Skigebiete in Poland

Polish skiing means the Tatras and the Beskids, with Zakopane as the undisputed centre. Kasprowy Wierch, reached by a historic cable car from Kuźnice, gives the country's highest and most serious lift served skiing at just under 2,000 m, with open bowls in the Gąsienicowa and Goryczkowa valleys that ski more like proper mountain terrain than a resort piste. Below it, Nosal, Harenda and Szymoszkowa cover the easier ground, and Białka Tatrzańska and Bukowina have modern lifts and reliable snowmaking.

In the south west, Szczyrk in the Beskids has been comprehensively rebuilt with new gondolas and is now the largest single ski area in Poland, and Karpacz and Szklarska Poręba in the Karkonosze serve Wrocław and the German border. Vertical is modest, and the Tatras are a national park with strict rules about where you can and cannot ski, so off piste requires knowledge of the regulations as well as the avalanche forecast.

Zakopane in winter is as much a town break as a ski trip. Ski jumping at the Wielka Krokiew is a mass spectator event, the thermal baths at Chochołów, Bukowina and Białka are large, modern and open late, and horse drawn sleigh rides with a bonfire are the standard family evening. Cross country trails run in the Chochołowska and Kościeliska valleys, ski touring in the Tatras is popular and well established, and the Slovakian side of the range is half an hour away.

Góral highlander food is distinct from the rest of Polish cooking and built for cold. Oscypek, the smoked sheep's cheese with its spindle shape and pressed pattern, is grilled and served with cranberry jam at stalls along Krupówki street in Zakopane and is protected by EU origin rules. Kwaśnica, a sour cabbage and pork rib soup, is the mountain warmer, and placki ziemniaczane, potato pancakes, arrive either with sour cream or under a goulash.

The wider Polish repertoire is all present: pierogi filled with cheese and potato or meat, bigos hunter's stew of sauerkraut, cabbage and several kinds of meat, żurek sour rye soup served in a bread bowl, and golonka pork knuckle. Portions are large and prices are among the lowest in Europe for the quality.

Grzaniec, mulled beer or mulled wine, is the terrace drink, and herbata z prądem, tea with a shot of spirit in it, is the hut version. Vodka is the default toast and the flavoured ones, particularly żubrówka bison grass vodka with apple juice, are more approachable than the plain. Zakopane's après scene runs along Krupówki with live góral bands, fiddles and a fair amount of noise, and it is cheerful rather than exclusive.

Zakopane has been Poland's winter capital since the late nineteenth century, when the town became a retreat for artists, writers and intellectuals escaping partitioned Poland. Stanisław Witkiewicz developed the Zakopane Style of timber architecture there in the 1890s, drawing on góral highlander building traditions, and the Villa Koliba and the Chapel of Jaszczurówka remain the reference examples.

The Wielka Krokiew ski jump, built in the 1920s, hosts World Cup ski jumping in front of crowds that regularly exceed forty thousand, and jumping is Poland's most popular winter sport by a distance. Adam Małysz's four Crystal Globes in the early 2000s and Kamil Stoch's Olympic golds and Four Hills grand slam made national heroes of both. Zakopane has hosted the Nordic World Ski Championships and repeatedly bid for the Winter Olympics without success.

The Kasprowy Wierch cable car, opened in 1936, was a major engineering statement of the interwar Polish republic and was built in a matter of months amid considerable protest from conservationists, an argument about access versus protection in the Tatra National Park that has never entirely gone away. The original stations, rebuilt and modernised, are listed monuments.