Refried Neurons

Last Thursday, I was catching up with one of my girlfriends who lives in Poland’s Tatra Mountains. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year. Out of sheer curiosity, I checked flights to the nearest airport for the upcoming week. Funnily enough, it’s a route I’d never used before, but seeing a ticket for £40 combined with a blissfully empty work schedule made the decision for me.
Just like that, I found myself dragging my ass out of bed at a silly hour on Tuesday morning. I’d had a terrible night’s sleep, complete with a spiking fever, all to catch a 6:00 AM flight. Naturally, my Uber to the airport cost more than the return flights. 😆 I spent the entire ride chatting with the driver. I’m not exactly a social butterfly at 4:00 AM, but after finding out he was just finishing a grueling night shift, I figured keeping him awake was the least I could do.

A Tiny Airport with Grand Views

Once I arrived, the board showed that the flight to Poprad-Tatry was on time, always a welcome sight. At the gate, I found myself surrounded by Slovakian Roma. It suddenly clicked that this side of the Tatra Mountains is home to many settlements of this minority. The last time we drove through that area, we passed villages filled with horse carriages and carpets drying right on the tarmac. It made me wonder: do all travelers have a universal love for horses?
Either way, Poprad-Tatry is officially the smallest airport I have ever stepped foot in. This means one of two things: it is either genuinely bloody tiny, or I am simply too poor to fly into exclusive airports (no private jet in my collection just yet). But the view from the tarmac? Oh dear, it is an absolute treat if the skies are clear. I would book the flight again just to peek through the window. Pro tip: when landing, sit on the left; when taking off, sit on the right.

Welcome to Podhale: Where Rules are Merely Suggestions

Every time I visit Podhale, the southern region of Poland, I am left in absolute awe, though not always for the right reasons.
The mountains are the obvious draw, but despite my love for hiking, I think I’ve only done two actual trails here in my life. I come here for gossip and girls’ time. We had grand plans for a massive hike, but life did its thing, my mate got sick, and we ended up settling for a casual two-hour stroll instead.
The second thing you notice about Podhale is the urbanism or rather, the complete lack of it. If you know the right people, it seems no rules apply. You can build pretty much whatever you want, wherever you want. Houses of every imaginable shape, color, and size pepper the hillsides. Unless you have a direct panoramic view of the High Tatras, your view will definitely just be the side of someone else’s house.
I remember a conversation I had in the Alps with some locals who hated that they weren’t allowed to build whatever they wanted. The precise architectural anarchy that drives me mad in Poland, they found absolutely amazing. Yet, when I asked if they took any photos of those Polish villages, they looked at me blankly and said, “No, why would we?” Exactly. A little architectural order is a good thing.
Things are slowly starting to change new builds are now required to have matching wall and roof colors, but the old houses? Oh well, come and see the chaos for yourself.

The Dark Side of the Tourist Boom

Let’s not get bogged down by façade colors, though. There are far more worrying things happening here, which made me incredibly grateful to be staying at my friends’ super cozy flat at the edge of the national park instead of a resort.
There are only two actual towns here, Zakopane and Nowy Targ; the rest are villages, with Białka Tatrzańska being one of the most popular. It features a single street lined with massive guesthouses, each holding anywhere from twenty to a few hundred people. The catch? There is no public sewer system.
Septic tanks are the norm, which in theory is fine. Except for one detail: I have never seen a sewage tanker truck there. Considering how fast my friends’ tank fills up with just six people in one week (10m3), there should be a permanent traffic jam of waste trucks. Instead, nothing.
Meanwhile, the Białka River, which flows out back and used to be a glorious, crystal-clear mountain stream, is turning into a sewage canal. But hey, only one side of the village has the “privilege” of dumping wastewater illegally into the river. As for the other half? God only knows. One friend shared a local “secret” method: “Let’s just dump it onto the neighbor’s land. I have money, so they can’t touch me.”
No one seems to grasp that this stuff seeps into the ground. Then, they and their tourists drink it, bathe in it, and whatever else.
Then there’s the winter air. In the colder months, you’re more likely to get lung cancer here than cure anything. Coal blast furnaces, where people burn literally all their rubbish, are not a thing of the past; they are very much a thing of the present. Yet, millions of people flock here in search of “fresh mountain air.” I swear, the air quality in central London is better.
Local business owners drive Porsches and BMWs funded by their guesthouses, yet they can’t seem to agree on simple civic infrastructure like public heating or a proper sewer system. Instead, they put up billboards. Everywhere. If you think you’re going to get a nice, clean picture of the Tatra Mountains, think again. Your shot will feature about 30 billboards selling everything from halal dinners to bike rentals. In an era where everyone uses Google or AI, who is actually buying things off a highway billboard? Why waste the money?
Zakopane recently passed a ban on them, but it’s riddled with exceptions. I’m highly curious to see how they enforce it. Local creativity knows no bounds. During COVID, when renting out hotel rooms was banned, owners would simply rent you a “parking space” and throw the room in for free!

