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TAIPEI TIMES
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003
With its rolling hills, undulating seas of green and golden wheat, oat and barley fields, pockets of forest, and serpentine lakes of dazzling cerulean blue, the Kujawsko Pomorskie region of Poland is nothing short of a pastoral wonderland.
The mood is relaxed in the villages along the narrow two-lane road linking the ancient capital Gniezno and Torun, the 13th-century birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus.
But even the father of modern astronomy, who first shocked contemporaries with the notion that Earth was not really the center of the universe, would himself likely be baffled by the bizarre goings-on in one of those villages, Wylatowo, population 581.
Ever since the crop circles and, as local legend has it, the aliens, cropped up three years ago, the beautiful but sleepy backwater has drawn throngs of visitors ranging from the harmlessly curious to the distinctly peculiar.
Villagers have also become consumed by a lofty new pastime: now, besides tending their fields, pigs, chickens and cows, they also regularly contemplate the nature of the universe.
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