One of the joys of traveling in a foreign country (or reading a map, if you can’t travel) is seeing all the strange, wonderful, funny and otherwise goofy names along your route. That applies to just about any country, as people living in F*@#$g (Austria) and Climax Springs (USA) can tell you. And Great Britain is just chock full of odd place names.

It’s a very entertaining way of passing time during long and otherwise boring road trips. And since the holidays are right around the corner and may of you will travel to Poland to spend Christmas and New Year with your loved ones, I thought it might be a good idea to show you just what kind of odd names you can encounter while driving from one end of the country to the other. Yes, Poland. Poland has its own share of strange (and some are really strange) place names.

For example, take this village in kujawsko-pomorskie voivodeship – Złe Mięso. Yep, a place named “Bad Meat.” Let’s just hope no food processing plants are located there.

Bad Meat can definitely be one of Stanisława’s Problems. Yes, there is a village between Siedlce and Białystok called Kłopoty Stanisławy.

Fancy traveling a bit further than just boring, old Poland? No worries, you can do that without ever leaving the country. There’s a Korea in podkarpackie voivodeship (wonder if they make kimchee there), Ameryka (America) nearby Opole. Not enough? We also have Węgry (Hungary), Paryż (Paris) and Wenecja (Venice).

click on the map for a larger view

Here’s a very cool map of most of the places with goofy names in Poland. Some of them I will not list here, because I want to keep it as a PG blog.

And what’s my favorite name? I heard about this one a while back, but didn’t quite believe it. Mała Wieś przy Drodze – Little Village by the Road.

Now, courtesy of yellerbelly’s most excellent photography skills and his Warsaw Daily Photo blog, I have visual proof that Little Village by the Road is not an urban legend and does indeed exist.

So, what are some of your favorite Polish place names?