I have a suggestion for those of you who will be travelling near Szczecin In Poland. Great place to visit, especially if you love nature!

Gryfino is one of the oldest towns in Poland. It was founded in 1254 by a prince of Szczecin Barnim 1^st. Despite turmoil, a few wonderful mementoes and the general urban layout have preserved in the town from these days. Almost totally destroyed at the end of the World War II, in the 1970s the town experienced its revival due to the fact that  a heat and power station ’Lower Oder’ (Dolna Odra) was established. The population tripled and on the high embankment of the Odra totally new town grew. Known in the country and abroad  sports  and recreational facilities of Gryfino with the Aquatic Leisure Centre ’Lagoon’ in the forefront,  big cultural events with the famous ’Gryfino Days’, wildlife of two landscape parks and friendly people are the main reasons for more and more visitors from the country and abroad to come. Gryfino is a base for tourists from which to explore the area of two landscape parks – The Lower Oder Valley and Beech Forest, where you can find a unique on a European scale plant community and rich fauna. One of exceptional  biological specimen is Crooked Forest in Nowe Czarnowo, four kilometers south to Gryfino, near the power station ’Lower Oder’. It is a pine forest that looks like it came right out of a Hans Christian Andersen story. Around four hundred trees in the forest have been formed with a 90° horizontal bend in it’s trunk before rising vertically again. The trees are believed to be about eighty years old and although there is no explanation for this freak of nature one widely held belief is that the trees were shaped this way by human hands (possibly by carpenters wanting to use the wood for furniture making).

In Gryfino and in the vicinity there are also a few places of historical significance.

St. Mary’s Church in Gryfino (earlier St. Nicola’s) is a gothic granite and brick building from the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries raised on a plan of a Greek cross. Beautifully carved choir stalls and a stone pulpit from 1605, a work of Pomeranian artists from Rugia Island, have preserved from the former equipment. A gothic church in Weltyn, six kilometers east of Gryfino retained its historic polychrome decoration inside, presenting scenes from the New Testament. Weltyn village itself mentioned in historical sources as early as in 1212, is an enchanting holiday place on Weltynskie Lake with its clear water of an area of 350 hectares, rich in fish, with three islands, situated among fields and forests. A country church, which was  built  of granite quarters in the first half of the 13^th century in Gardno, nine kilometers east of Gryfino, kept its archaic form of Roman sacred building consisting of a hall, a rectangular chancel and an apse.

I think that visiting crooked forest is especially worth the trip. Have anybody visited the place already?

If you have, please share your impressions with us!

Do następnego razu! (Till next time…)