(Wizzit Inflight Magazine, 2006)

If you need reasons not to leave Krakow, there are hundreds in the Old Town and Kazimierz alone before you even start on Wawel Castle – you can’t drink in all of them during your stay, of course, but the city’s legendary choice of bars isn’t exactly motivation to strike out past the suburbs.

Krakow’s hospitality institutions are also being joined by a new breed of property that prove especially hard to extract yourself from, irresistibly commodious and big on elegance. The new Hotel Stary on Szczepanska, for example, has the kind of design details that might make other five star hotels look like primitively fashioned barns – a new standard of luxury and sophistication that obviously reflects a city in its pomp.

If you can set down your expertly rendered vodka cocktail for just a few days, though, there’s a train of thought that sees Krakow as the gateway to a greater world of delights – the region of Malopolska.

“It’s little!”

“It’s minor!”

“It’s lesser!”

I witnessed some debate – albeit limited to two-word arguments - as to how best translate the name. Little Poland sounds about right, but without the blinkered connotations of Little England, instead describing the representative diversity of the region.

Whatever the diminutive term, it’s in the south of the country, cosying up to the Tatra mountains on the Slovakian border. Malopolska is a fair distillation of the Polish spirit, not least because of its fair, distilled Polish spirits, more about which I would discover later.

A morning at the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz may not seem like the ideal way to begin a regional tour, but if you ever need to inject some perspective into your life and confront some big emotions instead of complaining about house prices or late trains, then it’s a mandatory stop, and one which doesn’t require any elaboration.

Striking for different reasons, but also just beyond the outskirts of the city, the Wieliczka salt mine is a 900 year old wonder. 200 kilometres of passages house over 2,000 caverns in this spectacular labyrinth, and you can spend hours in wondrous reflection at the intricate sculptures, chapels and underground lakes that have been fashioned out of the crystalline rock face. Don’t leave Krakow without first taking these two essential day trips.

Heading south down the western fringe of the region, you quickly find yourself embroiled in what is perhaps the biggest ‘local boy done good’ story since Jesus progressed beyond rudimentary woodwork.

In the 1920s, Karol Józef Wojtyla was just another scabby-kneed urchin playing football around the streets of Wadowice. Fast forward 58 years and Pope John Paul II is on the way to becoming one of the biggest spiritual icons of our times. His home, a sleepy 10th-century town next to the Skawa river, has become a shrine to its favourite son.

In and around The Virgin Mary church and the museum of his family home, there are all manner of papal nicknacks, from books and cds to what were allegedly Pope John Paul II’s favourite local confectionary, should you need religious endorsement to try a cream cake.

You can immerse yourself in the life of the late Pope as much as you like, but even the most heathen visitor should drive up the winding road to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, a UNESCO-touted monastery where you can get a handle on the importance of Polish Catholicism and gawp at the Baroque architecture.

As the road leads south-eastwards, the elevations become more pronounced, and the landscape eventually gives way to the Pieniny National Park, vertiginous limestone cliffs sporting castles in various states of disrepair.

Slicing through the panorama is the Dunajec River. We spotted a startling number of men in matching embroidered waistcoats and ornate hats lounging around on the banks – not some kind of riverside Morris dancing convention but, it transpired, guides waiting to raft people down the spectacular gorge.

Punting along on ten-person wooden platforms, you’re surrounded in turn by bushy woodland, overhanging rock faces and eerie mist thick enough for you to intermittenty question your guide’s river knowledge.

The Dunajec forms part of the Poland-Slovakia border, and rival Slovakian rafting companies perform parallel trips. The guides shout across to each other as they pass, probably some friendly rafting banter. That or aggressive taunts, though it’s hard to be intimidated by men in embroidered waistcoats. Coming out 18km downstream, you’re firmly into Little Poland.

To venture into Malopolska is to discover the Polish (Goral) Highlander culture. The tourist experience of this is usually limited to watching fancy-costumed thigh slapping, but the Gorals are a proud people, and their cultural influence has stretched down from the Tatra mountains and looms large over the regional way of life.

