Krakow & Auschwitz/Birkenau

We were sad to leave Wroclaw as we had found only about 1/3 of the city’s dwarf statues. Big smiles when I spotted this guy at the train station, pulling his suitcase as he hurries for his train!

Our Sunday train to Krakow was the most crowded train we’ve taken on this trip. We had middle seats in a first-class compartment, but it was comfortable, and we had enough room. We arrived at our hotel with time to walk a bit in the Old Town. Our hotel is just a few hundred feet from this UNESCO World Heritage site. St. Martin’s Basilica stands on one corner of the Market Square in Old Town.

On Monday, we went on a full day tour to Auschwitz/Birkenau. The entrance had the same Nazi sign we’d seen at Terezin in the Czech Republic and Dachau in Germany, “Arbeit macht frei,” which means "work makes one free." 

The opposite was true. If not selected for immediate death, prisoners were used for labor, in the camps and outside on construction and road projects. Many concentration camp prisoners were also used in factories that produced weapons and other items that supported the German war effort. Prisoners, poorly fed with rampant malnutrition and disease, died from the overwork and starvation.

Auschwitz, a former Polish Army barracks, was not established until 1940, after some of the concentration camps in Germany. However, it became the deadliest because it was where the Nazis perfected their Final Solution, the gas chambers and crematoriums. This is also where Mengele and other Nazis carried out their horrific medical experimentation on Jews, Roma, and others.

This mound housed the Auschwitz crematorium from 1940 to 1943. During 1941 and 1942, a gas chamber was added and used. In 1943, all crematory activity was moved to Birkenau as its multiple larger crematories had been constructed there. 

Birkenau, about 2 km away, is more properly called Auschwitz II. It was the second phase of Auschwitz, opened for prisoners in 1941, and the numbers of people killed at Auschwitz, 1.1 million (90% Jews), include those killed at its Birkenau location. Trains were used to ferry people here from all over Europe. The tracks lead past barracks and directly to the gas chambers.

At the end of WWII, with the Soviet Army close to Auschwitz, the Nazi SS leaders burned and blew up the gas chambers/crematoriums. Five facilities: two at which Nazis could kill and cremate 1500 people a day, three smaller ones where Nazis killed 800 a day. Ruins are all that the Nazis left of these five buildings in hopes of hiding the activity that went on here.

The tour also took us by the barracks, housing 600 prisoners each on wooden platforms with practically no sanitary facilities. The laborers stayed here until they died or were executed when they could no longer work.

Since Auschwitz is about an hour and a half from Krakow, we didn’t return until late afternoon on Monday. Tuesday, we had no scheduled tours, so I took Phillip on a walk. An over 6-mile walk, to Krakow Castle and around Old Town. 

From the Krakow Castle rampart, we had a view of the Vistula River.

We did not go into this main part of the castle, but it had a nicely landscaped area.

Upon exiting the castle on the north side, we walked thru the entrance with the drop-down gate.

After the castle walk, we walked the entire circumference of Old Town via the Planty Gardens. The gardens were put in place where the city walls, dating from the 13th century, had been. These city walls formed a complex network of fortifications, towers, and gates, surrounded by a deep moat on the outer side. However, during the 1800s, the medieval city walls fell into disuse. During that time, Krakow was under Austrian influence and Emperor Franz I of Austria-Hungary ordered the dismantling of the old fortifications, filling the moat with soil and creating a garden in its place. Now, a pleasant park in which to walk. Oh yes, I verified from several sources that the circumference, not diameter, was 4 km. I’m not making the same mistake that I made in Busan. 

We saw these blue and white carts in many locations around Old Town. They are specific to Krakow and sell Obwarzanek Krakowski.

This is Obwarzanek Krakowski, basically a cross between a bagel and a pretzel. This food is protected and on the EU traditional food list, meaning it can only be produced and sold here. A tasty, albeit chewy, treat for 3zl (about 75 cents US). 

On the north end of Planty Gardens we found St. Florian’s Gate and a guard tower with a grass-filled moat.

To get back into Old Town, we walked thru St. Florian’s Gate.

This evening, we went back out to walk around, actually, to find ice cream for Phillip. It was dusk, and we got a nice picture of the Town Hall Tower, the only original remnant of the 15th century town hall. It's chilly here, the high today was about 45 degrees. The lights on the lower left are heaters in the restaurant patio areas. 

Tomorrow: another tour, to the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Wieliszka Salt Mines.

Wroclaw Dwarfs & Segway Tour

Wroclaw, Poland is a delightful city! We came for its history, but also for the dwarf statues. Over 350 of them have been installed around the city, mainly in the tourist areas. In the early 1980s, a university student, protesting the communist government, painted dwarfs on a wall from which the government had removed graffiti, drawing attention to what had previously been there. This started an underground movement, called the Orange Alternative, whose adherents wore comical orange pointed hats to make fun of the communists. By the late 80s, marches began in support of dwarfs. The original Wroclaw statues were a tribute to the Orange Alternative, now they are a city marketing tool. Whatever the reason for their explosion from 36 to 350 in number, it is great fun for both of us to walk around and find them. The dwarfs are about twelve inches tall and made of brass. Here is just a sample of the pictures I took as we found the dwarfs.

