An interview with the Kramerscy family from Zabrze, owners of Speed Travel – the transport company, Animal World – the mini zoo and ZONEI – the advertising agency. Grażyna Kramerska has just been nominated for the Charismatic Woman, her husband, Jarosław, for the Leader by Vocation and their children, Paulina and Patryk, for Leaders of the Future.
Over 20 years ago you established Speed Travel, known for providing transport and travel services, and 4 years ago the Animal World was set up. How did it all happen?
JK: Speed Travel is the mother company, which other companies have grown out of. I run it together with my wife, Grażyna. We organise group holidays to any place in the world and cowork with well-known travel companies. We also offer passenger transport within and outside the country. We cater for special events, weddings, funerals, airport or holiday transfers, and training courses. We have an extensive fleet of vehicles and hire: coaches, minibuses, campervans, passenger cars, trailers, tow trucks, mini-excavators. Before the pandemic, we were equipped with 25 coaches, now we have reduced the number to 15. Recently, we have expanded to include Speed Wash, an eco-friendly steam car wash, where our staff washes and refreshes all vehicles from quads to large buses or lorries. In addition, we provide disinfection and ozone services for vehicles, premises, offices and flats. During the pandemic period our business was reduced and, as we owned lots of animals, a friend of ours suggested us to show them in public. In 2020, we launched Animal World, whereas in 2023, we established the Zabrze Animal World Foundation and currently are in the process of completing the final paperwork.
What kind of customers have made use of your transport services?
JK: Everyone makes a good customer, but the most famous have been musicians: the Scorpions band, Goran Bregović, Boney M and many other well-known figures have passed through these 21 years. We often transport sports groups, actors, dancers, school groups on various European exchanges, and we’ve even transported the entire embassy staff to Nigeria.
What do you do on a daily basis, Grażyna?
GK: Everything and everywhere. We run a company together, we’re friends, we support each other. I’m even a bus driver, I got my licence in 2017 and now driving big vehicles is my passion. My husband is my replacement, I can always rely on him. Working in transport has given me lots of joy and the opportunity to visit many places in the world. Some people say we’re on holiday all the time, and we probably are – although not when covering 1,500 kilometres. Recently, we’ve been organising group trips to exotic countries, we’ve been to Thailand for example. In January we’re planning a trip to Florida and the Bahamas. At the zoo, I’m a veterinary technician, having graduated from veterinary school, and help my daughter Paulina, who’s doing a great job looking after the animals at Animal World.
Did you also go through veterinary education, Paulina?
PK: I’m currently completing my education at a veterinary technical school, having previously completed a catering one.
How did you discover your passion for animals? Did you already stand out with it at school?
PK: During school years I used to be a long-term class leader and then treasurer. We had a cat, fish and dogs at home, but it was a neighbour owning a large number of animals who infected me with a passion for them. My older brother and I learned about their habits, enjoyed looking after our pets and, of course, playing with them. Patryk had his own YouTube channel and we wanted to make videos about animals, so we gathered some. Patryk co-founded Animal World.
JK: Son is 24 and owns ZONEI Advertising Agency, where he employs several people. When he was still a student at the IT technical school, he won photo competitions, including European ones, and managed the school television. He has made movies for and on behalf of Discovery and TVP, to name a few. Because his company is innovatively equipped, including modern cameras and drones, and relevantly qualified, he can provide specialised services in the field of photography, filming, video animation and graphic design in the broadest sense. He’s been running our Speed Travel website since 2018.
How many animals are there at Animal World?
PK: Several hundred, including dozens of species. We have, among others, alpacas, kangaroos, goats, sheep, monkeys: golden-handed tamarins and buffy-tufted-ear marmoset, Vietnamese pig, raccoons, Patagonian maras, suricates, deer, roe deer, fallow deer, various kinds of reptiles such as bearded dragons, geckos, iguanas, turtles or birds – ostriches and nandu. We recently trimmed the claws of our pigs and counted 124 of them. We also keep sea anemone and coral reefs in the aquarium.
Do you have cats as well?
GK: There are about 20 cats running around, but you have to watch out for them, because they pull our fish out of the pond and murder the chicks. Some animals roam freely around the facility, monkeys come to the house and sit there for hours, and, of course, dogs are permanent residents.
How do you gather the animals?
JK: We’ve met lots of breeders and sometimes we exchange, sometimes we buy or sometimes we sell. Mainly my daughter takes care of this, she has an excellent approach to animals. We also adopt animals, such as rabbits – if someone wants to get rid of them, but we also give them away – if someone wants one.
Paulina, two years ago you featured in the first edition of STO TWARZY ZABRZA for having opened a zoo together with your family. What are your responsibilities?
PK: I’m one of the bosses, the youngest one – so I’m happy to take my mother’s advice and experience. When my parents aren’t on site, I manage, making sure everyone does their job, the animals have clean stalls and are fed, and that the catering for visitors is working. We have eight full-time employees, plus we work with several veterinary clinics around the country. Both my mum and I are guides, showing visitors around the zoo. We also have a guide, Wojtek, who talks about animals in such an interesting way that people come back especially for him. I enjoy looking after the animals myself, feeding and cleaning them. I check if any animal has fallen ill, in which case I have to act straight away and apply the right medication along with the appropriate treatment.
