Poland

A visit to Poland is a journey to a land of myths, magic, romance, rolling plains and very warm and friendly people, and to a nation being born anew -- yet again.

Since its birth in the 10th century, The Republic of Poland has a very long track record of ups and downs, death and rebirth.

Now in the early 21st century, this little country -- just a bit larger than the state of New Mexico -- is a phoenix rising and just beginning to find stride again after its last down. A bit more than a decade after becoming the first of Eastern Europe to awake and emerge from 45 years beneath the iron curtain, Poland has yawned, stretched joined the European Union in May of this year and is ready to get on with the future.

Poland's stereotyped reputation has often been that of a state of chubby cabbage-eating peasant farmers who play the tuba and do a funny three-step dance called the Polka and drink a lot of beer. Not quite. The people and land of Poland are much more than that and want much more than that.

It is actually a land rich in culture and history and political action. It was Poland's late 20th century move to re-legalize trade union Solidarity and an agreement to hold partially free parliamentary elections that started the shock waves that began the dramatic 1989 domino-like collapse of Eastern European governments that transformed the Soviet Union and shifted the balance of power throughout the world.

The center and main storehouse of this country's rich cultural and political history is in its former political and still cultural capital, Kraków.