One Innocent Mistake Is So Common Among Tourists In Poland, Even Rick Steves Made It

Where is Poland? It's a simple enough question, but your answer might land you in hot water. If you said, "in Eastern Europe," millions of Poles would beg to differ. Even veteran traveler Rick Steves got it wrong for many years, grouping the country and several of its neighbors under the "Eastern Europe" banner for his guidebooks. Most Polish people, however, prefer their country to be classified as Central Europe. 

When we look at history, it makes sense that there's confusion over Poland's position in Europe. During the Cold War, most people thought of Europe as divided into two halves: Capitalist democracies lay to the west, while Soviet-controlled territories, including Poland, lay to the east. Many tourists still hold this divide in their heads, as Steves' co-author Cameron Hewitt wrote in a 2023 Facebook post. "In the two decades that we've been producing our guidebook, we've used the old 'Eastern Europe' terminology ... mainly for 'marketing reasons,' to avoid confusing our customers," he wrote, explaining that Eastern Europe was "the easiest shorthand to help people figure out which places we were talking about." But it's time to bring ourselves up to date.

Europe's political landscape has shifted significantly since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Poland is now a decades-long member of NATO and the European Union, and is firmly aligned with more Western institutions. On top of that, geographically, Poland is at the very center of the European continent. Many Polish people see the binary west-east divide as outdated and affirm that, geographically and culturally, Poland belongs in Central Europe.

In his Facebook post, Hewitt explained his belief that the real dividing line is now along the eastern edge of the EU. Any country to the east, like Ukraine and Belarus, can be classified as Eastern Europe. Grouping Poland with those countries and with Russia may paint an unfair picture in potential visitors' minds. Poland is a safe country where Americans can vacation visa-free, and it's home to one of Europe's greatest still-undiscovered destinations, according to Steves. Exclamations of "Wow, Eastern Europe isn't at all what I expected!" may receive perplexed and frustrated glances from locals.

If you want to earn some brownie points on your next trip to Kraków (Steves' pick of the best destination in Poland), we recommend following Hewitt's advice. He wrote, "We believe that properly categorizing these places as Central Europe is simply the right thing to do. (Truth be told, it's long overdue.)"