This is no more apparent than in some of the roadside restaurants, where an authentic Highlander time can be had – music, folklore, food and drink in one handy primer.

Tucking into some steaming zurek sour soup, my guide Krzysztof began to tell me of the most famous highlander, Juraj Janosik. As far as I could make out, he was basically Robin Hood without the greenery obsession, getting up to all manner of romantically outlawed adventures around the end of the 17th century. Janosik now lends his mythical status to songs, costume and even a type of savoury pancake – one up on Sherwood’s finest, that’s for sure.

Highlander cuisine leans heavily on massive slabs of well-cooked meat, and our main course is delivered on wooden plates similar in size to the crafts we were rafting down the Dunajec on hours earlier. The feast is very hot, mostly as it is indisputably on fire. It’s the traditional manner which laughs in the face of health and safety regulations.

As the flames die and we carve into the hunks of carrion, a family string quartet starts up, dad leading his costumed brood in some Goralska classics. The music veers from toe-tapping jigs to haunting laments that sound like the singer’s family has just been wiped out in a freak agricultural accident.

If it’s not enough to bring a tear to your eye, though, then the after-dinner tipple is an absolute banker. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’m drinking prohibited moonshine strong enough to strip creosote, I insist on it being protected by the European Union. Luckily, this is the case with Sliwowica, a regional plum brandy that enjoys the curious status of being technically illegal to produce (the fact that every second house produces their own version hints at the lax enforcement policy) but protected from being produced elsewhere by European law.

This isn’t too much comfort when you’re gasping for the oxygen that the 70 percent hooch has just deprived you of, and the European Union might not assist you with your liver failure, but as with most ‘delicacies’ that you suspect only the tourists ever taste, it’s the tradition that matters. The band looked impressed that a foreigner had downed it without wretching up a kidney, and performed a local dance I assume is reserved for such occasions.

Some kind of restorative was in order, and thankfully the next day was a trip to the southern tip of Maolpolska, and the renowned health-giving mountain environs of Zakopane.

The highest city in Poland and ensconced in the rolling splendour of the Tatra Mountains, Zakopane was up until the mid 19th century no more than a sleepy hamlet, inhabited mainly by the bohemian writers and poets that had colonised the place, ostensibly to overindulge and sleep with each other’s wives.

That all changed with the discovery of vitality boosting springs, and before long, all manner of ailing chancers were arriving, and a thriving spa, and then skiing resort soon emerged. There’s a certain alpine vibrancy around the resort, which in the summer is a draw for hikers and climbers as opposed to the winter’s skiers and snowboarders.

The main street leads down to the base of the mountains, and buzzes with souvenir stands, food stalls selling the famous smoked goats cheese (Oscypek) and folk-themed tavernas. Reasonable facsimiles of Janosik perform cute outlaw stunts for the tourists’ coins.

The highest point, at the top of the slope of Gubalowka, is 1,220 metres above sea level. There’s nothing I like better than strenuous hiking, and I managed a great view of people doing just that as I sat in the funicular and motored up the slope.

From the walking trails along the top, you’re taken aback by the kind of knockout valley views that moved not just the first bohemian crowd, but many of Poland’s heavyweight thinkers and artists. It’s a place where the rebirth of a nation was dreamed up, an inspirational haven of patriotic zeal and national identity, albeit one that now has top class recreational facilities.

It feels like you can see back across the whole region from here, almost back to Krakow across the roof of the incredible wooden church at Sekowa, the curious painted village of Zalipie and the Renaissance castle at Pieskowa Skala.

The journey up to the roof of the country is well worth venturing out of Krakow for – that night, at one of Zakopane’s many lively bars, I even knocked back a celebratory Sliwowica in honour of the Highlanders. Call me a sentimental old goose, but I swear my gasps for sweet, sweet air this time were just a little less painful.

(Back to Arrivals)