My Travels with Tintin – Poland

I have two Tintin albums in Polish. The first, “Berło Ottokara” (King Ottokar’s Sceptre) was translated by Marek Puszczewicz and published in 2009. The second, “Błękitny Lotos” (The Blue Lotus) was translated from the original French by Daniel Wyszogrodzki and was originally published in 2011, although my copy seems to have been reprinted in 2016. Both albums were published by Egmont Poland in the standard softcover size.

According to Wikipedia, Egmont Poland (part of the Egmont Publishing group) seems to have begun publication of the Adventures of Tintin in Polish in 1994 with just two albums, The Secret of the Unicorn and The Crab with the Golden Claws. It would take until 2002/03 for the next few albums to be released, and then the reset of the series would be released in two traunches, in 2009 and 2011. I feel bad for the Polish fan who rushed out and bought that first edition of The Secret of the Unicorn in 1994 – imagine having to wait over 10 years to finish the story in Red Rackham’s Treasure in 2011!

Luckily I didn’t have to wait. In fact, unlike most of my foreign language collection, I actually received these two albums BEFORE I visited Poland. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my “home away from home” as far as model-related websites go is Scalemates – and I think it’s one of the best. The group there is very helpful, always offering tips, tricks and encouragement, so it’s quite easy to make some “online friends”. One of them, Robert asked me to help him out with a bit of English editing and, knowing my passion for Tintin, sent me these very nice Polish editions as way of a thank you. Tintin never visited Poland, so there’s no “perfect album” to get. But, I think the Syldavia adventure is close enough in an “Eastern European” sort of way… and you can never have to many copies of The Blue Lotus, right?

Of course that meant I had to visit Poland next, right?

My trip to Poland:

My first, and hopefully not my last, visit to Poland was in August 2025.

As I’ve mentioned, our family trip to Latvia and Poland was arguably a homecoming of sorts to visit our family roots. Latvia is my Dad’s side of the family, Poland is my Mom’s. Strangely enough, even though my Dad’s only 1/2 Latvian and my Mom was born in Poland, growing up things seemed to gravitate more towards the Latvian side. I think that largely has to do with how much more family I have (had) on my Dad’s side compared to my Mom. For my Dad, his mom and and aunt, along with her daughter and son all arrived in Canada in the late 1940s/early 1950s, and they more or less established the Latvian community in town. Of course, there’s a significantly larger Polish diaspora (just based on the relative population sizes of the two countries) in town, by my mom and grandma never really seemed that involved in it.

My mom arrive in Canada in the early 1950s with her sister, their mom, and their Grandma. We have some more distant family, but for post-war relocation/immigration reasons, many of them were in the United States. So growing up I really only knew my mom, my Aunt and my grandmother as my personal Polish community. They spoke Polish, but unfortunately I never learned, so it was just a thing my Mom did and I didn’t give it much more thought. We did get engaged once or twice with something “Polish” – like being a newcomer “buddy” family to a recently escaped family (this was the Cold War, remember), but that was more or less it.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t really know all that much about Poland itself growing up, and if I’m honest I didn’t really care. Poland in the 1970s/80s didn’t really seem to have much going for it, at least as far as I was concerned, so there wasn’t much of an external pull to discover it either.

It was only when I got older than I started to reflect on where I’d come from. When I was younger, I’d been fascinated with Asia and was able to travel extensively. But with my parents getting older (and having since lost both my Grandmas and my Great Aunt), I started feeling like if we were ever going to discover the homeland, we should do it soon. Boy am I glad I did.

I don’t know what I expected from Poland… probably not a lot… but it certainly over delivered.

Part of it might be because it came on the heels of a slightly dour few days in Latvia, but Poland really felt… alive. There was an energy in Warsaw (Warszawa) that I hadn’t expected. We stayed in the Old Town area and were able to tour the Royal Castle. Amazing history and a more prominent player in European history than I’d imagined. We also saw the Museum of King Jan III’s Palace at Wilanów, which was equally amazing and beautiful. We also tried to see a few more modern sights but ended up at the Copernicus Science Centre on a holiday and it was so busy we couldn’t get tickets. So instead we visited the NBP Money Centre – which sounds boring but was interactive and had a great deal of information on currency of all kinds. I also got to lift a huge gold brick!

Next we travelled to Gdańsk by train. That was a bit epic – especially travelling with two Seniors. There was some confusion regarding our train booking/tickets, so we missed the train we thought we were taking and ended up having to wait several hours for the next available one. Even though I wasn’t on the hunt for some Tintin books thanks to Robert, that might have been my chance. I had plenty of time to kill at the Warsaw train station and that led me to the nearby Empik bookstore in the adjacent mall. I didn’t spot any on the shelf, but I might not have been looking hard enough, there was a nice selection of both translated American comics as well as Franco-Belgian BD.

