist times Polish cinematography would use these landscapes to produce westerns.

You might easily all of a sudden, in the middle of the woods discover a very regularly designed cementary. During World War I there heve been very heavy fights taking place in this scenary of lower mountains. Sp the very symmetrical, regular cementaries are military monuments. For many years the cementaries remained forgotten and have fallen apart. Today, there are many volunteer groups from various Polish organizations who take care of them and restore them. Also there are groups from other countries, especially from Austria who frequently travel to these places and help to rebuild the memorial places.

You will of course find regular village cementaries next to the wooden churches - in better or worse shape.

The Supcarpathian Region is - as self evident as it sounds - a hilly landscape. It is a good place to go for a day walk - this can be managed also by people without any experience in hiking.

If you prefer big cities, you will be disappointed here. The towns, even the capitol of the region Rzeszow, are small. You will recognize however their splendid past by looking at the old centers of the towns. These territory has been ruled by powerful Polish magnates and / or played a very important role in the international trade. The following pictures show Biecz, a medieval trade city specialized on trading wine to the north, imported from the south. The Hungarian territory is only a stone's throw from here.

What most people do not know, here, in the little town Gorlice mineral oil has been for the first time recognized a source of energy and used for the first oil lamp. Check on Wikipedia the name of Ignacy Lukasiewicz. Why here? Because the oil resources are so close to the earth surface that it was very easy to get a hold of it. Even the rivers carried once in a while a layer of oil on the water table. Therefore, one of the rivers is called Ropa which means naphta or pus. Once having recognized the potential of the reservoirs, a very early industry of oil exploitation settled every where in this area. Nowadays, you can find single old cranes abandoned in a field or you just visit Bobrka - an open-air museum for early oil exploitation.

There are spots between the heels where some premodern people produce something premodern in a very premodern way: below you see tar ovens. There are men producing tar all day long, every day, they have dirty clothes and faces and you will be scared when you meet them - although they are friendly.

From dust to glamour: where a plenty of resources could have been found, there were industry magnates building their residencies. Here you go - a 19th century neo-rococo new-rich palace hidden and a bit abandoned on a suburb of a little town. 

Of course where medieval trade routes have been crossing the country, a number of castles had to watch over the boundaries of the Polish kingdom, safety of the tradesmen and the goods transported. Watch out for ruins of these fortresses.

And wherever you go, there will be farm life and farm animals...

These little sherifs will bark at you! Oh yes, they will!

And cows do wander around on their own. But nobody drives fast on these roads anyway.