Whats your criteria? Income? Enviroment?
I just went to Bialystok with some friends from Norway, and even "out there", the town square was beatifully done, with cafè's, restaurants and nice architecture. The small pubs that you found on every street were really cool to just hang out with, on your way to the next one! The park infront of the castle was amazing and in the evenings the town square came to life with kielbasa stands, beerstands and live music. I was in heaven.
But I'm having a bit of a canundrum, as I was gonna move into my house in Mikolow in a couple of years, but since it's so costly to renovate it and I won't get a loan to fix it up, (living in Norway), I'm selling it, in order to invest the money in a finished house. Then I started to look around, what if we went somewhere else? Where is the best place to live, if not in Mikolow (Or Bielsko) What about fresh air, proximity to a nice town, roads, history, lakes, mountains...I should never have done this. This has led to a real headache! I could throw a dart at the map of Poland, and wherever it hits, you'll find a nice city, nice streets, castles, rivers, lakes, stunning nature, either the south, east, west or north, they all have something that you want to experience. And I barely even heard of the town Torq posted pictures from, Slupsk, and from the pictures he posted, one just wants to go there right away, and see it for oneself. When I went to Bialystok, we stopped in Warszawa for a day, thinking it was gonna be another big, smelly major city. We went through the "old city" and the streets surrounding it...I mean, we walked for a whole hour, and all I could see was magnificent buildings, beautiful cobbled streets, town squares filled with flower shops, restaurants, hidden bars under the streets.. My friends were blown away, and so was I. We almost had it to ourselves, there were literally no one out at midnight, even though it was a friday. The lights, the feeling, the architecture, it just blew us away.
So now I'm just looking at the map going, where the hell is the BEST place to live??? Even Warszawa looked nice! Right now I'm looking at the tri-city area, where I met my wife, we don't have any family there, but the closeness to the sea, the fresh air, the beautiful cities of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot...you have Torun close by, the lakes...It looks perfect. I even found a property development agency that sent me information about small "villages" being built around golf-courses and near lakes. About 700 000 zloty for a fully built house in a brand new area. But then someone says; "Jelenia Gora!", and I go there to look...god damn it, it looks nice... On one side, I'm really happy that Poland has all these magnificent areas and cities, but at the other hand, it makes it even harder to pick one...
People here just say; "My city!"...but could you maybe please elaborate why you think/believe your city/area is the best? And maybe even show some pictures, like Torq did, if you have them?? This thread would be the best one so far....
And I know many polish people say, yes, it's nice, but it's so hard, the income is low, the prices are high, work is hard to come by..but if you look away from that for a moment, and just look at the area itself, from a viewpoint of architecture, nature, closeness to other cities, activities during the seasons, family life....
Dariusz
