Poland – Warmia-Mazuria, Podlaskie (Olsztyn, Białystok) August 9- ,2019
I entered this area of Poland in the far north east of the country from Lithuania.
Like all Schengen countries, this is an invisible border with only a sign.
Just before the border, I picked a young couple hitchhiking. I really like picking up hitchhikers but see them rarely. The last was over 3 months ago in Romania. I prefer backpackers as they can usually speak English. I would unlikely give a ride to someone who did not speak English. As soon as I saw them at the intersection of the road leading to Poland, I wanted to pick them up as the man was a traveling German carpenter. They dress in a very unusual way and are immediately recognizable. Wanda was from Cologne, a pediatric nurse who had recently quit her job and was interesting in taking time off and possibly doing some environmental activism, somewhere with no definite plan. They had known each other for about a year and as he travels all the time, she joined up with him in Lithuania. Leander had been working in his trade in Norway and Sweden. Both wanted to go to the World Heritage Site, Białowieża Forest, an ancient forest in eastern Poland famous for remaining original for centuries. With no specific plan for Poland yet, I decided to go there too so we agreed to travel together for the 2 days to get there.
I have seen, and talked to these “traveling carpenters” twice before. I forget the first time but believe it was in Mexico. The last time was in about 2016 in my home town of Courtenay, British Columbia.
TRAVELING CARPENTERS (Wanderschaft)
This is an 800-year-old tradition in Germany. Finish your three-year carpenter training (German students are streamed to a group that finishes grade 12 aiming to go to university or after grade 10 to enter a trade) and hit the road working as a carpenter wherever you want throughout the world. There are about 6-700 traveling carpenters out there at any one time. Most come from Germany but a few from Switzerland and Austria. For the past 200 or so years, they have been an organized group with several rules of behaviour.
• They must dress all the time in the traditional clothing of a traveling carpenter: a black top hat, white shirt that is long sleeved and buttoned up, black vest, black heavy cotton (German leather) bell-bottomed (usually 60-80cms around and made this way to keep saw dust out of shoes) trousers with a 2-zipper flap fly and a specific courduroy heavy jacket, and white buttons on the vest and jacket. The “costume” sticks out as it so unusual. Once they have decided to live this way, they purchase the clothes privately or have them hand-made. They have a second set of traditional clothes with them that they work in that is a little simpler. They also have “chill out clothes”, more common dress but only use that when staying with relatives and not working.
• Their only luggage is what they can carry on their back and must be the traditional cloth wrap with attached shoulder straps. They must be able to wash it so that eliminates any commercial packs. They all have a sleeping bag and pad, sometimes a tent (but usually not as they are too bulky and weigh too much), but often have a tarp that allows them to camp out.
• They must commit to at least three years, but can continue as long as they want. Most find 3 years long enough and then become a traditional carpenter.
• To become a traveling carpenter, after finishing formal training as a carpenter, one only has to find someone presently working as a traveling carpenter who agrees to mentor you for three months to teach the rules, how to hitchhike and deal with the accommodation issues. They also learn the polite demeanour demanded by the profession.
• They cannot work or go within a 50km radius of their home town for the duration. If they want to see their parents, relatives or friends, those have to travel outside the 50km radius to meet them. This forces them to be traveling all the time. It helps to have relatives outside this distance who may serve as a home base.
• They can’t work at any one job for longer than 3 months.
• They can’t pay for travel or accommodation for the duration – they must work in trade for both.
Travel is almost always by hitch-hiking as it is not permitted to use commercial or public transportation that has a price.
Accommodation. Most commonly they are supplied room and board at the job they are working at. When not working and traveling, they camp, stay at fire halls, ask locals if they can sleep on their couch, sleep in bus or train stations or anywhere they can find that is free.
• Remuneration. They usually receive money for their work in addition to room and board. With this, when not working, they purchase their own food at stores and cook or occasionally eat in restaurants. They also use it to buy new clothes when their present set wears out.
Suwalki. This is a city in northeastern Poland with a population of 69,210 (2011). It is the capital of Suwałki County and one of the most important centers of commerce in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Suwałki is the largest city and the capital of the historical Suwałki Region. Suwałki is located about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the southwestern Lithuanian border and gives its name to the Polish protected area known as Suwałki Landscape Park. The Czarna Hańcza river flows through the city.
The Augustów Canal (Kanal Augustowski), a tentative WHS (20/03/2006). This is a cross border canal built in the 19th century in the present day Podiaskie Volvodeship of northeastern Poland and the Grodno Region of north-western Belarus. Built from 1823-39, it was 101.2kms long and had 18 locks and 22 sluices starting in Debowo, Poland and ending on the Neman River near Sapotskin, Belarus where it connects to the Bystry Canal.
