The beginning of the 90s, a wooden mountain shelter somewhere in Bieszczady, with no electricity or any conveniences, covered in snow in the winter, always crowded with travelers hungry for a warm meal and a hot tea. Ewa, a teenager from Łowicz, dreaming of escaping from the little town and Robert, a 30-year old from Cracow, a mountain guide with long moustache, wearing a red GOPR sweater, a host at the PTTK’s mountain shelter in Mała Rawka.
Ewa comes to Bieszczady in 1993 for a camping trip with friends. Native city of Łowicz does not interest her, she wants to run away. Warsaw is not it, she dreams about the mountains. Friends from Łódź take her to a mountain shelter near Wetlina ran by their friend. She falls in love on her first trip to Bieszczady. With mountains, shelter home atmosphere, amazing people that come there, sing and play guitars in the magical surrounding. She runs out of money for holiday voyages and knows that she has to go back home, yet she decides to beg “Mr. Robert” to let her stay in the mountain shelter. She’ll pay for food and accommodation with her work. Ewa stays in Mała Rawka until the end of holidays. By then she knows: this is her goal, this is a house where she feels safe, where she comes back for every bank holiday, vacation or long weekends, even though the trip from Łowicz to Mała Rawka takes 12 hours. She doesn’t stop when she starts her studies in Wrocław – the distance grows (700 km, often hitchhiked) but she never grows tired.
mountain shelter by Mała Rawka today…
and views that make it easy to fall in love with them…
this fellow seems to like it already!
In 1995, after 2 years of coming back to Mała Rawka, it turns out that “Mr. Robert” is a special person for Ewa. They start dating. After two months, Robert proposes to her in Wrocław. Ewa decides to give it a shot: they leave Łowicz for Bieszczady in a small Fiat, taking just a small box of books and one duvet. They get married in the autumn, she switches from day to external studies and starts an adventurous life o a “real tough girl from the mountains”. Locals take it sceptically: Robert has been a man of the mountains for many years while Ewa is a much younger girl from the city. She doesn’t care about that and focuses on what’s important for in life for HER. Working with people makes her invigorated and convinced that what she’s doing is right. She takes care after a large mountain shelter, cooks for guests, becomes a mother and a protector for all travellers coming to Mała Rawka after long trips. 24/7, 365 days a year. Day and night. Sometimes it’s hard. When she goes 7 km up in 3-metres of snow, with groceries in her backpack. When she travels to Wrocław, every second Thursday, 24 hours one way. When she does not get any days off, since there are no days in the mountains without tourists…
October 1995 – coming back to Mała Rawka after wedding – a picture from Ewa and Robert Żechowscy archive
After a while, Ewa and Robert start taking care about another mountain shelter in Ustrzyki Górne. They work all the time – Ewa in Rawka, Robert in Ustrzyki. They are so busy with work, that despite being together for several years, they have no time to think about children. How can you start a family if you live on 9 square metres and every morning have to wait for the toilet in line with crowds of tourists? In 2000 they start thinking about running away from the mountain shelter and having their own home. They buy a parcel in the little village called Smerek, located a few kilometres from Wetlina. That’s where Chata Wędrowca stands today – a place that everyone visiting Bieszczady knows. From the very beginning, they are aware that Wetlina is a place with the largest touristic potential in Bieszczady. That’s where they want to start a restaurant and work for their own, not for somebody else like in the mountain shelter. They fight: for a few years they look after he mountain shelters and build the restaurant. In the meantime Ewa gets pregnant. Chata opens for business on 27th December 2003. They still try to ride both horses without falling but it’s becoming more and more difficult. An unfortunate accident in Mała Rawka in 2006 means it’s time to say goodbye to the mountain shelters. They move to Wetlina for good. Since 2006 they live here, work, and accommodate travellers looking for a room or a decent meal after a hiking trip. They still feed tourists, like they used to in Mała Rawka.
entrance to the inn and a list of preserves that makes my mouth water!
Nowadays Chata Wędrowca is a destination where pretty much everybody coming down from the mountains is heading. A place that grew over the last decade from one room and four tables to a big restaurant with 130 seats, that serves a few hundred lunches a day in the high season. Despite that, it remained charming, cosy and homespun. The food is not sophisticated, but still very tasty and what’s even more important: true! No instants, no tricks, no frozen foods. Nothing new in the big cities, but in tiny touristic villages such as Wetlina it’s still a rare ideal. A Giant Pancake with blueberries and cream is one of the musts in Chata. It originates from Mała Rawka, where they wanted to make food for the travellers using ingredients that they had. So they took flour, eggs, milk and blueberries that grew nearby. Today it’s a delicacy that some people dream about at night and a meal with a MADE IN BIESZCZADY Local Product certificate. It’s name, appearance and recipe are protected by law since 2012 which means that you won’t find it anywhere else! If you’re not feeling like ordering sweets, think about a grilled trout or some of the delicious meats – i.e. spicy oven-baked lamb or pork neck with cabbage and potatoes. We also liked fried cheese with cranberry sauce – even better than in Czech Republic o Slovakia.
Half of a Giant Pancake (PLN 18) – it’s the second entry it’s featured in but it absolutely deserves it 🙂
great fried cheese
oven-baked lamb
You can buy things like prune and blueberry jam with nuts, raisins and cloves or a cherries with blueberries, vanilla and cloves in Sklepik Wędrowca (Travellers Shop). They taste divine! And if you have friends who love Kofola and Lentilky, you can find all the popular Slovakian flavours in the shop as well (Studentska too!). And beer of course. On one hand a Czech and Slovak beer pub and on the other great beers from local brewery called Ursa Maior (more about it soon on the blog!).
And if you manage to book a night at Ewa and Robert’s, you will find yourself in an amazing place, where you instantly feel at home, where you feel the warmth of the fireplace in the evening, where a black cat walks around the furniture, a big dog called Blaszka sleeps on the carpet and the scent of fried jams comes out of the kitchen. You just don’t want to leave.
a perfect place – porch at Ewa and Robert’s
Be sure to take a walk to the mountain shelter by Mała Rawka and think that despite all the difficulties it’s worth doing things your own way. Despite everything. Ewa and Robert are the best examples here. Their story is admirable and when you listen to Ewa telling it, you can feel the weight of the backpack she carried to the mountain shelter in the snow and at the same time you feel the excitement of a young girl running away for her beloved mountains every single time she can. Such stories prove that Bieszczady is indeed an unusual and magical place…
Ewa and Robert with children in their beloved mountains – fot. Marek
#MagicalBieszczady is a project that aims to show the extraordinariness of this region, the beauty of the nature and the stories of the locals. New TV series “Wataha” takes place in Bieszczady – it premieres on 12th October 2014 on HBO. More to come soon at hbo.pl/magicznebieszczady
*the entry was written in cooperation with
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