Cabbage Festival

One of Karen's work colleagues told her about the annual cabbage festival in a small town north of Krakow called Charsznica. We took off about 11:00; the drive took about an hour. We wended our way through picturesque villages, arrived at Charsznica, and parked the car. We walked into the festival, which was much like a small county fair in Midwest America. There was a stage with performances going on throughout the day. Most seemed to be children singing along to recorded music, but we did see a lovely folk dance with 16 couples on the fairly small stage. There were tractors and other farm implements on display (including John Deere), with salespeople ready to talk to prospective buyers. A small midway was at the far end of the field. We were early enough that the crowd was quite small; we heard that the evening would consist of a disco and fireworks, so many people probably planned to come out later; in fact, as we left around 2:00, more people were arriving.

Below is a view of the field as we entered, with the booths in the background.

The first booth we stopped at was a man hawking a special vegetable gadget that could slice, dice and do all sort of fantastical things. What could we do but each buy one for about $2? After all, it was a fair!

Some of the booths had elaborate vegetable displays, including this rabbit and a "woman."

Several booths had dried flowers for sale, and this one had them decorating hats and wreaths.

What do you go to a fair for but the food? Below are small cabbage rolls baked into bread. They were good!

I had a fresh small waffle topped with strawberries and peaches. Some people had cream on theirs, but my English and their Polish didn't result in that item! (I did learn that ice cream is LODY...)

A man on stilts approached me as I waited for the others to finish up. He doffed his hat when he saw my camera.

After we left the fair, we drove through more beautiful countryside and into a national park. There are still a few homes there from before it became a park. 

There were wonderful limestone formations in the area.

Soon after we left the park, we saw this small country church with a long gradual walkway.

This nice house was in the village near the festival. All the houses have beautiful gardens and plantings around them.