Anyway, after cooling our heels we thrown into the mix again. Trying to get five people, and their associated baggage onto a train already crammed with people was fun and I got to practice my Polish… Przepraszam! (Excuse me!) quite a bit.  Eventually we arrived in Gdańsk, got ripped off by a taxi driver, and collapsed into our rented apartment. The next day we had a chance to visit Gdańsk Long Market (Długi Targ). We had a chance to buy some artwork from some students at the Academy of Fine Arts there, but we took a pass on it – which I regret. That evening all of us were able to get a guided tour (via a 6 passenger golf cart) and visited St. Bridget’s Church (and it’s AMAZING amber alter) and the shipyards – both of which were key areas during the “solidarity” (Solidarność) movement of the early 1980s, led by activist Lech Wałęsa. We also got to see some of the historic sites along the main waterway.

The next day my wife, son and I (leaving Mom and Dad to rest) visited the remarkable Malbork Castle, a Brick Gothic castle complex located not far from Gdansk. It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Even though it was originally built in the 13th and significantly expanded in the 14th century, I was also interested to see how much of it was Rebuilt after WWII. So much of Poland was razed to the ground (including the previously mentioned Royal Palace in Warsaw), but so much of it was also rebuilt as well. An amazing example of the Polish people’s determination. Malbork was a castle that went on forever. Even our pre-recorded audio guide seemed exhausted by the end of the tour – and it didn’t make it any easier that we exited on the wrong side of the castle from the train station. Nothing like a trudge around the moat in the hot sun to put a cap on the day.

After that, we travelled by plane to Wrocław, a city on the Oder River in western Poland. I thought we’d be by-passing some of the train travel issues, but air travel has its own peculiarities – like missing luggage. We went to bed “pretty” (as my wife said) that night since none of us had a change of clothes. Luckily the next day we were able to get our bags and then the 3 of us (again, without parental supervision) went to check out the miniature world in Kolejkowo. As a “miniature model museum” enthusiast myself, it was inspiring. But I was pleased to see that even my wife and son were engaged by the expansive miniature city that was laid out before them. There was something to see in every tiny window  – and the promise of a “prize” if we found all the miniatures on the list ensured we looked in every one of them. Loved it. Wrocław is also known for it’s market square, but compared to the Old Town in Warsaw and the the Long Market in Gdansk, it wasn’t quite as amazing. It did have a lot of little brass dwarves to find though, so I’ll give it that.

Then it was back on a plane and off to Kraków. I kind of wish we’d had more time there because we didn’t really see much of the city. On the first day we were off on a bus – listening to Polish wedding music – to the mountains of Zakopane. We did manage to score (probably overpriced for tourists) Oscypek, a smoked cheese made of salted sheep milk exclusively in the Tatra Mountains region of Poland. Zakopane was nice enough, but coming from the region of Canada that has the Rocky Mountains of Jasper and Banff… well, Zakopane was cute. We also did have a nice afternoon relaxing in the hot springs – even if I did have to resort to my Canadian health care card and some math to convince the staff that my son was in fact sixteen years old and could be allowed into the adults’ “quiet zone” as well.

The next day we saw the The Wieliczka salt mine. Excavated from the 13th century, it produced table salt continuously until 1996, and was one of the world’s oldest operating salt mines. It is now an official Polish Historic Monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  You can check out the mine shafts (even if it IS a long walk down for Seniors… and I speak from experience) and the labyrinth of passageways. But the real attractions are the underground lake, the four chapels and the tons of statues – originally carved by the miners out of rock salt, but now also done by more contemporary artists. When we were leaving though, my Mom, Dad and I got separated from my wife and son (I was with the slow-walking group). However, once we hit the surface and there was no sign of them, I discovered that there were two separate exits from the mine – one where we were and the other one “in town”. That led me on a mad dash across several blocks looking for my wife and son. Luckily I eventually found them sitting patiently on a bench inside the “miner’s exit” building and we were all reunited.

That night we also did what my Mom had been looking forward to – an evening of Polish cooking and entertainment (dancing and singing). It was good, but considering what the Wieliczka tour guide had told us, I was expecting a bit more. The meal was plated when I was expecting more of a buffet, and the singing/dancing was restricted to two men and a woman and a bit of enthusiastic audience participation – including my Dad of all people. There are some things you can’t unsee. 🙂

Then it was back to Warsaw for a quick couple of days and then home. This trip gave me a new appreciation for my heritage – and probably because it was the first country I’ve visited where everyone seemed to expect me to speak the language, I felt a bit ashamed at not embracing it sooner. All in all it was an amazing and treasured experience, and I’m glad I got to take that trip with my family (especially my Mom) while I had the chance.