Stonka
Lowlanders

Summary/Abstract: Lowlanders (cepry) pose a a genuine challenge for reflections on the ”phenomenon of Zakopane”, its meaning as a cultural project, and its place in the collective imagination of the Poles. Thousands of visitors flowing in and out of Zakopane and the Tatra Mts. comprise the true Great Alien and from the vantage point of the local residents - the invisible (mass-scale) man, thanks to whom, nonetheless, and under whose pressure the mentioned phenomenon continues and is subject to change. Probably nowhere in the olden and new “resort towns” of Europe has the antagonism between the local residents and the visitors been elevated to such a degree within a curious mythologisation. What did the ”lowlanders” and the ”town-dwellers” perceive and were capable of comprehending when confronted with Zakopane and the Tatras – this is a prominent question to which no one has so far discovered an answer. Scorned, they maunder next to us (the presumably superior local inhabitants), vanish, and then, in the manner of some natural phenomenon, reappear – after all, Zakopane would simply not exist without its cepry.

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