Poland - the good, the bad, and the inside of the wardrobe!

This morning I write from central Romania, speeding along the railway from Cluj Napoca to Sighisoara, a small city in southern Transylvania, and one of the many debated homes of the famous Count Dracula! Tomorrow marks 4 months of travel, and it’s hard to believe I am already one third of the way through my adventure; however I must be beginning to miss the comforts of home, because right now it’s tempting to pay a return air ticket just to pop home for one of mums vegetarian lasagnes, and a decent bread and butter pudding!

The Market Square, Warsaw

Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is a fantastic big and busy city, which has borne the brunt of conflict throughout the ages, and today offers an amazing look at European history throughout the past 1000 years. Unfortunately I unwittingly chose to visit Warsaw on Constitution Day, in which all the shops were closed, and the streets closed for various parades and celebrations, however still had a great day wandering the crowded streets and doing some decent people watching!

The Saxon Gardens

The old city, of which 85% was destroyed in WWII, has been incredibly rebuilt, now overflowing with patriotic souvenir shops, quirky café’s, more ice-cream shops than you can point-a-pole at, and a bustling central market square – filled with artists, caricaturists, street food vendors, and an unusual water fountain most remarkable for the digestive sounds it makes, rather than the fountain itself. The old town is connected to the new city by the ‘Royal Route’, a stretch of road lined with government buildings and galleries, and the phenomenal Saxon Gardens – quite the place to be on a sunny afternoon!

From Warsaw, I headed south to Krakow – the former capital of Poland, and one of Europe’s oldest cities.

I spent my first day in Krakow heading out of the town to Oświęcim - a small town in town about 50km out of the city, and home to the devastating Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps. Operating between 1940 and 1945, today the camps are unquestionably one of the most intact, chilling and emotional reminders of the holocaust, with the three camps (Auschwitz, Birkenau and Monowitz) claiming the lives of an estimated 1.3 million people – primarily Jews – from throughout Europe in their 5 years of operation.

I started my tour of the camp complex in Auschwitz I, touring a selection of museums, buildings and exhibitions before making the sombre walk through extermination chambers and crematoriums in which so many people lost their lives. The museums, photos, facts and figures are horrific – and well beyond my comprehension – however by far the most confronting displays were those of the personal belongings of victims; 70,000 pairs of shoes, the hair from 140,000 heads, thousands of glasses, prosthetic limbs and brushes, all displayed behind glass, and a shocking representation of the number of lives lost. While the size of the piles is beyond what my mind can even begin to understand, sadly this is only a small selection of what would have passed through the camp.

I didn't take any photos in Auschwitz, however these photos from www.scrapbookpages.com show the displays as they are found in the Auschwitz Museum today.

Human hair
Photo from www.scrapbookpages.com

70,000 pairs of shoes
Photo from www.scrapbookpages.com

Prosthetic Limbs
Photo from www.scrapbookpages.com

Suitcases
Photo from www.scrapbookpages.com

Glasses
Photo from www.scrapbookpages.com

Empty tins of Cyclone B - the chemical used in the
extermination chambers
Photo from www.scrapbookpages.com

From Auschwitz 1 I headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a much larger, purpose built concentration camp about 1km from the first camp. Birkenau is a 170 hectare property at the end of a train line, with four extermination chambers and crematoriums – killing up to 20,000 people per day during the years of its operation. Many of the buildings no longer stand, and the property is filled with countless brick chimneystacks reaching up from the grass like strange plants headed towards the sky. The remaining buildings show the disturbing conditions the prisoners endured in the camp, with over 700 people living stacked on wooden platforms in buildings barely the size of my own home, with little or no heating, no flooring, and only poorly constructed wooden walls to protect them from the often freezing conditions outside. Thousands of people died in the poor living conditions, which saw many once healthy adults plummet to below 25kg from the hard work and limited food. The bathroom buildings still remain, with rows of communal toilets and basins, as do the hospital buildings, in which thousands of ‘patients’ underwent a range of experiments to further the knowledge and work of the Nazi’s in their undertaking of the ‘Final Solution’. 

