Zakopane

They were supposed to stay closed until at least 31 January 2021. But people have enough, especially Higlanders from the  Podhale region in the Tatra mountains a region south of Poland near the Slovakian border. Highlander and architect Sebastian Piton from Koscielisko, a tourist town near a very popular town of Zakopane, is leading a movement called “Goralskie Veto”.

Goralskie refers to highlanders and veto comes from a  centuries old Polish tradition called “liberum veto”  where a single deputy could veto a law which he felt was bad for his people. This was great to protect minorities, but also it also blocked many good bills from being passed.

“We have no other option than to use this ‘enough is enough-veto’. We don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. The government suggests  that it will loosen the restrictions when the number of sick people goes
down.”- said Mr Piton at the press conference held on Thursday, 14th of January in Podhale. “But we have seen in the past weeks and months that even when the number of daily infections decreased, the Polish government extended the measures instead of loosening them. The argument was always the same: “we want to protect the public”.

Sebastian Piton compared the situation to the metaphor of the boiling frog:

If one puts a frog in a pot of water and starts heating it slowly the animal adapt its body temperature as a result. The frog remains inside the pot in a constant effort to adapt to the situation. But when the water is about to boil the frog has no force left  to jump out of the pot and it finally dies.

The same thing is happening here.  Piton thinks it’s time to stop the measures now and move forward before it’s too late. We need to react when we still can.  There is no other way. And we hope that it will happen all over Poland, not just in the Podhale region. It is already the case in many places (…) People, regardless of great stress, reopen their businesses, because they have no other option. I think that it will have a snowball effect and that all of Poland will be open for February at the latest.”

Podhale announced the actions would officially start on the 18th of January 2021. About half of the entrepreneurs (several hundred) from the region said they would follow, but many restaurants, small hotels and inns, ski slopes and other places in the Podhale region already restarted their activity. Many of them cooperate with Highlanders from Goralskie Veto who offer their help and in particular their legal support. Goralskie Veto activists also back people from other regions. Several days ago, they were at a restaurant “U trzech braci” (“At three brothers”) in Cieszyn,  in southern Poland near the Czech border. Several police vans showed up for an inspection, but finally didn’t close the place.

 

Goralskie Veto also said that they would not accept the covid vaccine as it is a medical experiment.

 

 

The slopes say enough

 

– The owners of the slopes say enough. The slopes are closed to skiers and unsanitary sledges. We received a ready-made sanitary protocol, complied with restrictions concerning, in particular, the number of people, and we succeeded. We were monitored by the police and the Department of Labor, and these checks yielded no information. Despite this, we were shut down. We also talk enough in this situation, in which we do not know what to do next, we do not know what will happen after January 18, – said Arkady Matushynsky, a representative of the board of the ski pass.

 

– We managed in a sanitary mode. The slopes were not a source of pollution. For skiers and snowboarders, gloves, closed nose and mouth, is a sport that can not be practiced without maintaining the appropriate distance. We are waiting for someone to talk to us. We sent letters and requests. We can all see what happened during the accumulation of holidays up to 2 weeks. It was impossible to leave the Vistula at the weekend. Finally, we want someone to hear us – said Janusz Tyszkowski, owner of the Skolnity Wisła ski and bicycle park in the center of the Vistula.

 

– We say enough. We were told we had to open the slopes, and later, despite following the recommendations, we were closed. We have a playoff that needs to be prepared, to make the tracks snowy. Today, about 1,000 people work on all the lifts, and we will have to fire them to survive. At the moment we do not know what we will get and whether we will be able to continue to function. We want to open up and act, ”he added.

 

The 13th press conference dedicated to the support of communes located in mountainous areas was announced by Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Development, Labor and Technology Yaroslav Govin and Head of the Prime Minister’s Office Michal Dvorchyk.