Skeletons and Ice Cream Recommendations — Doing Urbex in Poland — Part I
This is the first part of a two-part series on our experiences doing urban exploration in Poland. More photos are published on Abandoned Nordic’s Instagram page.
The image of Poland (at least for me) consists of bad roads, trucks and cheap booze. Many urban exploration trips later, I can say that this image might just be pretty accurate, but behind it, there is a weird, intriguing borderland which reveals its secrets to explorers who have patience to fall into the rabbit hole of abandoned polish places.
If you are traveling in Poland, looking for abandoned places, you cannot miss Poland’s numerous manor houses and castles. There is a ‘Zamek’ or a ‘Palac’ practically in every town. If there is a gloomy park corner with tall grass, you’ll probably find an abandoned ‘palac’ there. The condition of these buildings varies from ‘tire warehouses’ to maintained high value estates. Usually everything worth selling has been stolen, but luckily there are more untouched places still there. And, you can’t detach beautiful architecture with a saw.
The caretaker needs his beer — “Palac B”
We visited Poland twice during 2022 and have been there many times before these trips. Although we saw many, many abandoned manor houses, there was one particularly interesting for us. You’ve probably seen pictures from a luxurious Polish castle, nicknamed ‘Palac B’ on Instragram or Youtube. This time we were lucky enough to actually get inside and explore this huge castle, with permission though. That day, we were waiting for a caretaker who was willing to let us in (due to a small fee). He parked his car next to a small grocery store and greeted us quickly. “First, I need some beer” he told us merrily and ran to the store. He soon came back and started unlocking a small door and disarming the alarms. He told us that his father had worked here, when the castle was still in use. He then walked us through the seemingly endless ballrooms, corridors and fireplace rooms of the building, telling us where we weren’t allowed, since many of the rooms were in bad shape. We agreed that he would return in two hours and soon heard the door closing behind us. Now, we were alone inside one the most iconic palaces of Poland, even Europe.
The palace has a rich history going back to the 16th century. For the last 30 years, the place has been empty and is deteriorating quickly. Many ceilings are being supported with wooden logs and there is one beer-sipping janitor against the forces of nature. I must say, he’d done a decent job given the circumstances.
The place was a maze. Giant ballrooms were filled with gorgeous details and old wooden staircases were covered in dust and spiderwebs. There were rooms with beautiful old wooden ornaments, depicting hunting scenes. Two hours went by fast and we had lot’s of material for Instagram from here. We met the janitor who was in a hurry, trying to keep the drains clear, because a heavy thunderstorm had started. We thanked him, and I wondered for how long this place would be even in this condition.
Hallelujah!
There is one ‘Law of Nature’ in Poland. People go to church every Sunday, which in itself isn’t something very special. To be precise, every Sunday morning, practically every man, woman and child marches to the town church. This means that there are hundreds of eyes staring at our rental car and us — the strangers.
One (Sun)day, we were heading to an abandoned manor house with our friend Otto (IG @ottogoeswild), and realized that it was Sunday and the whole town would be on the streets soon. We quickly formed a plan to visit the manor house (which was conveniently next to the church, argh) during the Sunday service. The service would most likely start at 9 AM sharp, since it was 8.40 and tens of nicely dressed people were walking towards the church. At 9.01, Otto and Tanja entered the abandoned manor house, while I was keeping an eye out. Our little ‘Mission Impossible’ was a success since when the service was over, we were all in our car, ready to leave the nice town and no one was bothered because of our photography adventure, hallelujah!
Another ‘Law of Nature’ in Poland to keep in mind, are the Saturday weddings. It was almost impossible to find a hotel without a wedding on Saturday. These parties would last until morning hours. Urbex is quite exhausting, so luckily we were so tired every evening that these celebrations didn’t bother us much.
The cockroach house
Not all abandoned buildings are huge glorious castles. We visited some small abandoned houses, one which was in the middle of the forest, far from any urban areas. After a hike in the forest, we reached the house and entered. Moist and musty air was hanging inside, around all the old furniture still inside — books in shelves, clothes in closets. Cockroaches were fleeing in panic since we had disturbed their peace. The ceiling had been decaying for a long time and was slowly disintegrating towards the floor. Now it had formed a suspicious substance with the decaying wooden floor.
The place was disgustingly beautiful — just what looks great in urbex photography. This house was a modest example of a time capsule and we were seeing what time and nature does to a place. These moments usually come with a hint of disgust due to the decomposition of the building, but this is something natural and memorable.
Cockroaches weren’t the only creepy crawlies during our trip to Poland. It was summer and walking through the forests meant that we were quite often covered in spiderwebs. These webs crisscross where people don’t walk and so were all over us after a hike to an abandoned place. One has to understand that even though there are paths or roads to abandoned places, nature takes over quickly and only few people visit these hidden places. Once we managed to accidentally carry a large spider to our car. During the night it had made a formidable web inside our car. We found the thumb-sized fellow quickly and released it to nature unharmed.
Instead of an iPad, use the skeleton
This wasn’t the end of animal encounters for us. We visited a strange small village school with old teaching aids. No laptops or iPads, but biological samples and animal skeletons in beautiful wooden boxes. We called this school “The Skeleton School” since the jewel of this place is clearly an original actual human skeleton which had been used in teaching (in the picture below). The skeleton was in pretty decent condition, only one foot was loose. You don’t see actual skeletons in schools these days, do you? The school is very small, only a couple of classrooms and is located in a distant rural village, so it has been sitting there untouched for a long time. A hint of the past are the old maps, where we can read ‘Soviet Union’, instead of Russia.
K / 7.10.2022
