His father, Henryk Kon, was a lawyer, and his mother, Róża Wolanowska, was the great-granddaughter of Majer Wolanowski (1844–1900), the well-known Polish manufacturer.

Wolanowski studied chemistry at the Grenoble Polytechnical Institute (France 1938-1939), but the outbreak of World War II caught him during a vacation in his homeland.

In this period he met such famous people as Edward R. Murrow, Sydney Gruson, Flora Lewis, Larry Allen, Vicent Buist or Pierre Marechal, who were correspondents in Poland then.

He joined a ship-rescue operation in a Norwegian fiord, made a long trip aboard an Icelandic cutter in North Atlantic waters.

He went on five trips around the world (1960–1972) and also visited the Pacific region – he visited Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Papua and New Guinea, West Irian, French Polynesia, Fiji, Hong-Kong and Singapore; accredited to the headquarters of the UN Troops in New Guinea during the landing operation (1962–1963); as the US stipendist (he was granted a scholarship United States Department of State - "Program for Leaders"), he belonged to the team of reporters (as the only reporter from the Eastern Bloc) to cover the take off of the space vessel Gemini 5 in 1965 (Cape Kennedy, Florida); he acted as advisor to the World Health Organization Information Department in Geneva, then in a similar capacity at the WHO branches in New Delhi, Bangkok and Manila 1967–1968.