Unfortunately, the devastating Auschwitz Camps are only a small portion of the overwhelming history of the holocaust, and while an estimated 1.3 million people lost their lives in Auschwitz, this is only a fraction of the estimated 11 million people who lost their lives in concentration and extermination camps across Europe. I spent my day walking the two camps in Auschwitz absolutely overwhelmed by the magnitude, the brutality, and the horror of the history displayed before me, completely unable to even begin to understand the enormity of the lives lost, the families destroyed, and the on-going effects of this chapter of world history. While it was a day when I was ashamed of the human race, and the atrocities we are capable of, it was a day I hope to never forget.

St Anne's Church

I spent my next day in Krakow walking the city, enjoying the traditional hourly trumpet call from the Church of St Anne, the impressive Barbican and remaining city walls, and the busy Main Market Square, before heading out late in the afternoon for the Wieliczka Salt Mines. The mines, which completely stopped operation in 1996, and which stretch underground for around for over 300km’s, date back to the 13^th century and are an amazing series of mine shafts, rooms and caverns which have been transformed into quite an entertaining tour which goes through the history of salt mining at the site, the history of mining in Poland, and took me through some of the incredible chapels and chambers inside. Adding to the fun of the tour was the straight-faced, yet ridiculously sarcastic 70 year old tour guide, who had worked in mines his whole life, and had obviously had way too much time to come up with a selection of jokes only an old man can pull off so well!

A salt chandelier in the Salt Chapel

With the major tourist sites out of the way, it was time to meet some locals, and I spent the next couple of days with Piotr, a local uni student, and his never ending stream of hilarious friends, and their Polish version of Jungle Speed – Prawo Dzungli!!! Piotr lives in a flat just outside the old city, with four passionate vodka-loving guys, a crazy cat, and whoever else decides to camp the night on the floor.

Jungle Speed vs Prawo Dzungli

On first inspection, the flat is a fairly typical student flat, with every available space covered in some form of empty alcohol bottle, and more space allocated to the Xbox than for anyone to sleep, however my second day with Piotr uncovered the flat actually has much more to offer than meets the eye! When Piotr invited me into the large pine wardrobe at one end of his bedroom, I thought I was either about to enter Narnia, or about to become the next victim of a Josef Fritzl style plot, never to return home, and never to see the light of day again… however I was certainly not prepared from what was inside. Pushing his clothes aside and climbing the shelves of the wardrobe, Piotr invited me through a manhole in the ceiling of the room, leading to an amazing space above, decked out with funky wall paper, fairy lights, carpet, bean bags, flat screen plasma TV, and a surround sound system to complete the ultimate wardrobe hideaway! The room is only fairly small – the same size as the wardrobe below – and only about a metre tall, however it was the perfect place to cram five people in for a lazy afternoon of DVD’s and delicious Polish cake! Way better than Narnia.

Pope JP's local haunt, and Piotr - King of the Wardrobe!

Piotr and his friend Mateusz kept me busy showing me around the city, devouring traditional, stodgy, delicious Polish food, braving the ‘Dragon’s Cave’, and taking a walk out of the city to a park which is now the ‘Windy Point’ for the youth of Krakow, and was once the hangout of a young Pope John Paul II. I doubt he used to take his girlfriends there for a raunchy hook-up, but you never know!!! My last night in Krakow was spent shot-ing ridiculously potent Polish Vodka, losing many a battle in Prawo Dzungli (I actually found someone better at Jungle Speed than me – outrageous!), and sharing stories of life in Australia, life in Poland, and life as a Jungle Speed addict.

Poland is an amazing country, and I was lucky to meet many great people, and share some very funny and memorable moments along the way. It is a country with an unbelievably sad story to tell – a history for which it is known throughout the world – however the Polish people have clearly moved on, and while still acknowledging the events of the past, have created a country in which the future is promising and bright.

I spent my last day walking the picturesque streets and parks of Zakopane, a small town in the south of Poland, before once again heading south, bound for the breath taking High Tatras Mountains of Slovakia. 

"Work makes free"
Unfortunately, it wasn't true.