It was the first summit level canal in Central Europe to provide a direct link between two major rivers, Vistula River through the Biebrza River (a tributary of the Narew River, and the Neman River through its tributary, the Czarna Hancza River thus providing a link with the Black Sea to the south through the Oginski Canal, Daugava River, Berezina Canal and Dniepr River. It uses a post-glacial channel depression, forming the Augustow lakes and the river valleys of the above rivers, making it possible to perfectly integrate the canal with the surrounding elements of the natural environment.
The reasons for construction were both political and economic. In 1821, Prussia introduced repressively high customs duties for transit of Polish and Lithuanian goods through its territories, which practically blocked the access of the Polish traders to the Baltic Sea through the Vistula River and the Prussian seaport of Danzig (Gdansk). The canal bypassed Prussian territory linking the center of Poland with the Baltic seaport of Ventspils. The canal was used for the transport of flour, salt, grain, chalk and gypsum. A large port was built at Augustow allowing for vessels up to 40m long and 5m wide, it was described as a technological marvel with
The completed part remained an inland waterway used for commercial shipping and to transport wood to and from the Vistula and Neman Rivers until rendered obsolete by the regional railway network. The final section to connect to Ventspils did not occur.
After the St Petersburg – Warsaw railway was built, it declined and from 1852, it floated only forest products and then was closed in the mid 1860s.
In WWI it was damaged but rebuilt and between the world wars, became a tourist attraction with sporting routes for canoes, sailors and boaters. In WW II, three locks, 12 bridges and eight weirs were demolished. The Belarusian section was not repaired but the Polish section from the border has been restored for tourists and water management.
The canal connects 7 natural moraine-damned lakes and 11 rivers, each connected by locks and weirs, towpaths and roads, bridges and buildings. A water reserve feeding the canal is provided from outside.
It was listed as a tentative WHS in 2004 and is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland.
BIALYSTOK
It is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Białystok is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area.
Białystok is located in the Białystok Uplands of the Podlaskie Plain on the banks of the Biała River. It has historically attracted migrants from elsewhere in Poland and beyond, particularly from Central and Eastern Europe. This is facilitated by the nearby border with Belarus also being the eastern border of the European Union, as well as the Schengen Area. The city has a warm summer continental climate, characterized by warm summers and long frosty winters. Forests are an important part of Białystok’s character, and occupy around 1,756 ha (4,340 acres) (17.2% of the administrative area of the city) which places it as the fifth-most forested city in Poland.
The first settlers arrived in the 14th century. A town grew up and received its municipal charter in 1692. Białystok has traditionally been one of the leading centers of academic, cultural, and artistic life in Podlachia and the most important economic center in northeastern Poland. Białystok was once an important center for light industry, which was the reason for the substantial growth of the city’s population. The city continues to reshape itself into a modern metropolis.
Branicki Palace. It was developed on the site of an earlier building in the first half of the 18th century by Jan Klemens Branicki, a wealthy Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth hetman, into a residence suitable for a man whose ambition was to become king of Poland. The palace complex with gardens, pavilions, sculptures, outbuildings and other structures and the city with churches, city hall and monastery, all built almost at the same time according to French models was the reason why the city was known in the 18th century as Versailles de la Pologne (Versailles of Poland) and subsequently Versailles de la Podlachie(Versailles of Podlasie).
This is a large yellow/white trim palace fronted by large gardens and fountains. It has two copper domes. 
St. Roch’s Church. Built between 1927-1946 in a modernistic style, designed by renowned Polish architect, professor Oskar Sosnowski. Its official name is Church – Monument of Poland’s Regained Independence and it stands on the Saint Roch hill on Lipowa Street in Bialystok, in the spot where a Roman Catholic cemetery, founded in 1839, once stood. The cemetery was profaned by the Russians during the January Uprising.
The church is planned as an octahedron, with three masses set on one another. The first mass makes the main part of the complex, the additional two are located on the sides, making the attics. Originally, the church was commemorated to Mary, symbolized with a star, therefore Sosnowski used stars in his design, especially in elements of the vault. During the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland during World War II (September 1939 – June 1941), Soviet authorities planned to open a circus in the unfinished building.
The church has an impressive, 83-meter tower. On the top, there is a 3-meter figure of Mary, which stands on a Piast-style crown. The vaults resemble traditional vaults found in houses of northeastern part of Poland. Near the church there is a rectory, also designed by Sosnowski. The whole complex is surrounded by walls, in reference to the tradition of fortified churches, common in eastern Poland.
