Tykocin, Podlasie, Poland.

Tickling Tykocin. Tykocin (pronounced ti-ko-chin) is a village/town in Podlasie on the lovely Narew river. It was once a thriving town of around 4,000 people and half of this was a Jewish shtetel (the West side of town). You can read more about them here. After the war, as one can imagine, this town had lost a great many of its population. The Baroque style synagogue is one of the best preserved in Poland and is from the mid 17th Century. It has a tragic history, like much of Poland, but today the town is growing back into a tourism location based on Jewish past as well as the surrounding nature.

The second building with a low roof was a typical shape of a Jewish merchant house in Poland around the 18th/19th Century. You can see these buildings all over Poland, especially in the towns of Podlaskie

The view from the window of our restaurant Galeria Sztuki i Smaku "Opowieści z Narwi "

A podpiwek (pre-beer, meaning a non-alcoholic fermented drink) it is often made as part of the beer making process.

Fried river white bait

Pike with a herb sauce and buckwheat

Perch on spinach

Amazing fresh water lobster pasta!

The bridge over the Narew

The "fake" castle as some locals call it. A re-built castle run as a hotel and function centre based on an original castle that once stood there.

A symbol of the area, the white stork migrates to Podlaskie every year to have babies and then return southwards.

The aforementioned synagogue 

It still needs a little love.

The fields around the area were full of hay bales. Always a fun photograph.

Barn Storming.

Sometimes in life we miss out because we are in a rush. When in Warsaw, I am always seeing people whirl around me, running for buses, trams, trains when chances are they would only need to wait a maximum of ten minutes for the next one. When we rush, we miss the little things. I remember when I would catch the train to work and walk down Rundle Mall in Adelaide. At first I would always rush to get to work early, then one day a woman smiled at me, it made me smile. I then continued to smile at people as I walked down the mall those morning following, some people smiled back, some thought I was a serial killer but it was this that slowed me down. Then I started to look around me, it was so early in the morning there wasn't many people to be smiling at like a chuckle headed loon, so I started to look past the shop window displays and the horribly ugly signage associated with sales, new shipments, or whatever else they would try to rope the customers in with. I looked up, I saw the old building facades the beautiful bricks that you would never see in the "glitz" of the shop fronts. From then on I have tried to look at all the little things around me. From sewer covers, to building finishes. So this post is about the little bits of a 100 year old barn in Sokolka.

The devil is in the detail.

hinge

More hinge

A different Hinge

hook and chain

knot of wood

Knot and gap with straw

Banging on

The door

Nail and Grain

Knocked out knot

Nailed wood end

Wire in the sky