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Poland
In Your Pocket
- Auschwitz
- Bydgoszcz
- Chorzow
- Danzig (auf Deutsch)
- EBPO 2012 Варшава
- EBPO 2012 Вроцлаве
- EURO 2012 Gdansk
- EURO 2012 Gdańsk (Croatian)
- EURO 2012 Krakow
- EURO 2012 Poznan
- EURO 2012 Warsaw
- EURO 2012 Wroclaw
- EURO 2012 Wroclaw (Czech)
- Eurocopa 2012 Gdansk
- Europameisterschaft 2012 Danzig
- Frombork
- Gdansk
- Gdynia
- Gdynia (auf Deutsch)
- Gliwice
- Kashubia
- Katowice
- Kornik
- Krakow
- Lodz
- Malbork
- Nowa Huta
- Ojców
- Poznan
- Sopot
- Tarnow
- Warsaw
- Wieliczka
- Wolf's Lair
- Wroclaw
- Zabrze
- Zakopane
- Zoppot (auf Deutsch)
- ЄВРО-2012 Βαρσοβία
- ЄВРО-2012 Βρότσλαβ
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Features
- Euro 2012 In Your Pocket
- Smoking
- Tipping Tribulations
- Not a Queue
- Polish Name Days (Imieniny)
- Wisława Szymborska
- EURO 2012
- The Drowning of Marzanna
- Błędowska Desert
- Hot Beer
- The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity
- Fat Thursday
- Three Kings
- National Anthem
- Stanisław Poniatowski
- Polish Friends of Beer Party
- Midsummer's Night
- Disaster in Smolensk
- Ryszard Kapuscinski
- Polish Alcohol
- Wolf's Lair
- Kazimierz Pułaski
- Marek Kamiński
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Teodor Talowski
- Jan Karski
- Czesław Miłosz
- Magdalena Abakanowicz
- Edward Gierek
- Blofeld
- Wojtek the bear
- Superstitions
- Enigma
- Irena Sendler
- General Wojciech Jaruzelski
- Krzysztof Komeda
- Białowieża National Park
- The Syrenka
- The Maluch
- Ignacy Jan Paderewski
- Daniel Libeskind
- Fryderyk Chopin
- Witkacy
- Władsyław Szpilman
- Krzysztof Kieślowski
- Andrzej Wajda
- Izabella Scorupco
- Zbigniew Cybulski
- Eugeniusz Bodo
- Roman Polański
- Stanisław Wyspiański
- Leon Schiller
- Max Berg
- Charles Proteus Steinmetz
- Tadeusz Kościuszko
- Max Factor
- Rubinstein
- Jerzy Kosiński
- Marek Grechuta
- Polish Food
- Recommended reading
- National Football
- Grzane piwo/wino
- Poles you should know
- Discover Poland
- True crime
- National Holidays
- Euro 2012: The Draw
- John Paul II
- Solidarity
- Lech Wałęsa
- Creepy Poland
- The Pianist
- The Polish Dwarf
- Staypoland Hotel Reservation
More features:
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True crime
Four years after he published a gruesome bestseller filled with sex and violence, author Krystian Bala found himself jailed for 25 years, guilty of orchestrating a murder almost identical to the one he described in his book, Amok.... -
Superstitions
While it would be inaccurate to claim the Poles as being a deeply superstitious nation visitors will be delighted to know the country has more than its fair share of quirky beliefs and customs.... -
Jan Karski
‘Every government and church says, “We tried to help the Jews,” because they are ashamed, they want to keep their reputations.... -
Izabella Scorupco
You wouldn’t expect to catch James Bond playing hide the sausage with a bearded woman, so it should come as a bit of a bombshell that Izabella Scorupco (his squeeze in Goldeneye) was exactly that – albeit for a role in some nonsense Scando art house flick.... -
Recommended reading
Orange AlternativeRevolution of Dwarves,Major Waldemar Fydrych & Bronisław Misztal, 2007A cracking addition to any coffee table this hefty manuscript comes stuffed with all the trivia you ever needed to know about the Orange Alternative.... -
Tadeusz Kościuszko
History produces few men like Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746-1817, commonly anglicised as Thaddeus Kosciusko).... -
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
Born Carl August Rudolph Steinmetz in what was then Breslau on April 9, 1865, Charles Proteus Steinmetz was a 1.... -
National Anthem
Whether you call it “Poland is Not Yet Lost,” “Song of the Polish Legions of Italy” or “Dąbrowski’s Mazurka,” they all describe the same thing: Poland’s national anthem.... -
