Dirty, noisy, crowded?
I was very worried, because after hearing so many stories from my friends and reading the media, I had an image in my head of a Polish beach, packed with people, screens up to the waterline, screaming children and compatriots drinking beer from early in the morning, throwing around tons of plates of chips and sweets and pets. Oh, and of course, those horrible recipes and warnings not to eat out if you don’t want to go broke! Should I go into this nightmare or not? I took a risk.
The first evening by the sea was enchanting. Clear skies, beautiful sunsets, people walking along the seashore, taking pictures with seagulls, with their loved ones, against the backdrop of the sunset. Pure idyll. Kołobrzeg has a very long and wide beach with gentle access to the water. Although it is closed off by a port on one side, on the other side you can walk and walk endlessly, dipping your feet in the water. I remembered how much I loved it and how few places like it exist on the rocky or stony coasts of the Adriatic or Mediterranean Sea.
And the most important thing is the temperature. We left Warsaw at noon, under a scorching sun and a temperature of 31 degrees Celsius, so the night by the sea in a temperature of about 20 degrees was a real rest. And I think it will be so for a growing majority of Poles who, like me, can no longer spend their holidays in the heat of Greece or Spain, and summer in Polish cities is becoming increasingly difficult to bear.
Climate change is hitting us mercilessly. According to the European agency Copernicus Climate Change Service, every month in the world has been the hottest in recorded history for the past year. Southern Europe has been plagued by multi-day heatwaves with temperatures of 37-39 degrees since June, which have already caused at least 23 deaths, reports the independent research institute World Weather Attribution. In these temperatures, even relaxing on the beach, near the water, ceases to be relaxation and turns into torture.
Poles – drunkards and thieves?
So, on the first night in Kołobrzeg, I felt like I was finally getting a break from the heat. But let’s not get carried away, we have a beach day ahead of us. My daughter and I went to the beach very early, heeding the warnings from our friends that there is no place to set foot on Polish beaches at noon. It turned out to be completely untrue. Yes, there were a lot of people, but you could easily find a nice spot by the water and even set up a big screen. Yes, we had a screen! We decided not to distinguish ourselves from the other beachgoers, but nevertheless, the Baltic beaches are a sea of screens, something that various hipsters and wannabes have been mocking for years. “Screens are a nuisance” – I have heard many times at parties and social gatherings.
However, for me it is a wonderful invention. For many reasons, not least because it protects against the often cold and gusty Baltic wind. It prevents the pages of a book from turning by themselves, sandwich wrappers from flying in all directions and sand from getting in your eyes. But it also provides a bit of privacy on the beach, where there are actually quite a few people, allows you to dig a hole in the sand without fear of someone falling in it, and can hide bags with children’s things or inflatable toys. I can’t imagine sunbathing on the Baltic Sea without beach screens! I think we can get away from them now.
I also didn’t realize that the people around me on the beach were taking up space with their screens. No one had placed them too close to the water, making it impossible to pass through, no one had set up sun loungers while other swimmers had nowhere to camp.
I have never seen such ridiculous parties with beers in hand behind any screen. Even if people did drink them, they did so politely and in moderation, just as people drink sangria on Spanish beaches and Aperol spritz on Italian beaches. During the week I went to the beach, I didn’t see anyone drunk behind the screen during the day, the children were also not particularly noticeable, they didn’t scream, contrary to the horror stories my friends told me about spoiled brats on the beach, they didn’t throw sand at anyone, and the parents were very careful with them, so as not to disturb the other bathers.
A lot has changed
So, in my opinion, the beach culture in Poland has definitely changed (although I know I may have been lucky), but something else has changed – the feeling of safety while at the beach. First of all, many people, including myself, left their things on the beach and went swimming, apparently without fear of being robbed or asking the neighbors behind the screen to keep an eye on their belongings. Poland has become a country of honest people, which was demonstrated in 2019 by an international study conducted by scientists from the University of Zurich and the State Universities of Utah and Michigan in the USA.
Scientists took a closer look at 40 countries and conducted an experiment, leaving a total of 17 thousand items in public places. Wallets with small amounts of money and the owner’s details. The idea was, of course, to see in which countries citizens are statistically more likely to return the wallets they found. It turned out that in this honesty rating, Poland was in an extremely high sixth place – 80% of the wallets were returned to their owners. Poles. In this study, we proved to be more honest than the Germans, French or Czechs.
And this could really be felt on the beach in Kołobrzeg. I also really liked the level of involvement of the lifeguards in ensuring the safety of swimmers in the sea. The lifeguards not only sat in their towers, but also walked along the beach, closely observing what was happening in the water, and the lifeguards on boats patrolling deeper waters did the same.
Expensive and cunning?
This year our vacation was supposed to be budget-friendly, because at the same time we had to renovate our house. Friends shook their heads: “Did you really choose the Polish seaside for a cheap vacation?” However, I think I managed to spend this week at the seaside at a reasonable price and without any special restrictions. My daughter and I went to the seaside by train, a round-trip ticket for the two of us cost PLN 196 (my daughter has a student discount). I rented a two-room apartment with a small kitchen and bathroom in an aparthotel in Parsęta, it cost PLN 1,400 for 6 nights for two people.
We had our own kitchen and a beautiful, spacious balcony overlooking the river, where we could have a lovely breakfast or dinner. Once a day we went out for something to eat, but it was mostly things like fries, casseroles, some soup, etc. – the bill for one of these outings was about PLN 100 for the two of us. Plus daily grocery shopping like at home. We spent about PLN 1,000 on food, ice cream and waffles.
The downside of our apartment was the two-kilometer distance from the sea, but we bought tickets for scooters, of which there are plenty in Kołobrzeg (there is no Uber). Scooter rides cost about PLN 200 per week. And that’s actually all the main expenses of our trip. Of course, we had some unpleasant surprises, such as the cost of PLN 30 for a taxi for a distance of 800 meters or a sachet of ketchup for fries for PLN 5. In any case, we spent about PLN 1,500 per person, which seems to me a very reasonable price for the opportunity to take a break from the city heat and my beloved walks by the sea. My favorite sea.
