Beware of the marten – in the mountains

The reasons why investors should not be looking to the Bieszczady Mountains can be roughly divided into factors that are natural and civilised. The former include, rather awkwardly, the hordes of wild animals that seem to roam at will across the region. The backyard of the guest house where I spent my last holiday was regularly visited by a small brown bear. The baby bear actually looked rather sweet, especially when it was eating dog food from the bowls. But this didn’t stop the terrified owner of the guesthouse from calling the forester and trying to persuade him to remove the animal before its much more easily agitated mother turned up or it got addicted to Pedigree Chum. These efforts came to nothing, since according to the forester there are no large bears in the area. This had to be the case because all adult members of the species wear telemetric collars. Unless it was a tourist from Slovakia... And since the bear turned out to be rather taciturn, it was difficult to tell which country he was from. But finally, unruffled by human intervention, the animal disappeared into the backwoods. The hotelier spread his hands helplessly. “These are the Bieszczady Mountains,” he said, with calm resignation. I was personally the victim of other members of the local fauna a few days later, when I was starting my car outside the guest house one morning. The cold engine had been gurgling oddly, but finally I got it started. However, a light flashed on the dashboard a moment later to inform me that the alternator was failing. I lifted the bonnet from under which I pulled out the broken transmission belt. The owner of the guesthouse, who appeared out of nowhere (good managers can sometimes do that), pointed out the small incisions with his finger. “A marten, sir. These are the Bieszczady Mountains,” he said with barely concealed satisfaction. So I had to endure a hair-raising drive of almost 50 km to the nearest car service centre, during which all the car’s electrical devices stopped working in succession as the battery ran down. And the sharp bends on Bieszczady roads certainly feel a lot less romantic when the power steering is off... When the mobile phone network went down, that wasn’t too charming, either, as it effectively cut us off from the outside world for almost two days. No phone and no internet. We started feeling a bit like Bieszczady settlers who, having turned their backs on civilisation, had simply gone off into the mountains and disappeared. If the signal went down for just ten minutes in the centre of a large city, the number of lawsuits and suicides wouldn’t bear thinking about – but in ​​Cisna and surrounding villages, the worst reaction to a two-day interruption is a shrug at the most.

Well, these are the Bieszczady Mountains, said the owner of the guesthouse, repeating his mantra for the umpteenth time. Meanwhile, the owner of a pizzeria in Bieszczady told me a colourful story about how he once tried to find a plumber to mend a damaged hydrophore pumping system. The breakdown had forced him to close the business temporarily and, of course, the long May weekend was approaching – those few days when the service sector in Bieszczady can make hay and thus stay afloat for the next two months before the summer season begins. It turned out that the only professional within a 50 km radius was employed full-time in a national park, so he could only take on extra work at the weekend, but not that particular one because he had already promised his wife that he would repair a leaky boiler in their bathroom. The caterer, faced with the prospect of ruin, then desperately expanded his search area. And then by a few times more. Eventually he found an available plumber... in Silesia. The specialist turned out to be an enthusiast of the Bieszczady Mountains, so he combined the job with a bit of tourism. “I wouldn’t come to any other mountains," he told the pizzeria owner with dignity. Therefore, dear investors, give this area a wide berth. It’s not even necessary to send analysts out to gauge the investment potential of any of the plots here. It would be a costly trip and, besides, analysts on business trips tend to drink a great deal and then crash their company cars. Ask yourself if you are really ready to have to deal with martens under your bonnet, bears from Slovakia and plumbers from Silesia. I could save you a few złoty by telling you the answer: no, you’re not. Because these are the Bieszczady Mountains.