Europe, Poland in Particular

My girlfriends parents are both from Poland so she has some family still over there, as such she is kinda keen to go over there and visit at some stage.  Her Dad and brother are staying with us this week and we were talking about visiting and snowboarding amongst other things.  He did mention that there are mountains in Poland and the Czech republic with reasonable facilities not to far from where some of their relatives live.  My girlfriend although she was born here is fluent in Polish so I should be able to communicate through her ok.

We are thinking about heading over for a couple of weeks in February at this stage, will probably be spending a fair bit of time in Poland but will also want to go see some more of Europe at the same time.  Has anyone been boarding in that part of Europe before?

I have *not* been riding in Poland, but geographically, the mountains of Poland are in the south, so it appears that your best bet is to fly into Krakow or Katowice and take a train / bus / auto from there. The closest I’ve been is Krakow, and it is well worth 3-5 days of your time to visit the stellar sites in the town and also take side trips to Wieliczka salt mines and Auschwitz. Krakow was untouched by World War II, and is fantastic, highly recommended.

Your base for snowboarding is likely to be Zakopane, which is a 2-3 hours south of Krakow.

I don’t have specific information on the Czech Republic, but the mountains are nowhere near as high, you’re probably better off going riding in Germany as it’s pretty close by.

We have been looking into it a fair bit more and have come up with a bit of a tour route we would like to take.  Seems that the best way to get into that area of Europe is to fly to Frankfurt, hiore a car and get around that way. We’re looking at a big circle from Frankfurt to Innsbruck to Zakopane to Krakow then up to Olstyn and to visit some of my girlfriends relatives.  From there I wouldn’t mind ducking over the border to Kaliningrad just to say I have been to Russia and apparently it’s a fairly interesting place.  From there maybe down to Bozi Dar in the Czech Republic than back into Germany and one of the small resorts just outside of Frankfurt before flying back home.  It’s a round trip of around 3500kms so 3 weeks would be a nice amount of time to do it. 

Myself and the girlfriend are ok with the car travelling and it gives you the opportunity to see the place and stop in out of the way villages and stuff like that.  Over 2.5 weeks at Xmas we went from Melbourne to Noosa and back with lots of stops in between and we never felt like we were in the car the whole time so we shall see how we go, still lots of time and lots of planning to be done but the above is kinda a brief starting to point, I’m open to suggestions as to other places to go but that trip encompasses Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Poland and Russia, fair amount of countries to visit.  I expect to hear lots of talk about Italy and Switzerland but considering we need to spend a fair amount of time in Poland I’m trying to stay in that part of Europe.

I guess the other thought is to book flights well ahead of time with Ryan Air or something and get to other places on the cheap that way.  Not to sure on the advantages of that yet but will see what further research digs up!

I have never been to Poland (yet..) but i would encourage you to try and get in touch with some people who live or have spent time in Europe they might be able to tell of some great local spots. Last time i was there we spent a week in Serbia snowboarding at Koponika (i think thats how you spell it) the locals were great, and to my surprise so were the slopes. So yeah if i hadn’t got that tip from some locals we probbably wouldn’t ever have experianced the Serbian Slopes.