I think Warsaw or Krakow is your best bet. Krakow is a university city and tends to be more liberal, though Warsaw is more international and cosmopolitan. Either way, for the most part I don’t think you would have any problems in either city, because while some extremists will defend the Church to the death, the average person will not give you any trouble.

In addition, Krakow is a very young city thanks to the student population, and young people in Poland especially tend to be far more open-minded when compared to the older generation.

Feel free to contact me if you need any advice.

I have gathered quite a bit about Polish religious positioning by just reading these comments upon this page from people I tend to trust more than any others (mentally stable atheists!).

The staunch conservative (old world) Catholicism in Poland seems to be much stronger, more lingering than I would have thought. My perceptions were that Europe was much more indifferent to religion than what these beneficial postings here are educating me of.

For instance, many enrolling in our intern programs from Prague, Bratislava, Kiev, etc., openly (almost proudly) state their atheism.

My company is expanding our production momentum (mainstream film, studio, technologies, acting schools, etc.) into many European countries (including Poland) next year and we’re searching/selecting the given cities that are best, strategically suited to us.

This would entail more liberal, socially modern and tolerant persuasions that would actually support an American film company looking to propel the entertainment industry in such cities. Our themes will be universal (nothing really controversial) and feature diverse, yet “common” mainstream topics, and we’d hope for the social freedom to promote said range of themes.

The feeling I get though, is that we should stay as far away from those rural areas as possible and concentrate only upon the major metropolitan areas; meaning, Warsaw and nowhere else. I would never want to be asked or pressured into declarations of my religious standing, etc. (I never deny my atheism and find religious intoxication repugnant.)

Ideally, I’d even like to offer some film footage (thus productive exposure) to this March and would like to feel safe while doing so, and not have the (exaggeration intended) Holy Polish Catholic Inquisition putting us to stakes by night’s end for our role in this.

Perhaps someone (with Polish background) could elaborate more towards what differences (social intolerance) can be observed between select cities in Poland. As it stands, given what I’m taking in, its Warsaw or nothing.

Once again, hats off to those marchers.

You may visit the official site of the march and take note: http://www.ateosmexicanos.com/marcha2009

Down here is the same as in Poland, the catholic church and the religious right get in politics all the time, making proclamations on the media and propiciating ignorance and misinformation about skepticism, critical thinking and the scientific worldview.
Hope you can take a look at our publicity, videos and images, I know all of it is in spanish but still you can take notice and look around, we’ll have pictures and info after the march itself.
Peace!

(these are my photos from the 2009 tolerance march in Krakow, featuring plenty of neo-Nazis).

One point to add is that a lot of Poles, especially those now in their 20s, are Catholic only by name. They are born Catholic and go through the sacraments and so on, and probably have a church wedding to please their parents, but likely only go to church on the major holidays. However, the paradox is that most of these people will still defend the church, because as someone above mentioned, to not be a proud Catholic is to disrespect the role of JPII in bringing down communism throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

Again, thank you Hemant for posting this, and I’ll try to keep everyone updated from the march itself!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_the_Bee

BTW, Cracow has several university-level institutions and a large population of students, yet the city is considered far more conservative, than the capital, Warsaw.