How to find a Polish pen pal?

I'm planning a trip to Poland in a couple of years. If all goes as planned, I'd like to stay for a year or two and really study sausage making. I am going to begin learning to speak Polish soon. It would be great if I could make a few friends before the trip. Would anyone know how I can connect with folks in the meantime? All I'm finding online are dating sites and while I wouldn't mind meeting a nice, single lady, those sites all seem to be scams. I read one article about Poland that said that online dating is not very popular in Poland - they still like to go out and meet real people, in person... wow, what a novel concept! Mainly, I'm just looking to make a few friends to chat with about food, culture, etc... get the local perspective and maybe a friendly face when I arrive.

Facebook probably has a hundred groups of "Poland for Tourists" or "I want to visit Poland" or some such, I used to run a similar group for Brazil, it was full of locals who wanted to meet foreigners and generally a good source for info, it might be worth making a profile specifically for this purpose (and skipping all the rest of the FB drama).

But since you're looking at a really specific kind of trip involving food culture, I would skip that and go straight for Slow Food Poland, there is a site showing different places where Slow Food is active, plenty of ideas for cool people to reach out to (I find that Slow Food, organics, and permaculture all tend to overlap, in my travels the Slow Food people have generally been all my kind).
You could write people where you're thinking of going, I see there is a blog type thing, the site seems updated regularly, from these pages you might find more info to search for groups focusing specifically on the things you're interested in. Start here maybe?
https://www.slowfood.com/nazioni-condotte/poland/
https://www.slowfood.com/tag/slow-food-poland/

Tereza Okava wrote:Facebook probably has a hundred groups of "Poland for Tourists" or "I want to visit Poland" or some such, I used to run a similar group for Brazil, it was full of locals who wanted to meet foreigners and generally a good source for info, it might be worth making a profile specifically for this purpose (and skipping all the rest of the FB drama).

But since you're looking at a really specific kind of trip involving food culture, I would skip that and go straight for Slow Food Poland, there is a site showing different places where Slow Food is active, plenty of ideas for cool people to reach out to (I find that Slow Food, organics, and permaculture all tend to overlap, in my travels the Slow Food people have generally been all my kind).
You could write people where you're thinking of going, I see there is a blog type thing, the site seems updated regularly, from these pages you might find more info to search for groups focusing specifically on the things you're interested in. Start here maybe?
https://www.slowfood.com/nazioni-condotte/poland/
https://www.slowfood.com/tag/slow-food-poland/

That sounds like fun - thanks!  I'm not interested in going back on FB - I find it an extremely toxic environment.  I'll definitely check out the slow food links though.  Does anyone know if there are similar sites for herbalists, permies and such?

For fun, I google "permaculture poland"

Several sites might be of interest, here are a couple:

https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/case-study-permaculture-food-revolution-poland

https://www.workaway.info/en/host/419983596917

You might try a search of the area you are going to visit and see what happens.

If you don't want to use FB, then you could try with couchsurfing - I think this is the nicest way to get in touch with people in other parts of the world
There are few websites I could recommend regarding permaculture, agro-forestry, foraging etc:
https://agropermalab.org/eng/
https://permakultura.edu.pl/en/
https://permisie.pl/
http://permakultura.com.pl/
http://lukaszluczaj.pl/
https://dolinamgiel.pl/

Good luck

I've had penpals in Europe and in the 'States for a few years now. My Czech penpal and I have two years plus, and are still going strong. It's a fun hobby, and useful too, in situations like yours.

I went to a rather plebeian penpal connection site, and it did the trick for me.

penpalworld.com

There are likely several people from Poland with whom you can connect, and most people indicate their general geographic location in their profiles.

Good luck!