Łódź, Poland: The Weirdly Wonderful Place You've Never Heard of

A dark, dark past struggles to make way for a brighter future

Piotrkowska Street, a shopper’s paradise in Łódź Poland. Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

As a jazz drummer, John gets called to perform all over Europe, which is awesome when you’re a globe-trottin’, plane-lovin’ mama like Yours Truly here. John played a lot in Poland in the pre-pandemic days, and that’s where he first heard about the “black sheep” of Poland, a town called Łódź.

It’s pronounced “Woodge,” and if you were a native Polish speaker, you would mutter it under your breath, along with a string of equally indecipherable syllables that sound like the bastard child of a Russian father and French mother. It’s unnerving, being in a place—for six weeks, no less—where every street sign, every billboard, every magazine and every news broadcast is in a language that you understand not one word of. Unnerving, and an awful lot of fun. Younger Poles speak excellent English, most of them. Older Poles do not. They speak Russian and Polish. The farther out from the city centers you venture, the less chance you’re going to hear a word of your mother tongue.

I say go for it.

Łódź is an architect’s dream. You have everything here, from ramshackle to the sublime. Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

So, why is Łódź the “black sheep” of Poland? Let’s bone up on our history. Hitler kicked off WWII by invading Poland on September 1, 1939. W.H. Auden wrote a poem about it, possibly my favorite poem of all time. The Soviets invaded it sixteen days later. Hitler’s original plan was to make Poland a German playground, a place to summer and relax, and he held much the same view of Poles as he did of Jews, which is why he exterminated so many of them. Three million Polish Jews were put to death (90% of Poland’s Jewish population) and between 2-3 million ethnic Poles, including artists, scholars, teachers, doctors, priests, lawyers—in other words, the cream of Polish society.

That’s a dark, heavy history for any country to bear. Łódź was an unwilling ground zero for a lot of that. The Germans depopulated the factories that played a significant role in the city’s prosperity, stole all the machinery, and killed the craftspeople.

Ghost brides in Łódź. Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

Much of Łódź’s history is steeped in this darkness. Polish children that were sufficiently Aryan were kidnapped by the Nazis and sent to Germanification camps. Others were exterminated. After the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets annexed Poland, spreading a reign of terror almost as grim and terrible. As is true of most invaded peoples, there are stories of enormous heroism and bravery as well as those where neighbors were forced to turn in other neighbors in an effort to save their own families. I, personally, do not judge this. If my kids were on the line, there’s no telling what I might be capable of.

Grandma surveillance system, Łódź. Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

You can still feel a bit of this heaviness when you visit Łódź. But like spring weeds poking through a crack in the sidewalk, you can feel hope there, too. The architecture reflects this. Block after block of bleak Soviet architecture (full disclosure: I find much that is “true” and beautiful in dystopia) offers a crumbling tribute to the past. But there are lovely, modern buildings, too: a mall called Manufaktura, and a main artery called Piotrkowska Street, one of the longest commercial thoroughfares in Europe. Formerly a broken, dismal Polish town overrun by thieves and junkies, Łódź has now come into its own.

Mornings that John and I had coffee there, we were almost frightened by the quiet. Noisy, boisterous Italy it is not. And I wonder if that quiet is also a relic of Poland’s oppressive past.

We rented an AirBnB, small but tidy, in a building that smelled of cigarettes. Across the street was a delicatessen staffed by two no-nonsense Polish ladies whose forbidding countenances melted under the warmth of John’s irresistible Euro-American charm.

Łódź, fully rubyfied by fall. Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

Łódź has one of the lowest cost-of-living indices in Europe. Thirteen cents for a baguette. Thirty dollars a month for access to a world-class gym. We rode the quaint painted tram everywhere, no car necessary.

Poles are reserved, but not unfriendly. Łódź was a working vacation for me, so when I couldn’t get my browser out of Polish Google at the Brick coffee shop (our favorite haunt), a young techie solved the problem for free within ten minutes.

There are uber-hip, light-filled apartments for not much money to be found on Piotrkowska Street and surrounding areas. Restaurants serving international fare abound. One Sunday night (Łódź rolls up its carpets early, so don’t dawdle), we found ourselves at the only open pizza joint we could find. Our pizza had sugar on it, which for two people who live in Italy, tasted like blasphemy.

Moral of the story: eat at a normal restaurant or go to the nearby Lidl and buy what you need for dinner. Also, use the translator app on your phone when you’re at the store; otherwise, you’re going to go home with some preeetttty strange stuff.

He casts a long shadow, my darling does. Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

Since we were visiting in the fall, the leaves were in every jewel-tone imaginable and the skies were a bright October blue. We roamed all over the city and then returned to our warm, snug apartment, loving Łódź, and feeling very much at home there.

One of the things we loved about Łódź was the murals. They’re everywhere. Łódź is a city of murals, even some that are … questionable? Is that the word I’m looking for here? Photo by Stacey Eskelin.

Where’s the “strangest” place you’ve ever vacationed? I’d love to hear about it. Leave your comments below.