The Bear Went Over the Mountain

the tatras in zakopane
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Yesterday I hopped on a bus and came to Zakopane. It's best known for its skiing, but it has a lot of trails to hike on throughout the mountains. I chose to stay at a PTTK. This is a building that was built during Russia's years of domination over Poland and visiting sports teams would stay there. Today it's essentially a hostel. From the outside it looked pretty impressive. I thought that it couldn't be right because I was only supposed to be paying $9 a night. The lobby area was huge and was nice in an old way. Then I got to my room. The door was locked so I knocked and was let in by one of my roommates, a middle aged guy with a thick red mustache, a collared shirt and his underwear. Being in the room I could now see that $9 made a lot of sense for this place. The rooms were clean, which is the most I really ask at a low price, but the beds were pretty close together and the room had this funky smell to it. I have no idea where it comes from.

hiking
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I left the room pretty quickly and walked to the National Park where I thought there would be some hiking trails. (The Tatra Mountains surround Zakopane). It was 4:30, a little late to start hiking, but there were people around so it wasn't a big deal. I went for about two hours and could see the summit of a mountain, but it was supposed to take 2.5 hours to get to the top. I could get to the top during daylight but there was no way it would last for my trip back down. So, as much as it pained me, I listed to my better judgement and turned around.

the turn around point
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At night I wandered around the main street, there are a ton of Polish tourists here and so their is a lot of activity. Not so much a lot to see, but just an area of energy to walk around in.

The next day I went hiking again. I figured I had at least eight or nine hours that I could use for hiking. Tried a different trail this time. Now here's where the lack of pictures really is a bummer. The mountains were really amazing, lots of good scenery. It was possible to get to a few different peaks and walk along the spine with open views to either side.

taking time to smell the flowers
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I'm not sure if any of the trails looped. From what I could see it just appeared that one trail constantly branched off into others. This is not how I prefer to hike, backtracking seems so painful. Everything has already been seen. Keeping the time in mind I knew I had to turn back in the next 30 to 60 minutes. To ease the pain of retracing my steps I started singing "The Bear Went Over the Mountain," and you know I think the song has a lot of truth. Everything was beautiful, but I don't think, at least within the limitations of hiking for one day, that if I had continued on I would have seen much different scenery.

another cemetery, but with wooden tombstones
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On the way down I wandered who created the Bear song, what were the circumstances it was written under, and was it meant as some type of teaching tool for little kids (the grass isn't always greener type of thing). It really doesn't appear to be a song that would inspire exploring.

Zakopane is cool, in a mountain town sort of way, but it's time to move on. Tommorow leads to Wroclaw and then Prague.