This is a huge new church, white with an interesting geometric design on the façade. Inside the nave is octagonal under a large stained glass skylight (the sun with a central eagle). The stained glass is frosted geometrics. The apse has grand stucco carvings. The Ways of the Cross, confessionals, two large side chapels and pulpit are nice carved wood bas-reliefs.
BIALOWIEZA FOREST
This is one of the last and largest remaining parts of the immense primeval forest that once stretched across the European Plain. The forest is home to 800 European bison, Europe’s heaviest land animal. UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme designated the Polish Biosphere Reserve Białowieża in 1976 and the Belarusian Biosphere Reserve Belovezhskaya Puschcha in 1993. In 2015, the Belarusian Biosphere Reserve occupied the area of 216,200 ha (2,162 km2; 835 sq mi), subdivided into transition, buffer and core zones. The forest has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an EU Natura 2000 Special Area of Conservation. The World Heritage Committee by its decision of June 2014 approved the extension of the UNESCO World Heritage site “Belovezhskaya Pushcha/Białowieża Forest, Belarus, Poland”, which became “Białowieża Forest, Belarus, Poland”. It straddles the border between Poland (Podlaskie Voivodeship) and Belarus (Brest and Grodno voblasts), and is 70 kilometres (43 miles) north of Brest, Belarus and 62 kilometres (39 miles) southeast of Białystok, Poland.
The Białowieża Forest World Heritage site covers a total area of 141,885 ha (1,418.85 km2; 547.82 sq mi). Since the border between the two countries runs through the forest, there is a border crossing available for hikers and cyclists.
The Strict Reserve of Bialowieza National Park can only be visited with a licensed guide available at the small kiosk at the entrance to the small reserve in the town of Bialowieza. PLN 6
Some of the tours offered are:
Face to Face with the Bison – For up to 6 people, it starts 1-1.5 hours before dawn and takes 6 hours visiting the forest but not entering the Strict Reserve. Requires own car. PLN 600
Bialowieza Forest by Night – Using night-vision binoculars, start 1 hour before sunset, takes 4 hours, for up to 4 people, visiting the forest but not entering the Strict Reserve. Requires own car. PLN 660
Bialowieza Forest at Twilight – Starts 3 hours before sunset, takes 4 hours, for up to 6 people, visits the forest but not the Strict Reserve. Requires own car. PLN 440
Onithological Morning in Bialowieza Forest – Doesn’t enter the Strict Reserve. Requires own car and binoculars. PLN 550
The Oldest Part of the Primeval Forest – Ornithological Morning in the Strict Reserve. Best in spring, starts at sunrise, for up to 8 people and takes 4 hours. Requires own binoculars. PLN 440
The Oldest Part of the Primeval Forest – The Route to the Jagiello Oak – The tree was destroyed in a windstorm in 1974. 4 hours. PLN 330 + 9 for the entrance ticket.
The Oldest Part of the Primeval Forest – Walk to the Heart of the Forest – 6 hours, for 6 people and requires special entrance approval. PLN 660 + 35 for the entrance ticket.
GO TO Poland – Mazovia (Warsaw, Radom) and Łódź
NOMAD MANIA Poland – Warmia-Mazuria, Podlaskie (Olsztyn, Białystok)
World Heritage Sites: Białowieża Forest
Tentative WHS: The Augustów Canal (Kanal Augustowski) (20/03/2006)
Sights: Masurian Lake District
Borders
Belarus-Poland
Lithuania-Poland
Poland (sea border/port)
Poland-Russia
XL
Islands on Śniardwy Lake
Wislany bay area
Villages and Small Towns
Reszel
Tykocin
Castles, Palaces, Forts
Frombork: Frombork Castle
Lidzbark Warmiński: Lidzbark Warmiński Castle
World of Nature
Białowieża Forest
Biebrza
Festivals: Juwenalia
Zoos: Kadzidlowo Wild Animal Park
Windmills: Stara Różanka: Stara Różanka Windmill (town marked)
European Cities
SUWALKI
BIALYSTOK
Museums
Army Museum
Podlasie Museum
Castles, Palaces, Forts: Branicki Palace
Religious Temples: Białystok: St. Roch’s Church
ELBLAG
Railway, Metro, Funiculars, Cable Cars: Elbląg Trams
Museums: Museum of Archeology and History
OLSZTYN
Airports: Olsztyn Mazury (SZY)
Railway, Metro, Funiculars, Cable Cars: Olsztyn Trams
Museums: Museum of Warmia i Mazur
xOpen-Air Museums: Olsztynek: Folk Architecture Museum