Travel in Masuria?

What situation regarding Belarus? Belarus has been behaving silly for years, decades even, staging all sorts of provocations including military exercises near the Polish border, importing illegal immigrants from Africa and Asia and pushing them into Poland, lots of other incidents, and all the time life in the region has continued as normal.

It kind of reminds me the histeria over Ukraine, particularly coming from the US. They made it sound as if the war was in Poland.

I'm in Poland now and all these recent antics with the Wagner mercenaries in Belarus is largely seen here as typical harmless Russian saber rattling. I highly doubt the couple hundred Wagner fighters in Belarus will dare to attack on the Suwalki Gap, if they do article 5 will be triggered and Putin's regime will collapse. Nato has been planning for such a scenario for years and the Russians know this. By October this will largely be forgotten, just like all the other Russian attempts to scare the west, remember the nuclear powerplant scare and the supposed European winter without electricity? Besides, the Belarus dictator, Lukashenko, has done everything in his power to stay out of any actual fighting, I doubt he wants to start now.

I would advise you to proceed with your trip to Masuria, a criminally underrated part of Poland, the beauty of the Masurian Lakes District rivals that of the English Lakes District. Please go and enjoy no need to worry.

Thanks for this! I am very much aware that our media loves to get clicks by hype, I was hoping it was just that again. I'm so excited to visit - the plan was first just to see the village my great grandfather came from (Krasnybor, near Augustow), but the area looks amazing and we've expanded to at least 3 days. I'm in Minnesota and it's amazing how similar the landscape and outdoor culture appear - can't wait to see for ourselves.
Does anyone have any tips or can't miss spots for travel in the area? We're renting a car from Warsaw. We will have 2 teen boys with us.

Please don’t let media hype deter your plans. My last trip to Poland was just six weeks after the invasion of Ukraine. I fell prey to everyone state side saying I was crazy to be going and abbreviated some of my Polish itinerary. I’m still incredibly sorry I did that.
I love the country so much I was trying to entice my husband to visit with me this year. He hates flying so an European flight usually means I have to dangle a pretty big carrot out there for him. Renting a self hire canal boat usually does the trick as he loves the water. I did some digging around the Masuria Lakes area and found there are a huge variety of boats you can charter for the day or week, chartered or self-hire with no license required. An even grander surprise was how affordable they were compared to French and English canal boats. . It didn’t work out for us this year but it’s rattling around the squirrel cage for next year. One of the companies we were looking at was Mazury-boats.pl but google others. Staying on a boat puttering around the lakes sounds like something teenagers would enjoy. Our daughter did.

Enjoy Poland. It’s a beautiful country and the people are even more so.

Hi,

If you have the opportunity to go Masuria, do it. The Masurian Lakes area is intriguing, fascinating. I would prefer going in the summer since October is already cold. Augustow was the site of a pretty awful battle between the Russians and the French.

Does anyone have any tips or can't miss spots for travel in the area? We're renting a car from Warsaw. We will have 2 teen boys with us.

Well Masuria is the old heartland of the Teutonic Knights crusader state, there are quite a few interesting things to see around the Lakes District. Gizycko, Mikolajki and Wegorzewo are good laketowns to visit, though October might be out of season. You also have Wolfsschanze (aka the Wolf's Lair), Hitler's eastern front headquarters, it's a complex of large concrete bunkers that still stand to this day. The famous 20 July Plot, an assassination attempt against Hitler, took place at the Wolf's Lair in 1944. Nidzica Castle is probably the closest Teutonic Knights castle of note, but there are many smaller ones throughout the region.

We just returned from kayaking and visiting Mikołajki yesterday.
The area is very much a summer playground. Visiting in October will be like visiting a MN lake in fall - quiet. If you have kids and want to do an indoor water park (i.e. see Poles at play), Hotel Golembewski in Mikołajki has an indoor water park. You are permitted to stay elsewhere but visit for the day. My kids enjoyed it; keep in mind, though that it may be smaller than ones in the USA.

If you're interested in WW 2 history, I would echo that Wilczy Szaniec (Wolf's Lair, or Hitler's bunker) is interesting.

In October, you could still go kayaking or hiking, though I suppose many of the seasonal businesses may have closed up shop by the then. As I'm a teacher, I can only visit in the summer, so I'm making presumptions.

I happened to bike near an army base in Podlasie the day that some Belarussian choppers allegedly violated Polish air space, and I didn't notice anything amiss.

As long as you aren't anywhere near the Ukrainian border, I wouldn't worry. Even near the Ukrainian border, there was only one missile strike in Poland, but now the fighting has moved way East.

Be prepared for some crazy drivers and some bumpy roads, though. Poles are the worst drivers I've seen, and sometimes pass another vehicle with much less room to spare than most American drivers, even expecting the driver coming the other way to give them room.

Enjoy your trip!

Hi,

Did you have the opportunity to go to masuria?

On my 1992 trip , the first one back after the fall of the Wall, I saw travel agencies in Germany, some located in train stations, offering bus tours to that specific area of the Masurien Lakes , now that such travel into Poland , including the former Prussian East, was accessible. One woman then in her early 40s did such a guided bus tour from Berlin to that region and beyond.