JK: It’s worth adding that treating an animal is very expensive. Sometimes we have to travel to Katowice, Wrocław, and sometimes as far as Warsaw with our pets, to take timely action. Unfortunately, there are no vets in Poland who are familiar with all of our animals, so we must have access to many clinics. Animals cannot speak and we need to make a proper diagnosis just by observing the animal’s behaviour, possibly taking samples for testing. We happened to treat a kangaroo via the internet, working with a specialist in Australia, as none of our friendly vets could help. It took almost two months, but it worked out. Sometimes, in spite of the efforts of ours and those of several clinics, it doesn’t work and it’s indeed our great failure. But thanks to the experience we’re constantly gaining, failures happen to us less and less often and that’s positive, plus they’re already starting to call us from other places similar to Animal World, asking for advice and it’s really nice when we can help, actually Grażyna and Paulina widely experienced taking these few years of work into consideration. Knowledge costs money and it costs even more to not know. You should know that, so far, we have not received any funding and we only support ourselves with our own income.
How do you make money to support the zoo?
GK: We’re open all year round, but most people visit us from April to September. People come from all over Poland, and we’ve also been visited by foreign groups from Korea and China. You can visit the zoo on your own or guided. We’ve discounted tickets for seniors, and we organise cyclic meetings for them, namely Wednesdays for Seniors, accompanied with coffee and cake. If there’s a large group, we light a bonfire and invite musicians to sing Silesian hits. We hold chargeable classes for schools and kindergartens. We offer 45-minute lessons with an alpaca, handicraft workshops. One of our employees runs 4-hour classes for children – Little Farmer.
We also organise birthday parties for the little ones, whom we have special birthday packages for, the kids don’t want to go home at the end and it’s really nice. I often meet our customers when shopping somewhere in town and the kids come up to me to ask how our pets are doing and when they can visit us again. You may have very close contact with the animals, even feed them – but only with food bought from us, for example finely chopped carrots. Home food is not safe for animals. During the festive season, we offer various activities such as a sleigh ride, carol singing. There’s also a Santa’s house here. We organise all kinds of outdoor events, be it children’s birthdays or adult parties. We also offer catering, barbecue facilities. Year-round tickets, bought once enable visiting our facilities whenever wanted free of subsequent charges. It’s slowly started to work for us. We’re trying to be a welcome place for everyone. Part of the income from our main business of transport helps us get through the hard times and to invest in the zoo.
JK: We keep hens and sell the eggs. We sell alpaca manure, as it contains many valuable properties, perfectly enriching the soil with phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium. Winter is particularly difficult for us, as the monthly cost of electricity alone is PLN 7,000, and some of the animals need to be reheated, as winter is not their natural environment. In addition, hay and straw are becoming increasingly expensive, and we’re getting quite a lot of it. The facility covers an area of 2 hectares, including buildings, warming rooms, incubators, where the lizards, reptiles, suricates and monkeys live. They must keep the apt temperature. We’re happy to accept acorns, chestnuts, nuts, various seeds and unneeded fruit falling from trees. After Christmas, we’re going to announce a Christmas tree campaign and ask for the trees, cause the animals really like eating needles. Every third Saturday of the month, we hold a garage sale. We also sell Animal World calendars, proceeds of which would go entirely towards animal food.
Will you be spending Christmas here?
JK: Yes, this year we’ve invited the whole family for Christmas Eve, and can’t wait to see how many of us is going to seat at the table together. Time will tell. Paulina likes cooking and just declared to be the one to prepare the Christmas Eve dinner herself. We can’t travel during the New Year period, because the animals aren’t safe. Last year, fireworks and firecrackers were launched over the zoo, scaring the animals much enough to have one ostrich dead.
What are you most proud of?
JK: Of my children and the whole family, but also of the fact that we’re active and constantly growing. Starting with just one car we now own a whole fleet. We’ve toured almost the whole world when actually at work. It is said that a man who enjoys their work will not be in it a day.
Pleas, name your most beautiful trip.
GK: We sailed to the Canary Islands. 15 years after our wedding, we decided to renew it. The ship captain, in the presence of the officers and some of the crew, ‘married’ us again. It was an amazing experience.
What are your plans and dreams?
JK: We dream of a good life for the children, trying to help them. We want to develop Animal World so that Paulina’s able to act on her own. Animals are her whole life.
PK: And boyfriend, Marcin…
GK: I haven’t been to Japan yet and I’m planning a trip there soon.
JK: Actually, we don’t have dreams, because they immediately turn into plans immediately fulfilled. Once, I think it was in 2016, we were sitting in Paris and talking about buying a RV when we retired. Then we thought we wouldn’t be able to afford one in retirement, so we bought one straight away and now try to spend each and every spare moment, and there are fewer and fewer of them, travelling. I used to dream of meeting a cosmonaut and look at this photo: in it I accompany an astronaut who has been to the moon. We live by the maxim: do today what can be done tomorrow, because tomorrow may not come….
We wish all the Readers and the entire WHY STORY Team a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!See you in the ANIMAL WORLD.
Dorota Kolano
Beata Sekuła
