Travel Diary 22

Travel Diary 22

The trip out of Austria was uneventful, but it became obvious we were in a new country, Poland, the further we went. The roads got more and more repaired creating lumps and bumps and rattles and clothes falling out of shelves in the van, when once none of this happened.

Poland is poor by comparison with the rest of the EEC.  Many kms of road being repaired, meaning 3 lanes down to one or two and even one complete side of the motorway being closed and the other side consisting of two lanes in one direction and one lane in the other. Only a few witch’s hats separating them. All at 90kph including trucks! At times quite nerve racking when the lanes are advertised as being only 2.2 wide! Try driving down that with a 2.35m wide van!!

We were headed for Krakow for a couple of days. No washing day this time, so the plan was to arrive, park and head off for the afternoon in town for a quick look-see and then a day wandering and a day at Auschwitz-Berkenhau.

Instead the autovia’s repairs slowed us down that much that we never arrived into the campsite until around 5.00pm. So it was really just setup, have tea and go to bed. Luckily this camp site, near to town was being run that night by a friendly, well-educated Pole who speaks 5 languages and has a degree in freight and transport logistics. Based on the number of trucks in Europe, (because let’s face it, Europe runs on truck transport), he has a degree that will be in high demand. Anyway he was a delightful chap. Knew a lot about Australia including the Kangaroos in Sydney streets and Koalas and killing sharks, snakes and spiders. Most people we’ve met know a bit about Australia due to Steve Irwin’s TV programs and so comments consist of “Sydney! Melbourne! Kangaroos! Snakes and Sharks, Crocodiles!” But this guy was a bit more informed.

Mind you he is not a typical Pole. We spent nearly an hour one morning around 5.30am when he started work, until 6.30am when really had to start work, chatting. He’s an interesting young man and full of curiosity and was happy to answer my questions about Poles and Poland.

The thing is, we had stopped a couple of times in Poland the previous day to get diesel and coffee top ups and the people we had struck were so different to where we had come from. By and large, we found Polish people to be reserved and not big socialisers – which is a bit of an understatement. This is so pronounced that I wondered if it was the result of the Soviet occupation since WWII. Maye the Russians had made everyone so suspicious that it became best to not know what anyone was doing and stay out of trouble. This causes people to become secretive and so on and I had wondered if this had created a state of mind that had eventually become part of the psyche of the Poles.

This young man had no answer to my question regarding this, but totally agreed with my assessment. At one point he said, if two Poles meet overseas, they will ignore each other, but Australians meet another Australian and it is party time! A great contrast in the two nations. Apparently this guy has about 3 or 4 Australians a year in his camp site and I was his first NZ’er! He knew nothing much about rugby, so I helped him out with a quick bit of education!! But I think that just left him bewildered!

Anyway, he was very helpful though in terms of providing directions, looking up stuff on the local internet and so on and believe me, this is enormously important when in a foreign country. So he became another member of the “He deserves a Kiwi Club!”. Needless to say, he was blown out. A delightful young man, a great camp site and close to town with quick, easy public transport available 200m down the road. Once again, we could not have been luckier in our choice of camp site. Seriously, this has happened to us time and time again. I have no explanation for it. We have just struck the best people! I’m smiling just thinking about it!

If I had the money, I would love to fly them all to Australia for a week. Have a massive BBQ at home. Spill over into the neighbours’ homes, hire a bus or two to show them around and have a ball for a few days! I couldn’t think of better way to pay back such help, assistance and quite simply … decent humanity. It’s this stuff which makes it a joy to get out of bed in the mornings! I am so thankful we have bumped into them along the way. We have been seriously blessed with some of the people we have met!

OK – enough of the emotional stuff, or I’ll start crying!!  However, let me say this …. Never lose your faith in people! They create all the goodness in the world. Combine that with the simple philosophy of “one gets treated how one treats people” and that is a wonderful blue print for life.

Now… Krakow! The first day we did the wander bit. Through the Church which quite frankly, holds the history of Poland under its roof. Go through this place and the audio guides discuss everything in it. Every few meters and I mean every 4-5 meters another icon or sarcophagus is there. Another side chapel; another cross or plaque or whatever. Each one telling a story or commemorating an event in history. What an amazing place!  If you knew nothing about Poland before visiting, you’d know about it afterwards! This church is built on top of one of the oldest Romanesque churches in Europe and which was not wrecked when the new one was built on top of it.

