We are super excited for this next chapter in our lives that will, unfortunately, mean moving far, far away from Warsaw as well as fitting the contents of our apartment into two 23kg suitcases. But hey, that's life.
This weekend we visited Bialystok, my family's whereabouts. We have visited a number of times before, but this time my Uncle and Aunt had a surprise excursion for us! We drove the 100 or so km to Bialowieza National Park, the last remaining part of the Medieval Forest that used to cover the European Plains. Apparently, the most strictly reserved area has not been interfered by humans for over 800 years!
Though we didn't enter the restricted area of the park, we did get an amazing view of the forest driving up. It's still early spring, but was green at every level of the forest, on the ground, creeping up the trunks, and finally starting to bud at the canopies. If you looked closer, you would notice that there were little white specks on the green forest floor. These were little snowbells which literally carpeted sections of the forest.
We visited the animal reserve, which is something of a beautiful petting zoo (but definitely no petting allowed). Here we saw the rare European Bison, which was almost extinct and is now under protection and exists in the wild only in the Bialowieza Forest. Fact of the day: it is the heaviest land animal in Europe. In addition to this beast, we saw moose, some wild cats, a lone wolf, and B's favourite: wild boars. They looked so funny digging their snouts in the ground!
After that we drove into the town of Bialowieza where we walked through a park that used to be part of the Tsar's hunting cottage property. Now you'll find an awesome museum highlighting the unique features of Bialowieza and the importance of good environmental stewardship.
I was surprised by the number of eco-tourists I saw, with huge cameras, nordic walking poles, and binoculars. There was a lot of English being spoken, which made me really happy. Not just because I like hearing English, but because it confirmed by hope that this place was special for a wider audience than just the Poles.
We worked up quite an appetite with the walking (and driving) so we had dinner at a little place on the main road. It was actually booming and they had to turn hopeful visitors out because there was no room. Once again, about half of the restaurant was full of non-Polish speakers who seemed to be enjoying their game pierogi and beers. We were all happy with our orders although (or perhaps because) none of us ordered some of the more…interesting menu items:
Bisouxx,
B[ZU]
p.s. Check out some of the candid and less candid shots with my Polish family as well ;)