West-East life in Poland?

The answer is simple - the area with the mentioned cities is located in Highlands. They don`t get best climate due to mountains nearby. And it wasn`t so easy to get there in the past when air travel was non-existent.

But Sofia is in highlands and it's the biggest city and capital here.

Yes, indeed, but don`t forget that your capital`s origins go back to BC, it even belonged to Alexander the Great or Romans at certain points. At those times, the location of a town in the Highlands was a huge advantage do to its harder accessibility (at least in theory) to potential invaders.

Or it is just an exception, like a pure accident, the first settlers` whim. I am looking at the map of Bulgaria now and other major cities are located in Lowlands.

That's what I say. It became big only after becoming a capital. So it's totally possible to turn Sanok or Nowy Sąncz into big cities. And why not - they're much closer to the core Central Europe (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest).

It's Lodz, Poznan, Bialystock and Lublin that seem to not deserve to be that big, they're fairly isolated, away from important foreign cities. I'd put Warsaw there as well but alas it's the capital and a hero city. I don't count Gdansk as at least it's a port.

What for? If it hasn`t happened so far, it means there was no need for that.


With today`s opportunities in transport and travel, several dozen kilometres more or less mean nothing. Krakow is about 70 km from Nowy Sącz straighline. What difference does it make to reach the core of Central Europe from the area?


Poznań isolated? I thought 3 hours from Poznan to Berlin by car on a highway is quite short.