No one loves you like I do

There are relatives of mine, who I only know from old pictures and stories. I have never met nor talked to them. In summer 2013 I traveled to south Poland, where I could finally meet them after years. Bieszczady, a mountain landscape bordering Ukraine and Slovakia, belongs to the poorest areas in Poland. Although it is hard to imagine, some locals still have to live without sanitary facilities. The economic policy focused on other regions, abandoning the Bieszczady. Many young people have already left the mountains, some are about to – a bus  heads out to Italy three times a day. The ones, who are left, have many reasons not to leave their home. In between patriotism and poverty, freedom and tradition, pompous Christ figures and wild creeks. The answer is weaved into a cloth: No one loves you like I do.