Warsaw to Krakow

Warsaw, apart from being the capital of Poland and its comercial centre, is, well, not much else. This was the scene of the aptly named Warsaw uprising at the end of WWII when the Polish underground fought a vicious battle against the Nazis. The thought was the Red Army is approaching and they would time the uprising so that the Russians could help out. The timing was right, too bad about the last part. Once the Russian army reached the outskirts of the city, they stopped. They had a great view of the city and the Poles fighting, and eventually losing. The Nazis were so pissed off at the uprising that they completely levelled the city, flat. Hence there is not much to see really. Some parts of the old town were rebuilt but the rest is pretty new. There is an interesting picture of Lenin though, and quite large. So Warsaw was a rest place for us, three days in a proper hotel. Then, on to Krakow which is a different story.
Krakow is a beautiful city which was almost untouched in the war. It has a magnificent castle in the centre of he town, which looks brilliant at night. The river flows through the town which gives it a chilled atmosphere. In the middle of the town is a large square with a church tower at one end and a cloth exchange on one side. Every hour someone blows a bugle from the church tower but the song is dramatically cut short mid-note. Historically this bugle tune was to warn the town of impending attack. During one such attack, the bugler was killed with a Tatar arrow through the throat while sounding the warning, and now it is commemorated every hour.
Just outside Krakow there is a salt mine which was used for hundreds of years and is now a tourist attraction. Actually it has been a tourist attraction for about 150 years already. This was to be an attraction unlike any we have seen in Eastern Europe so far, for a start we were allowed to take pictures. Also the mandatory tour guide was pleasant, funny and informative. But don’t worry, it was balanced with the rude and pushy tourists, mostly non-native English speakers which was strange being the English speaking tour. She took us down the mine, down over 80 flights of stairs into a different world. There are many chambers, completely made out of salt and mostly hewn out of the rock itself. The main chamber is breathtakingly huge, dotted with statues, reliefs, a magnificent chandilier made of salt and what look like 3D paintings. Considering the work was done by only three men and it is ALL made of salt, this was no mean feat. It is hard to describe the magnitude of the chamber so I will leave it to the pictures to demonstrate. After the tour had finished (over two hours), we thankfully took the lift back to the surface. It took 25 seconds to reach the top and the lift was moving. It’s hard to imagine spending so much time down there it is like you are living there, which is why they built the chambers and chapels in the first place.
Not too far from Krakow is another famous place, but famous for all the wrong reasons, Oswiecim or more commonly known by its German name, Auschwitz. There are two parts of the complex open, Auschwitz and Birkenau. Birkenau is the larger of the two and the one with the well-known sight of the brick arch through which the trains would enter. If you have seen Schindler’s List you would know what I am talking about. The two camps are about a 5 minute drive apart. I think there has been plenty written about Auschwitz and most know about the atrocities committed there, but there is something different about being there. We saw more than one person crying there, especially in the crematoria, which I have to admit did feel a little emotional, especially since they look like they could still be used. There is a feeling over the place, one friend told me it was eerie, but to me it was less tangible than that. It felt, for want of a better word, industrial which gives it a morose feeling given what the industry was. It is good that the place is still there and is being visited by many people, ironically mostly Germans from what we could see. It would be tragic for this to be forgotten and happen again (at least not in Europe, Africa doesn’t seem to count sometimes, but we wont get into that. Lets just say that the sooner they discover oil in black Africa the better).
Krakow was great, Poland has treated us well. We have one night in a tiny, country town in Eastern Slovakia and then it is off to Romania.