Mayor Krzysztof Baran opens the doors of a brand new spa. He shows the swimming pool, the jacuzzi, saunas, mud baths, an upper floor with a dozen ultramodern rehabilitation devices that look like small space shuttles. Outside it runs along a wall of wooden branches, along which water flows with salt and evaporates. Good for the lungs, he says as he walks the watchtower. He stops there for a moment and points out, “Look, Russia lies behind those pines.”
No water flows in the pool. All devices are packed in plastic. And there are no guests in the spa. Only dead flies. Lots of dead flies.
The problem? There is no investor who wants to build the necessary hotel for this spa town of Nowa Wies Ilawecka near the border with the Russian Exclave Kaliningrad. And the spa cannot open without stay.
Mayor Baran receives a weekly visit from possible investors. “They all ask two questions,” says Baran. “How many migrants cross the border? And is there a danger from Russia?”
To the first question is the simple answer: no. Migrants cross the border with Belarus-about 350 kilometers away. “Many people cannot keep the different limits apart,” says Baran. The answer is the same to the second question: no, there is no danger from Russia. “On the Russian side of the border is a swamp area, so we are not afraid of a raid.”
Mayor Krzysztof Baran sees in his municipality that “more storks live in some villages than people.”
Photo Anna Liminowicz
Are you perhaps interested in a holiday home?
Yet all investors drop out.
As a result, Baran’s municipality of Gorowo Ilaweckie, which borders on the Russian exclave Kaliningrad, is emptying at an unprecedented pace. In 2016, Poland closed the border crossings with Kaliningrad, after Russia invaded the Crimea. Since then, the number of inhabitants has fallen by around one hundred a year – which is a lot on around 6,400 inhabitants in total. After the large -scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine in 2022, that number increased to 140 people per year. The problems only get bigger, Baran sees: “The number of dying and departures is increasing exponentially and the growth is not forthcoming, among all 6,400 inhabitants are only thirty children.” Including his own ten -year -old daughter.
The war in Ukraine has only increased demographic problems in Polish border areas. Investors stay away, due to the border closures with Kaliningrad there is less work and tourists also avoid the areas. Even though it is safe in Poland and there is no direct threat from Russia.
Mayor Baran does not give up: “Are you perhaps interested in a holiday home?” He almost desperately asks the reporter and photographer.
A fitness room for the residents of Nowa Wies Ilawecka, where fewer and fewer people live.
Mayor Krzysztof Baran in the brand new spa town.
Photo Anna Liminowicz
Mayor Krzysztof Baran runs through the new spa, where the swimming pool is still empty.
Photo Anna Liminowicz
Laggered granny
Before the border closed, the residents of the trade with Russia lived. Poland picked up cheap cigarettes and fuel from Russia, the Russians came to buy meat. The supermarkets and other stores on the border were the busiest in Poland. “Now the border is another iron curtain,” sighs Mayor Baran.
Almost literally, because after 2022 the Poles began to build on the eastern shield – a closed border with high fences, rows of barbed wire, camera surveillance, tank ditches, bunkers and soon also mine fields. The result? Shops closed, companies left. “The only chance for young people on a job is with the army or border guard,” says Baran.
The absence of investments causes dilemmas at the town hall. “More storks live in some villages than people,” says Baran. “Do we have to construct asphalt roads for those abandoned villages? So that one lagging Oaatje is more accessible to the ambulance? That ultimately does not pay for itself.”
Although he also sees the added value of such a lagging grandmother. “It is useful if someone continues to live in this border zone in case the Russians do invade,” says Baran. “Then at least the person can call that the Russians are there.”
With her 91 years, Stefania Kowaliczyn is the oldest resident of Zywkowo.
Photo Anna Liminowicz
Ukrainian pop music
On the border with Kaliningrad is the stork capital of Poland: Zywkowo. The stork nests are visible on every house. “My husband could not handle violence,” says Anna Andrejev, widow of the local ‘Stork King’. “So when he saw storks fighting for a nest, he built a new one for the loser.” There are now more storks than people in Zywkowo. There are still 40 people on paper, in practice there are 19. The number of storks: 96. But for how long, the question is. Because storks leave in places where no more people are.
Anna Andrejev receives German tourists in her Ooievaarsmuseum in Zywkowo.
Anna Andrejev, widow of the local ‘Stork King’ in the Ooievaarsmuseum in Zywkowo.
Photo Anna Liminowicz
Stork nests are visible everywhere on the roofs in Zywkowo.
Photo Anna Liminowicz
“Young people are leaving because there is no work here,” says Grzegorz Wincenciak. The village lives on pension money and some tourists who come for the storks. “Many tourists stay away because they are checked here three times a day by the border guard,” says Wincenciak, drinking a beer in his garden just after noon. He blames the demographic problems mainly on the previous Pis government “who closed the border unnecessarily and announced as if there were already fighting,” says WinCenciak. “But nothing happens here, it’s quiet.”
According to Stefania Kowaliczyn, the Russians were always more afraid of the Poles than the other way around
Storks in the Poland border region and the Russian exclave Kaliningrad.
Photo Anna Liminowicz
That is what the oldest resident of the village, Stefania Kowaliczyn (91), who arrived in Zywkowo as a thirteen -year -old – repatriated from Ukraine. Before the Second World War, this area belonged to East Prussia and it was mainly inhabited by Germans, who forced to leave after the war. New residents came from Ukraine, says Kowaliczyn while in the background Ukrainian pop music sounds of the neighbors. “Four families – about thirty people lived in a house,” she says screaming – because hard of hearing. Now she only lives there with her daughter -in -law. Their partners have died, the (grand) children moved.
According to Kowaliczyn, the Russians were always more afraid of the Poles than the other way around. Although she has never crossed the border. “The border was always guarded. Once, in 1965, a Russian fell in love with a girl from the village. We sent him back and he ended up in the Russian prison because he had crossed the border.”
And what if the Russians come anyway? “Ah,” Kowaliczyn dismisses the question. “They still move on to the city and are not interested in the last remaining elderly people in this village.”
‘We do not live in a post -war era, but in a pre -war period’
A stork at sunset in the Polish border region.
Photo Anna Liminowicz