- Water and sweetened drinks are sold more during the day. Alcohol is consumed in large quantities in the evening – Biedronka employees say in an interview with Onet
- The time when the holidays were a time when we were willing to experiment with cooking is over, sellers say.
- — We are going to the mountains tomorrow, so we will make sandwiches, eat kabanos sausages, and boil hard-boiled eggs. Our children, I regret very much, do not drink water. That is why I bought them cola, says one of the tourists who showed us her purchases
- More similar texts can be found on the Onet home page.
In the summer of 2022 and 2024, we published on Onet a conversation with the owner of a small guesthouse in Podhale, the main topic of which was… garbage. Mr. Henryk, separating the waste left behind by tourists, managed to say interesting things about how Poles behave on vacation.
– Garbage doesn’t lie and shows that prices forced us to save money – this is what a hotelier said a year ago who evaluated the behavior of tourists based on the contents of waste bins. In 2022, we wrote that vacationers like to have a good time on vacation. A year later, the image of a Polish tourist has changed significantly. And in 2023, prices forced vacationers to save money and there were no leftovers from culinary experiences in their trash.
Now back to the topic. We decided to check again what Poles buy on holiday. But this time, we will check it differently. Instead of digging through the trash, we decided to just ask about it.
“What is this, the tax office?”
We asked customers leaving one of Biedronka’s stores in Zakopane to show us their purchases. People often responded to this with laughter.
– Oh, mother. What is this? The tax office will now check where I can get my beer – joked Mr. Michal, a tourist from Nysa. After a while he became more serious and added that there was nothing unusual in his basket. – We came to Zakopane for a vacation. We have an apartment with a kitchen, but we don’t cook dinner here. We found a nice restaurant nearby where a two-course dinner plus compote costs PLN 25. That’s a good price. More or less the same as in a similar place in our city. We eat there every day. Here we only bought snacks and something to drink in the evening.
The basket of the tourist from Opole County included several types of beer (in glass bottles, because beer in them is tastier according to our interlocutor), potato chips for children, bread, butter, tomatoes, apples, and watermelons.
“Watermelon is the fruit of the holiday,” explains Mr. Michel’s wife. “When I was a child, I remember eating it during the holidays. My husband has similar memories. That’s why we have a little family tradition and we eat it every day with our children on holiday. We sit together in the evening and eat. The juice runs down your chin, the seeds dance between your teeth. It’s funny, the woman adds.
“Everyone is thirsty”
Our next interlocutors are a family from Tarnow. They leave the market with a quick step. However, when we talk to them, they willingly stop. Their basket contains almost… only water. Two packs of small plastic bottles. One water with gas, the other without.
— We just got into Zakopane after our hike. The heat is unforgiving. There was something wrong with the air conditioning in our car. Everyone is thirsty, the man says. – That’s why, before we got to our accommodation, I stopped here to get some water. I took more. It will be perfect for a backpack for mountain trekking. He explains that we plan to hike a lot in the mountains.
– There will be time for more shopping in the afternoon. We rented a studio with its own kitchen. We want to cook something. But at the moment I don’t have the strength to walk between the shelves. – You need to rest a little after riding in this scorching heat, – he adds.
“Perfect thirst quencher”
Another family leaves Biedronka with a basket containing the bulk of the purchases, which are drinks. This is a dozen or so of beer, cola, and oranges. In addition, a kitchen towel, tomatoes, two cans of Cabanos sausages, an apple, a canned pie, butter, yellow cheese, hard candy, a few pieces of chocolate, and eggs.
basket full of shopping
– Tomorrow we are planning a longer hike to the Tatras. So most of the stuff is just provisions that we put in a backpack, says a woman pushing a trolley. – We will make sandwiches, eat kapanos sausages, boil hard-boiled eggs. Our children, I am very sorry, do not drink water. That is why I bought them Coke. We take beer to the mountains, but without alcohol. Perfect for quenching thirst. After returning to our headquarters, we will drink beer with a percentage. We will sit on the veranda after the children go to bed. It will be fun.
As our interviewee explained, she goes shopping every day during her stay in Zakopane. She buys food for breakfast and dinner. Sometimes there is something ready (dishes to be heated) for dinner. – We have a fridge in our accommodation, but it is small. “That’s why I wouldn’t fill it with more food at once, because it simply wouldn’t fit in it,” he explains.
“mandatory set”
“We have rolls, cheese, butter and bananas,” says Aldona, a tourist from Warsaw. “A must-have for mountain trekking,” he adds with a laugh.
Mrs. Aldona shopping. Rolls, butter, cheese, bananas. A woman will take everything in her backpack on a mountain trip.
Ready Meals and Passion Fruit Vodka
During our visit to the market, we met several other tourists out shopping. Most of them had pretty much the same thing in their baskets. We didn’t see anything unusual about anyone. Maybe it was a coincidence, but no one was shopping for hard alcohol.
“There will be time for that later,” says one of the Biedronka employees who is leaving work. He speaks to Onet willingly, but does not want to introduce himself. He cannot, because the network does not officially allow employees to speak to the press. – During the holidays, we order more of everything to the store. As the tourist season begins, the number of customers increases, and therefore sales also rise. We have to eat a lot of chips, water, sweetened drinks and beer every day. We literally sell several pallets of beer a day. Sales of ready-made meals also increase significantly during the holidays. Some dumplings, ready-made noodles and potato cutlets. He adds that there is also a large amount of soups and Chinese dishes that can be heated in jars.
As one of the Biedronka employees adds, when it comes to strong alcohol, most of it is sold in the evening. – Then every second customer comes for some wine, vodka or some other alcohol. However, more sophisticated varieties sell less, although recently flavored vodkas with watermelon, mango and passion fruit flavors have been a hit. People turn them into “holiday drinks”. In winter, mulled wine is sold again at the stands. “Seasonality of trade,” he adds with a laugh.
Restaurants don’t make as much money as they used to.
Heavy traffic at food markets worries Zakopane restaurateurs. – Today, customers who dined with us two or three years ago have moved out of necessity to three “Polish favorites”: Lidl, Biedronka and Żabka. They also make preserves in jars and bring them with them on vacation to the mountains. I know this because I also have apartments to rent. After many trips, the most waste that has to be thrown away is the jars, for example, with the bijoux. Such people no longer go out for drinks in the evening, they just… drink a bottle on the balcony. This is what middle-class vacations look like today. It’s a picture straight out of the 1990s, says Dariusz Gryniewicz, co-owner of several restaurants in Zakopane, Kraków and on the road between the two cities.
Echo Richards embodies a personality that is a delightful contradiction: a humble musicaholic who never brags about her expansive knowledge of both classic and contemporary tunes. Infuriatingly modest, one would never know from a mere conversation how deeply entrenched she is in the world of music. This passion seamlessly translates into her problem-solving skills, with Echo often drawing inspiration from melodies and rhythms. A voracious reader, she dives deep into literature, using stories to influence her own hardcore writing. Her spirited advocacy for alcohol isn’t about mere indulgence, but about celebrating life’s poignant moments.
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