Rail route of the month: Slavic magic on a gentle trip to Zakopane, Poland

21.02.2024 - 18:21 / theguardian.com / Steven Spielberg

Nine trains leave Kraków each weekday to climb up to Poland’s premier mountain retreat, Zakopane. In 1936, the fastest trains to Zakopane took under 2½ hours. Almost a century later, after infrastructure renewal work lasting several years, just one of those nine trainsmatches the 1936 time. Such is the state of railways in some parts of rural Poland.

Anyone in a hurry to reach Zakopane from Kraków will take the bus, which runs nonstop and takes two hours. But the train is a gentler, greener option. With time on my hands, I opt for one of the slower trains, which promises 48 intermediate stops. Yes, 48. There’s a dash of Slavic magic in the litany of stations along the route: Sieniawa, Skawina, Stronie, Stryszów, Szaflary.

We rattle south from Kraków’s main station, passing on our right St Nicholas Church, which has a fine Armenian votive cross in its garden. Then to the left is one of the two Jewish cemeteries in the Kazimierz district. Soon we are crossing the Vistula River on an impressive bridge with a complex lattice of girders. Until 1846, this meandering river marked the frontier between the Free City of Kraków (Rzeczpospolita Krakowska) and the Austro-Hungarian empire.

We shudder to a stop at Zabłocie, a community which in Kraków’s heyday as a city-state was where Habsburg bureaucrats could monitor the comings and goings there. It was from here that the salt mined at Wieliczka was shipped downriver, and the place bustled with commercial energy. These days, it is where tourists come to see the former enamelware factory featured in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

We stop at a medley of suburban stations, many of them brand new or recently rebuilt. Sanktuarium is the most striking, serving the memorial complex and sanctuary dedicated to the late Polish pope, now canonised as Saint John Paul II. This rail route touches on many places that featured in the early life of the future pope.

Our stuttering escape from Kraków affords views of modern churches, rusting railway sidings and concrete flyovers. Oriental domes in the distance signal a nightclub rather than Byzantium. We continue, slipping softly through Skawina, which for decades endured pollution from an aluminium smelter, and then cruise through orchards planted long ago by Bernardine (Franciscan) monks.

From Skawina the route south to Zakopane is single track. We are heading south, to the Tatras Mountains, near the Slovakian border, but first we cross the Beskid Hills. The beauty of this train journey today is the way the train dances with the topography. Here and there it changes direction, occasionally striking assertively south but more commonly following the warp and weft of the landscape. In places the hillsides tilt more sharply,