IN THE POLISH GLOBTROTTER WORLD
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It's very hard to establish when the globetrotter movement was founded in Poland.
It all began in the 70's in the student community when organising foreign travel
became common. Soon they were called "trampings". They were organised
by the students themselves without any guidance from travel agencies.
There were also more and more brave individual travellers an the trial using
the official assigned foreign drafts (after a lot of trouble you could buy at
the official rate five times lower than the unofficial one the equivalent of
US$ 150) the motto "The world for US$ 150 became popular. With this magic
amount Polish globetrotters began to wander all over the world.
In 1976 in Kraków, in the student travel agency "Almatur", one of
the main organisers of tramping expeditions, Andrzej
Urbanik ("Tourbanik") involved BIT (The Bank of Tramping Information).
At the beginning it was just a note-book with travel raports done by him and
his friends. The idea turned out to be excellent and soon BIT grown to the size
of large archives. In 1994 Bit was converted into TravelBIT - travel centre
which works in an uncomertial way and specialises in tramping information.
However, very often it turned out that during gathering information it was necessary
to contact the people who had travelled in the places we wanted to go. Getting
in contact with the proper people wasn't always easy, and very often didn't
guarantied success. When Andrzej Urbanik ("Tourbanik") couldn't get
any information about Indonesia and "friendly" informant advised him
that he should learn by his own mistakes. Andrzej want to find out for himself
about the difficulties. When he with his friend Krzysztof Kieć got to Indonesia,
they had the idea of organising a meetings of globetrotters in Poland. It was
in 1985 on Bali. After returning home they organised a "call to arms"
and one November evening over 50 travellers came to Harbutowice near Kraków.
The idea, again turned out to be excellent and from than on every year in November
in different places in Poland Polish and foreign travellers meet at OSOTT (Polish
Globetrotters Meetings) - the main travellers meeting. It's in the form of a
symposium where people present slides and posters from all over the world and
various problems connected with travelling are discussed. The most important
OSOTT's session is "Geography of Travelling"
The sum up OSOTT is the forum for exchanging information and a place with a
very special atmosphere for experienced travellers. In 1990 travellers who were
a little less experienced proposed organising a course for globetrotters. In
this Way The OPG (Meeting for Young Globetrotters) was formed. The formula of
this meeting is as follows: more experienced travellers share their knowledge
with those who want to set off on the trial. OPG has been organised a few times
already and has made it easy to realise the dreams of travelling for many people
who from that time have believed in themselves and set off their journeys. Recently
OPG has also been called "The World for Everyone".
Publications have played very important role from the beginning of the globetrotter
movement.
From 1987 to 1991 Polish journal "Światowid" presented some columns
for travelling: "Vademecum Globtrotera" and "Klub Globtroterów"
edited by Liliana Olchowik and Andrzej Urbanik ("Tourbanik"). They
constituted the main forum for exchanging travel information . from 1989 BIT
has released its own publications - "Globetrotter(r)" and "Travel(r)".
The members of OSOTT became the authors of the first globetrotter guide-books
in Poland. The most popular example is "Tramping Guide-book - Burma, Thailand,
Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia" by Andrzej Urbanik ("Tourbanik"),
published in 1987. With this guide-book a few generations of wanderers have
visited this beautiful region.
In 1996 the first book called „Przez Świat”
(ACROSS THE WORLD) were released to be a real blockbuster. Each volume contains
a few raports of journeys to the most interesting parts of the world by Polish
& European Globetrotters. The raports consist of mainly practical information
which allow you start a journey (even if you are an absolute beginner). This
books are an excellent supplement for tourist guides. They are designed for
experienced travellers as well as for dreamers. They turn out to be very helpful
in educating
people who take up tourism as a profession. In the next volumes of „Przez
Świat” you can also get some information about globetrotters’
meetings – „OSOTT” (Polish Globetrotters
Meetings) and „Świat dla Każdego” (World for everybody). You
can also find an enquiry information these meetings. This publication „Przez
Świat” turned out to be a real blockbuster!
Probably a lot of confusion was caused by the book by Edi Pyrek "Let the
word think you are crazy - get India spending only US$ 30!". After reading
it many uncertain dreamers set off for a journey........
e-mail:travelbit@travelbit.pl
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