Kielce and the area - amazing Polish Pocket Knives live there

halokielce.pl/2020/09/09/dlaczego-kielce-to-scyzoryki-ciekawa-historia-przydomku/

Kieleckie Pocket Knives - this is how the inhabitants of Kielce and even the entire Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship are often addressed. Where did this term come from? And does it have negative connotations?

There was metal industry in Kielce and it was very significant. It was the Old Polish Industrial District - the first such district in Poland. Furnaces and ironworks were located here. A lot of metal products were produced there - from sheet metal through stars to kitchen cutlery. Companies specializing in the production of knives also began to appear, producing daggers and pocket knives.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-Polish_Industrial_Region

Old Polish Industrial Region (Polish: Staropolski Okręg Przemysłowy) is an industrial region in northern part of Lesser Poland. It is the oldest and in terms of area covered, largest of Polish industrial regions. Most of the region is located in Lesser Poland Upland.

In prehistoric times future Old Polish Industrial Region was the area of flint and later iron tools. In Nowa Slupia, remnants of forty five bloomeries were found (5th - 10th century). In the Middle Ages, the region became the center of Polish industry - mining and steel mills. Various kinds of weapons were manufactured here, iron ore, copper and silver were extracted.

Some believe that naming Kielce inhabitants and inhabitants of the Świętokrzyskie region has a negative connotation. It is supposed to suggest that every resident carries a small knife to use it for evil purposes. And it's true, after the war many men carried pocket knives, but only because they were practical tools. And it was popular not only in Kielce.

Only people from outside of the region perceive the statement "Kielce penknives" as a negative statement. Meanwhile, the residents of Kielce associate it as a positive statement, or possibly as a neutral one.

Sheperd dog from Kielce

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The Pocket Knife Festival has been organized for years. It is an artistic event, during which concerts and cabaret performances take place, but also vernissages and meetings with authors. There are also artistic awards.

Pocket knives are also used to promote the region - guests who visit Kielce receive them as souvenirs.

2019 Pocket Knife Festival concert - Shut the Monkey group, my favourite coz they sing in nice English

Kielce Main Square

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They have a nice Main Square, and what is the standard of living there?

Some obvious poverty but also new developments and change. There seems to be quite a large student population.

I go there sometimes and most of my favourite haunts from a decade or so again are gone now.

There are some OK restaurants though.

It is alien standard. Which means very good. Check this structure in Kielce:

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We also have something like that, only bigger... in Katowice, it's called "Spodek".

Not long renovated.

There's also an old 1970s market building very close to it with a nice and extremely cheap cafe in the basement.

I don't think I knew about that. 🤔


LOL


It's low in the Holy Cross voivodeship in general and young people have been escaping Kielce for years (I don't know if that changed):

o2.pl/biznes/zarobki-w-polsce-opublikowano-ranking-wojewodztw-6707511319759616a

Weirdly enough, Kielce is one of the happiest cities in Poland:

sukces.rp.pl/spoleczenstwo/art38767021-gdzie-w-polsce-mieszkaja-najszczesliwsi-ludzie-wcale-nie-w-warszawie

Kielce does have a nice location, I have to admit :) And life is calm and slow here.

The one in Kielce is also commonly called "spodek", but, unlike the one in Katowice, it's a bus station :) It was built in 1984 and renovated in recent years.

Kielce's "spodek" at night:

It's interesting because my father, who comes from Kielce region, worked in the armaments industry in COP (Kielce belonged to COP) before the war and earned very good money. He even bought a motorbike (before the war).

By that I meant that the city is surrounded by the Holy Cross Mountains which are covered in forests (and that's what I love about my city :)):















As a kid I would go to this church and this is were I had my First Communion and Confirmation, can you imagine? :):



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So you're half Scyzoryk :D

Beautiful scenery. You're lucky to have so much nature on your doorstep :)

@Feniks, yes, sometimes I feel a little bit like I live in the Shire from the Lord of the Rings lol :):



Kozubowski Landscape Park in the Ponidzie region

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Yes, because if you aren`t interested in such stuff as heavy industry, it might be boring indeed. But the fact is that the area of Kielce is historic!

Samsonów the ruins of steel works which originated in 17th century.

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To be fair, we were probably taught such stuff at school, but I simply forgot :P ;)

I do remember from history classes that my region had a period of prosperity and development, but then the partitions happened and that was the end of it, if I remember right.


This name sounds familiar...

And some more photos from Ponidzie region :):

Photos by Wiktor Baron, Jakub Perlikowski and Przemysław Kruk:

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Oh, I forgot about his photo :P:

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It's very pretty around Kielce.

A bit before the Covids, I went to a sort of giant quarry with a big rock in the middle in the suburbs of Kielce. Well worth visiting.