Instead the builders, just sealed it off and built over top making no damage to the original. Years later, it was opened up and this meant we were able to walk through the “new” church and then down some stairs and into the basement where the old Romanesque church is. We stood at the altar where Pope John III held mass for a few people. We saw crypts and statues including a Black Madonna and afterwards climbed the tiny, narrow, internal wooden staircase up the bell tower.

Legend has it that if you stand beneath the bell and touch it with your outstretched finger and make a wish at the same time, that wish will come true. This bell is huge and is only rung a few times each year on special occasions as it requires 12 men to ring it! How the hell they got it up to that height and strung it up in the first place I have no idea.

We skipped the castle and instead grabbed a roll each and sat in an area near the River Bank eating and watching some teenagers practicing their skateboarding amidst a few pigeons arguing over our dropped crumbs.

We noticed that sightseeing using golf carts is popular here as well as in Rome. Some seating up to 8 people and expensive - $60 Euros, around $A90, for an hour. So we stuck to our feet!

On the way up town to Krakow’s Main Square, we called into a travel agency to ask about transport out to Auschwitz. Turned out tours were expensive and no English speaking ones the next day and she suggested we go by public bus and sort it out when we arrived. Which is what we ended up doing.

This consisted of nearly two hours being spent on a 20 seater bus which held about 30 people and some of the biggest behinds I have ever seen! These behinds were pressed hard up against the seats to stabilise the owners as the bus was swung around corners or the brakes were slammed on and they moved closer and closer forcing us away towards the windows as they took up more and more room of our seated area.

Despite this, I will say that I recommend visiting the place using this method. We caught the 10.30am bus and never got back until 6.30pm, but one gets to see countryside and villages you wouldn’t see otherwise. Coming back was much better with only 8 people on board and all behinds parked on seats!!

At Auschwitz, one buys the entrance ticket and waits for a tour with a guide who speaks in your language. It is compulsory to have a guide between the hours of 10.00am and 3.00pm. What with the next tour being an hour away at 2.00pm, we had a bite to eat and then read the stories and looked at the photos of the Remembrance Marches held a few years ago.

These Marches had bought survivors back to the camps along with teenagers, world leaders and others in an effort to ensure that what happened here will never be forgotten and never repeated.

I distinctly recall reading what one man said at this March, “I tell you, I have seen the Messiah! In fact, I have seen two of him. One was black and one was white. They were Americans and were the first people who came through the door of our hut the day we were liberated”.

There was a photo of an elderly man in his 80’s who had tears streaming down his face as he greeted the American soldier also now in his 80’s and on the March as well. The photo shows him hugging the American and the epitaph reads “I have waited 70 years to thank you. Now I can die in peace!”

There was another of two young girls in their late teens, again with tears running down their faces as they stood with their arms around an old man who had just finished telling them his experiences.

Stories of these people who survived were printed beneath each photo and they were extraordinarily powerful.

Our guide spoke good English and the three-hour tour started with a description of what we would see. While this place is called a Museum, it is not a Museum in the traditional sense of the word. It is the actual camps of Auschwitz and Berkenhau. The real thing preserved.

I will not go into the detail of what we saw. It is too harrowing. Suffice to say, many people were in tears and part way through some people refused to go on they were that upset and distraught. It just tears at you and leaves you completely gutted and emotionally drained. How human beings could treat others like this is beyond me! It matters not that we have all seen films and documentaries or pictures of this from time to time. The real thing hits home to a far greater degree. And it hurts.

Some facts though.

Auschwitz began with the Nazis taking over a village, evacuating all the people and turning two houses into gas chambers. Here they experimented with the gas starting with 600 local Poles. Later they built Auschwitz because the village could not house everyone they wanted to kill.

The first 140,000 – 150,000 people killed were just Poles. No particular religious affiliations. The Nazis hated Poles simply because they were Poles. It wasn’t until later during the war that they focused specifically on the Jews.