Zbigniew Cybulski
Referred too as the Polish James Dean Zbigniew ‘Zbyszek’ Cybulski personified the confusion and longings of Poland’s post-war youth.... -
Teodor Talowski
Disregarding the famous cathedrals, castle, medieval market square and university, one could still spend years of their life wide-eyed wandering the side streets of Kraków, tripping on cobbles, taking in every architectural detail, every subtle flourish on every facade.... -
Roman Polański
Born in Paris, 1933, to Polish parents, Roman Polanski and his family returned to Kraków, Poland two years before the outbreak of war.... -
Władsyław Szpilman
Born in 1911, in Sosnowiec, south Poland, Wladyslaw Szpilman studied the piano in Berlin, before embarking on a successful career as a composer and concert pianist for Polish national radio.... -
Polish Friends of Beer Party
Sure, it started out as a joke: In 1990 satirist Janusz Rewinski formed the Polish Friends of Beer Party (Polska Partia Przyjaciol Piwa or PPPP in Polish) to promote the country’s second most beloved beverage during the new shift in government.... -
Marek Kamiński
Born in Gdańsk on March 24, 1964, Marek Kamiński ranks as Poland’s greatest living explorer, and in 1995 became the first person in the world to reach both Poles unaided in the same year....
Witkacy
Eccentric, flamboyant and tragic, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz - remembered as ‘Witkacy’ (1885-1939) – was one of Poland’s premier avant-garde icons. A prolific playwright, painter and photographer, the Warsaw-born weirdo was at the forefront of Polish abstract art. The mysterious suicide of his fiancee in 1914 (whom he was accused of butchering) compelled him to seek solace in Australasia where he became involved in scientific expeditions. On hearing of the outbreak of war he returned to fight for an elite Tsarist unit. Serving with distinction against the Germans he was wounded, and returned to Poland to continue his descent into the depression that was to dominate his life. Plunging into heavy spells of morphine, cocaine and peyote abuse, his paintings became all the more inspired. Twisted portraits of his high-society friends (heads springing from penises, beastly animal shapes flying in the background) became his trademark. He experimented with all forms of modern art, started his own theatre company in Zakopane - the town of his youth - and expanded on his philosophical theories.
A rabid anti-communist, Witkacy was hell-bent on proving that an individual's aims would always differ from that of society and state. When the Red Army marched into Poland on October 17, 1939, sensing the end of civilisation, he shot himself. Originally buried in a far-flung corner of the Ukraine, Witkacy’s body was returned to Zakopane in 1988. But in a scene that wouldn’t have been amiss in one of his satires, it eventually emerged that bungling officials had buried the wrong corpse – the subject at the centre of the excellent Polish film ‘Mystyfikacja’ (available with English subtitles). Today a large collection of Witkacy's warped paintings can be seen on the top floor of Kraków's National Museum (H-3, Al. 3 Maja 1).
A rabid anti-communist, Witkacy was hell-bent on proving that an individual's aims would always differ from that of society and state. When the Red Army marched into Poland on October 17, 1939, sensing the end of civilisation, he shot himself. Originally buried in a far-flung corner of the Ukraine, Witkacy’s body was returned to Zakopane in 1988. But in a scene that wouldn’t have been amiss in one of his satires, it eventually emerged that bungling officials had buried the wrong corpse – the subject at the centre of the excellent Polish film ‘Mystyfikacja’ (available with English subtitles). Today a large collection of Witkacy's warped paintings can be seen on the top floor of Kraków's National Museum (H-3, Al. 3 Maja 1).