Was it Kadzielnia?

I didn't realise quite how close to Kraków Kielce is. Maybe I'll take a detour to have a look around there sometime.

That rings a bell.


The area between is quite pleasant. I like the areas around Szydłowiec and Pinczów, a bit further away but still in easy driving distance.

Lucky you!


A place that nurtured your artistic soul :)

The photos are beautiful, especially the 'shires' one with the curvy roads :)) That's what I miss when I'm in Poland. So many of Poland's roads are straight and I'm used to dangerous bends!

Kadzielnia (the second and third photo in my #13 post) is that place where you can run down the zip line and there's this amphitheatre there:




That hill is called Karczówka and I loved that place as a child even though going to church there was quite a "hike" for a kid :)) You had to walk up the first part of the hill, then take a turn by the village (yes, a village on a hill in a city! :)) and go through an entrance "made" in big bushes. You walked into a meadow through that entrance with some houses on one side. Then you'd walk into the forest and you had to climb big, old stairs made of big slabs of stone with roots of the trees going through them. For a kid those stairs seemed to be made for giants :)) And at the end of the stairs you could see the church in the forest, with moss growing on the wall surrounding the former cloister complex.

After the mass me and my childhood friend would run down that hill like crazy singing songs from cartoons for kids lol

Magic :)))


Oh, defenitely, Atch! For example, my path to school was leading past that hill with a church on it and I loved to look at that hill on my way to school. The tower of the church was visible over the tips of the trees and when there was fog that tower would disappear completely as if nothing was there. The legend says that this is how the church was saved from getting destroyed by Nazi bombs - God hid it with the fog ;) It used to be a cloister, btw.

The hill looks amazing during autumn - like it's on fire with the tower's dome shining in the sun :)

Once I was late for school and my Polish teacher was worried. My friend from the times when I was a little kid (we lived in the same block of flats) was in the same class as me and she assured the teacher that I'm OK and joked that I'm probably staring at the trees on my way to school and that's why I'm late ;D

What can I say - I did love to look at that hill and the trees on the side of the pavement, especially during autumn (and I just had to go through the colourful leaves that fell to the ground, obviously! lol) ;D

You can feel invited :)))


Well, you know, we "Polish Shire" folk walk with pocket knives in our pockets and we have winding roads... and... and... and we pick wild forest mushrooms ! :D So, we defenitely do danger here! lol You should visit our region if you need adrenalin boost ;D

And some winding roads in Ponidzie area :):

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Btw, I think the reason why so many of Poland's roads are straight is because a lot of Poland is flat (Poland lies in the Great European Plain). We had a classmate at highschool who came all the way from Warsaw area to study at our art school and he had to live at the school's dormitory. He would go back home for holidays etc. and at some point he told us that whenever he travelled back home he couldn't get over how flat it is over there, because after a few years at our school he got accustomed to a more hilly landscape of the Holy Cross region :))

Atch, so I'm guessing Ireland is hilly then?

That's part of it.

Plus Poland industrialised later than say France, Germany etc and far later than Britain so the road building history is closer (though not identical) to that of America which didn't actually have many major roads until after the railroad boom started.

I'm not sure if this has that much to do with it - if you look at the map of Europe the Great European Plain encompasses almost entire Poland with the exception of a very narrow strip in the South of Poland - and that's where we have mountains. In case of France and Germany it's the other way around - the Great European Plain takes up only a strip in the North of those countries and doesn't even touch Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Scandinavian countries and, obviously, the UK and Ireland which are islands. 🤔

Atch will be able to say more about this, of course, but when I look at the map of Ireland - it looks pretty hilly to me and sounds like a pretty varied landscape too:

earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/5343/topography-of-ireland

"The topography of the island of Ireland features a hilly, central lowland composed of limestone surrounded by a broken border of coastal mountains. The mountain ranges vary greatly in geological structure. The mountain ridges of the south are composed of old, red sandstone separated by limestone river valleys. The limestone valleys appear as deep green grooves that tend to run in an east-west direction. (...)

The central plain, broken in places by low hills, is extensively covered with glacial deposits of clay and sand. It has considerable areas of bog and numerous lakes."

I also doubt that Ireland industrialised as fast and heavily as what is the UK today considering Irish history, Great Famine, etc.


Half of the US is flat, then there are the Great Plains and the other half are the Rocky Mountains and it shows in the road map:

ontheworldmap.com/usa/usa-road-map.html

So, I think that every country's topography is the biggest factor in the way roads look like. I mean, that's logical - you have to go around hills, mountains, lakes, bogs, etc. :))

Ah, sorry, part of Finland is in that Great European Plain :))