The three main groups to be targeted were Poles, Jews and gypsies. The first gypsies gassed here were rounded up in Rome and shipped here via cattle truck.

Two gas chambers were used at Auschwitz and a further four were later built at Berkenhau.

Over 1.1 million Jews were gassed here. A further 4000 were shot and more hung. Plus, another million or so Poles, gypsies and other people the Nazis took a dislike to. A total of nearly 2.3 million just at this camp. There were other smaller camps like this scattered across Europe.

This occurred over a 3-year period. That’s over 700,000 people per year or approximately 1,850 per day.

The gas chambers are not that big but up to 2000 people at a time were literally squashed into them. Some died of suffocation before the gas dropped.

Mostly, these people were women and children because they were the ones that could not work. Any men and boys and stronger women who appeared able to work, were kept for as long as their health held out.

Berkenhau Camp was built because the Nazis couldn’t house everyone at Auschwitz. Berkenhau Camp covers 175 Hectares and was full for a few years. In other words, as fast as people were gassed and burnt, others arrived to take their place.  The scale of this was enormous.

We stood on the siding of the railway line where hundreds of thousands had climbed down out of the cattle trucks in those years and you can almost feel the ghosts around you. On this siding, people were immediately assessed with those destined for the gas chamber being immediately sent down a long path to the chambers. Often dead within an hour. Their bodies being cremated in any one of the large number of ovens still on display. Their ashes dumped into massive pits dug right beside the chambers. We saw two pits still on display and left exactly how they were found in 1946.

It is no wonder that many people who visit this place weep.

It took the hour long bus trip back to Krakow, to return to some sense of normalcy. Even then, the shock did not completely wear off. And to think that something similar is happening with ISIS in Syria and Iraq right now. Any thoughts I had of questioning the Wests involvement in ridding the world of ISIS or saying stuff like Australia shouldn’t be involved in supporting this war, have been totally dashed.

The sooner the world is rid of them, the better. Prison is too good for them!

On a lighter note, we did find the Wodka Café Bar where you can buy sample tastings of different flavoured Vodka. Each glass is the size of a Port Glass and there are 6 on a tray. Over two days, we tried a number of flavours including Cucumber, Coffee, Chilly, Black Pepper, Fig with a little lemon juice, Quince, Sloe berry, Raspberry. All were nice, but we fell in love with the Coffee one! Absolutely delicious!

The large central square is surrounded by cafes and bars. We went searching for Harry’s Jazz Bar and found it tucked away, downstairs off a small gallery of shops. Unfortunately, the music does not start until 9.30pm and that was too late for us. But what an interestingly decorated Bar.

There is an old, long building in the centre of the Square which these days is a shopping arcade selling nothing but touristy stuff. Jammed pack with tour groups and people like us. Most grabbing things like ashtrays with Krakow printed on them. Or silk scarves or plastic toys or place mats with the local castle and church printed on them or one of the myriads of things people buy as mementoes.

By this time, my foot was playing something shocking and I was finding walking difficult to say the least. So, we caught the No3 tram back to the end of the line. Then the No 167 bus back to Camp where we discovered I have a new blister on top of where the old repaired itself only last week! No wonder my foot smarted!

Krakow is a lovely city and has a river running through the middle of it. The Banks are covered in grassy areas where people congregate to eat a meal or chat or just be with friends and is frequented by beggars and alcoholics of which there were many.

The Castle and old Church are situated right on the river and streets run from there back towards the square. It is common to see musicians in these streets playing violins or piano accordions as street musicians do all over. Often people gather just to listen as many of the players are seriously good.

The outer suburbs have many new homes, but evidence of Soviet high rise apartment style buildings still exist.

During our two days we met a few Aussies and chatted over a glass or two. Many had been to Warsaw and along with Poles we asked, said that Warsaw was not like Krakow. While it had a good café culture, it was a bit dirty and so so. Other details made us question whether it was worth the drive and in the end, we felt that with my foot in the state it is in a rest day wold be in order and so we changed our plans and decided to go to Prague in the Czech Republic.

We have heard many good things about Prague and it is heading back towards Berlin where we have to go and the route is a little shorter this way. So in the morning we packed up and started on our 500 odd km drive to Prague. Hope this is the right decision!