Capitalism vs. Community
These are the little things that offend my eyesight and trigger my fear of E. coli poisoning. Then we get to the rest of the urban planning. Pavements? Why bother, who needs them? Commercial spaces for locals to run sustainable businesses? Nah, do it on your own property. In places like Jurgów, even if the village has dedicated space, you’re told that unless you have serious cash, you’re going nowhere. Support for small, local business owners? None unless you’re a friend of a friend.
But god forbid you ask for a pavement so local kids can walk safely to school. Do that, and you are officially blacklisted by the local authorities, who will make your life miserable.
Affordable housing is another myth. If you weren’t born into a family with land, you have nowhere to live because everything has been converted into a holiday let. Where do they expect the teachers, cooks, and cleaners to live? Granted, that’s a crisis in many tourist hotspots, not just Podhale. We easily forget that a hotel needs actual staff to run, and those people don’t just teleport in from a village 100km away.
So much has been built recently that I wonder if property prices will finally drop, or if they’ll just find new international markets. (The region used to host a lot of Russian tourists, but Putin decided otherwise, so now there’s a massive influx of visitors from Arab countries). Even if the tourists keep coming, can the infrastructure take it? They are already running out of water, dealing with contaminated supply, and facing legendary traffic jams. We’ll have to wait and see.

On day two, despite promising myself I wouldn’t set foot in Zakopane, I found myself trying to work from a local café. It used to be quiet and cozy. Now, there is a lady with a microphone shouting out orders with that classic, frustrated Polish tone that screams, “What the fuck am I even doing here?”
The day before, we had spent a lovely midday over the border in the Slovakian city of Poprad, sipping coffee in the sun with zero tourists around. The stark contrast made me laugh out loud. Just across the mountain ridge was a place where villages were perfectly contained so you could actually enjoy the countryside, with very few people and beautifully preserved heritage architecture. Meanwhile, today we were discussing how historic wooden houses in Zakopane are mysteriously burning to the ground so developers can clear space for giant, “caricature” concrete hotels.
After explaining to my work colleagues multiple times during a conference call that they should ignore the shouting microphone lady in the background, I wrapped up my meetings and headed into the national park for a quick escape.

I know a coffee house isn’t a co-working space, but my choices were that or sitting on a roadside curb. It turned into a lovely afternoon, so I figured, why not? The only issue was my attire. I wasn’t wearing flip-flops, but my trainers were definitely meant for tarmac, not mountain trails. Armed with tight jeans, a massive tote bag holding my laptop, and a heavy coat, I walked up the path. For the first time in my life, people were staring at me the way I stare at the lunatics wearing Converse on Snowdon.
I only walked about ten minutes up the path, which looked more like a paved walkway in Hampstead than a rugged mountain trail anyway. Still, never again.

The next day, we went for our actual two-hour hike. I stubbornly stuck to my jeans and a fancy woolen jumper, but paired them with my Vibram barefoot trekking shoes which honestly made the whole outfit look even more hideous. Thank God only the local cows saw us.
It was a beautiful walk, though we did get chased briefly by a cow and entirely by our own imaginations when we stumbled across a fresh bear footprint.
With the gossip officially finished, it was time to head back to London. On the flight home, I watched another plane pass right by ours. Fuck, it was fast. We all know planes move quickly, but seeing one pass in such close proximity that I could actually read the airline’s name on the fuselage was a terrifyingly cool first for me!