Just returned from a 5 day trip to Rzeszow in south east poland to look at land plots, meet a local estate agent and have a bit of leisure time with my daughter who came along for the ride. It's just 2 hours 15 minutes from london stansted and the plane was half full. I went with a friend who is from the city and knows the area well. As in most countries estate agents want to paint a rosy picture and tell you what you want to hear, so my friend gave me good, unbiased information whenever we went to view land plots.

The idea is to just try and buy something for as a short term investment and then re-sell either to the local market or over here. Land plot's kind of fits the bill as I can just buy it and forget about looking after it, as would be the case if I bought a flat or a house.

Plus I don't have a lot to spend so a small area of land would be good. Just about 80 kms away is a large national park (Bieszczady) which is known all over poland as a very pretty, largely untouched wilderness and great for many recreational and outdoor activities.
This I think would be the pull for foreign buyers as you could still afford to buy a place cheaply, amongst stunning scenery in a location that very few foreigners know about, and do stuff like horse riding, hiking, sailing in the summer and ski-ing in the winter, all at a much lower cost. Plus, looking well into the future it could become a gateway into the Ukraine which is nearby,

We did a bit of ski-ing one afternoon, just a 20 min. drive from our hotel in central rzeszow (highly recommended, Hotel Forum £35 for a double room, including breakfast) in a place called Babica. Only a 400m run, with a seperate area for kid's, but it had a restaurant and ski-hire. It was fun putting on a pair of ski's after about 10 years since my last outing, and even my daughter tried it for the first time. We checked on the internet that this place had snow and was open, and there are other ski-runs in the area. We only had a spare couple of hours, but that was enough for me.

Rzeszow's old town was just across the road from our hotel, very quaint and the old main square has a good smattering of eateries and drinking-holes. We found a really nice bar/restaurant called the Black Cat (czarny kot) which became our ' local' during our brief stay. Nice wood-panelled walls with comfy seating that served qood hearty- polish food and local beers. A 2 course meal for us both and a few drinks each is still less than £20, that's what I call VFM (value-for-money).

The polish estate agent I met has been around since 1992 so knows her stuff. She gave me a long list of available land plots but highlighted just 6 for me to visit that same day which we did, just about, as having a 7 yr.old child in tow who gets bored very quickly doesn't make things any easier. She also told me about a farm in about 20 acres for sale at a very good price (see our Offers Alert page)
which I reckon some bright enterprising person could turn into an outdoor pursuits type place. My polish friend told me about some chap he knows who runs a horse-trail business taking mainly german visitor's on overnight trails, with food and accommodation sorted at each stop, which I would love to try myself.