Zakopane, The Gatlinburg of Poland

We went to Zakopane today. Zakopane is in the Tatra mountains, right on the border with Poland and Slovakia. It was very interesting, but the best way to describe it (to anyone who has been there and understands the analogies anyway) is to say that it very much was Gatlinburg in Poland. There is a small center with some streets off of the center. The streets are lined with "log cabin" style building which hold shops selling everything from cheese to shoes, wood carving, postcards and knick-knacks and for good measure, real stores thrown in.
The city is doing relatively well for it's self financially, like Gatlinburg, but the outlying countryside is full of people who depend on winter, when the skiiers come. When it's not winter, the rest of the year is spent trying to stretch the pennies that were earned in winter and selling things like woolen sweaters, mittens boots and everything that no one has any use for in the other seasons of the year. This year, snow came late to Zakopane (January or February) which made the winter season super short, making the earnings for most of these people much smaller than usual.
Looking at the buildings, homes and everything around the area, you wouldn't guess that these are people who are struggling financially. It looks much like a Swiss village with the chalets and large homes. The large homes however, contain sometimes 2-4 families. The chalets are really only rentable in the winter and during the summer and fall stand empty.
After walking through the center and making it to a Mexican restaurant for lunch (I know bad idea... Mexican in Poland, and it wasn't the greatest by any means,) we go to hit the inclined railway to go to the top of one of the last mountains standing fully in Poland and not shared. The view was amazing, but to get to the view, you have to walk through little shops hocking the same stuff as down below. Sad to see it turned into a "shopping mall" as John put it. People have such an estranged relationship with nature so often, that without these things present one forgets that they can actually ENJOY looking at mountains, breathing fresh air and seeing nature. (There were pictures of bears all around, which I'm led to assume inhabit the area. We didn't see any!)
Anyway... in short it was interesting. Nice to visit, but probably WAY better in the winter during ski season.