We've actually done more here than just look in doorways and around statues for the dwarfs. Wroclaw has a large central market square that is NOT under construction. 

Fountains and statues abound in this area.

Many buildings were bombed during WWII and have been rebuilt in the same style they were in originally. This is a university building and although it had damage from bombing, we could not tell the reconstructed part from the original parts of the building.

Phillip and I have not just been walking the town for the past few days. Yesterday, we did one of my bucket list items: a segway tour. The handle in the above picture is from my segway. The segway tour was so much fun! We will do others in the future. I will say that I was not coordinated enough to use my camera and ride at the same time. The pictures of us on the segways are on my cell phone and they aren't transferring over for me to use in the blog. But, here's a picture of Phillip and his segway at one of our stops. The red brick on the ground is where the original fortifications of Wroclaw were (Napolean was actually the one who tore them down on his way east thru Poland toward Russia.)

Our guide, Martin, was a talkative fellow who knew his history and architecture. A geography lesson for you: Hamburg, Germany is the European city with the most bridges, followed by Amsterdam then Venice. Fourth in Europe for the most bridges in the city is Wroclaw. The Oder River branches, twists, and turns enough that Wroclaw has over 150 bridges. During our tour, we went over several of them, like this one to Cathedral Island. Wroclaw as a city began on this island, because the island settlement could be defended and used for river trade, during the 1200s. 

We rode past many buildings, some never damaged, that were built in the 1700s and 1800s, like this museum building covered in ivy. 

Martin took us on a longer tour than we had booked as we were the only people on the tour! Love those private tours that just happen that way. Instead of a 90-minute Segway tour, he could tell we were interested and having fun, so our tour was over 3 hours. We didn't stop for every dwarf we saw, but if we had stopped and a dwarf was nearby, I dismounted from the segway and snapped a quick picture.

We stayed out until after dark last night, so we were able to see the astronomical clock on one of the five-hundred-year-old buildings as it was lit by streetlamps.

Today, we walked along the Oder River. The entire four-mile walk, except when we diverted to a shopping mall to use a restroom, was in a park setting. 

Outside the Natural History Museum, they had a statue to be used as a chair.

And, we are eating well here. Phillip did not expect his meal yesterday to be quite so much food! 

Tomorrow, we take another train for a three-hour ride to Krakow. I still have more dwarf pictures formatted for this blog, so here you go:

Final Berlin Scenes & into Poland

Although Phillip and I have made our way into Poland, I have a few Berlin pictures to share. Before we left Germany, we spent a day walking thru the Tiergarten, Berlin’s version of Central Park. During our 8+ mile stroll, we enjoyed the Rose Garden area. Although it isn’t rose season, the garden was still beautiful.

The Tiergarten traffic circle had a spectacular center statue. I took pictures for a family with the statue in the background then they offered to take one for us. So, yes, Phillip and I are traveling together! I haven’t lost him yet.

The Tiergarten was full of statues, either soldiers, famous statesmen, or hunting scenes like this.

Several streams ran the length of the park, some with pools of still water that made a great reflecting surface for the trees. 

Unlike my posts during our SE Asia trips, I haven’t posted many food pictures. Since we’ve been in tourist areas and our hotel is immediately next to the main train station, we didn’t eat traditional German food. On Monday, we did visit a local market about 6 trams stops from our hotel. We went for the food and it did not disappoint! Delicious wurst, red cabbage, and potatoes cooked with bacon.

As I noted, we are now in Poland. Our train ride was almost four hours and was quite comfortable. We crossed a national border but because Germany and Poland are both EU countries, there was no actual border crossing, no passport stamp. We knew when our train crossed into Poland because Verizon sent us a text message that we had phone service here. Our first stop is Poznan and our hotel room, near the historic old town, is more comfortable and larger than the Berlin hotel room. Phillip tried to find an English language channel. No luck, so we watched a game show in Polish for an hour last night!

Phillip and I are only in Poznan for two nights because the historic old town, Stare Miastro, is its only attraction. We walked there today, only to find that Poznan is in the midst of a reconstruction project. The entire historic town square in under construction. These are views from the barely open sidewalk on two sides of the square.

At the historic square, the town’s Clock Tower is famous, with a live trumpeter at noon, and the fanfare accompanied by two mechanical goats, symbols of Poznań, head-butting each other 12 times. This pair of goats has been facing off since 1551. Crowds gathered for the noon show. 

We saw the trumpeter, on a walkway above the clock.

However, the doors, just above the clock in the above picture, never opened for the goats! We found a statue of the historic goat head-butting scene in a nearby park.

Poznan has a croissant museum, making St. Martin croissants. We stopped by and learned that they had a 2 pm tour in English, so we signed up to learn the story. St. Martin helped the poor in the 12th century and served as the inspiration for a 19th century Poznan baker to make special croissants to give to the poor, hence St. Martin croissants and the museum. The tour had a hands-on component and I volunteered.

We also learned at the museum that the clock tower goats weren’t working today because the construction workers accidently cut the power lines to the clock tower building this morning. No clock tower goats in Poznan today. Tomorrow, we head for Wroclaw. I hope nothing has gone wrong with the dwarf statues!