Two Weeks in Poland

Travelling with no set timeline means your plans can be fluid. Our original plans for Poland changed a bit along the way, all for the best mind you, and we spent two incredible weeks exploring some of this surprisingly varied country.

Our first major destination was to be Gdansk. Being a 7-hour drive from our last stop in Lithuania we decided to break the journey into two days, and overnight somewhere in Poland on the way. Driving through rural Poland as the day wore on we started to think finding a campsite was not that likely. All the villages we passed through were no more than a couple of houses and some barns. Then we stumbled upon Mikolajki. This picturesque lakeside town thronged with holiday makers. It looked like the perfect place to stop. We found a lovely campsite in town and had our first change of plans. This wouldn’t be a one-night stopover, we’d stay a couple of days.

Mikolajki is the tourist hub of the Masurian lake district and is known as the Pearl of the Masuria. Numerous sailing regattas are held here and the town is packed with sailing enthusiasts over the summertime. Despite being very touristy, with loads of bars, eateries, and market stalls selling hats and sunglasses, it is still a charming little town with loads of character. It reminded us of Queenstown, but with a lot more sailing boats.

We spent two days here relaxing and enjoying the bustling atmosphere of the town, before hitting the road again and heading to Gdansk.

Gdansk

Our first impression of Gdansk wasn’t great. We got off the motorway straight into an industrial area with oil refineries and factories, then drove past the expansive port with container cranes as far as you can see. To top it off, when we arrived at the campsite it looked like an abandoned section, overgrown and rubbish bins overflowing. It was another one of these pop-up campgrounds for the summer season, this time attached to a Polytechnic. The showers in the gymnasium were excellent, but they were a 100metre walk from the campsite. However, at $18 a night and so close to town we decided to make do. To our relief the next morning the rubbish was collected and suddenly it didn’t seem so bad. Although it could use some quality time with a weed-eater.

Trying not to pre-judge on our first impressions we jumped on the bikes and headed to town. We were immediately smitten by this beautiful city. It was a stunning evening and the town was buzzing with activity. The 757^th St. Dominic’s Fair was in full swing and the streets were lined with market stalls selling all sorts of arts and crafts, jewellery, bread, and an incredible amount Halva, a traditional sweet made from sesame paste. We couldn’t resist and had to try some. It’s an interesting texture, very rich and sticky, but not that sweet. The jury is out on that one. St. Dominic’s Fair, or Jarmark Dominika or simply Jarmark as its referred to in Polish, runs for three weeks and is hugely popular. Our timing to visit Gdansk couldn’t have been more perfect as it really did add colour and excitement to the city.

Gdansk has a beautiful mix of architecture brought from across Europe by merchants trading through this port city over the centuries. Many of the buildings were badly damaged in WWII but they have been lovingly restored to their former glory, resplendent in pinks, oranges, greens and blues. The pedestrian only Ulica Dluga (long street) and Dlugi Targ (long market) are lined with these wonderful buildings, as is the wide Motlawa Canal that runs through the city. The view from the Town Hall Spire down to the Golden Gate and back across the Dlugi Targ was wonderful, and a great way to appreciate the architecture of this gem of a city.

The Polish love potatoes a lot. In fact, eastern Europe loves potatoes. They are everywhere and in everything. We ate out at a very cool contemporary café that only served dishes with potatoes as the core ingredient. We both had a potato casserole of different varieties and agreed it was the most divine comfort food we’d tasted, and cost only $9 NZD each.

Gdansk is a port city and the shipyards here were a hotbed of uprisings and resistance to communism during the 70’s and 80’s. In the early 80’s the industrial action at the shipyards calling for better human rights eventually lead to the fall of communism in Poland. The former Lenin shipyard has now been transformed into the European Solidarity Centre, a large imposing building that has been renovated into a modern airy space housing a library, convention centre and museum. Outside the museum stands the 42-metre-high Solidarity Monument with 3 concrete crosses and ship anchors, in memory of the 42 dockworkers who were shot during the 1970 strike.

The museum tells the story of the shipyard workers and their fight for freedom from oppression, and eventually the downfall of communism. The exhibition is modern, creative and compelling and we both agreed it is best museum we ever visited. The old ABM (another bloody museum) adage was redundant in this case.  We were moved by the strength and bravery shown by those in the Solidarność (solidarity) movement, who peacefully waged a campaign of resistance against the communist regime. At the end of the exhibition was a wall made up of white and red pieces of paper spelling Solidarność. On each piece of paper was a note from a visitor to the museum, expressing their feelings and thoughts on what they’d seen. We left our note with the thousands of others.

Three days in Gdansk was long enough to see the sights, but we could have stayed much longer. We fell hard for the charms of this graceful city.

Warsaw

From Gdansk, we made the very slow trip to Warsaw. The Polish seem to be investing a lot in new motorways, but they don’t do it stage by stage, they do the entire road at once which meant long stretches of roadworks at 30km per hour. After a full day travelling we arrived in the capital, home to 1.7 million people. It was one of the hottest days they’d had and at 5pm it was still 30 degrees.

Our campsite was about 5km from the city centre and right on a bus route so the next morning we decided to leave the bikes behind and take the bus to town. The old town is lovely, but not as quaint as some off the others we’ve visited on our trip so far. We had to keep reminding ourselves of that Warsaw was almost completely destroyed during the war. Reminders of the war are everywhere. We sheltered from a downpour in an antique shop which proved to be a treasure trove of military memorabilia. There were German iron crosses, SS badges, and medals and uniforms from various armies. The rain had long stopped before we emerged. Despite wet weather, tourists were out in their thousands, and we started to miss the less crowded Baltic countries we had left behind.

The Polish composer Frederic Chopin grew up in Warsaw and the city is very proud of him. They are Chopin mad. Even the airport is named after him. Tickets to numerous Chopin concerts are sold to tourists all through the old town and in the beautiful Lazienki Park there are regular outdoor performances of his work. We came across bench seats that play Chopin music at the touch of a button. These seats are near places that had relevance to Chopin’s life. Not long after discovering the Chopin playing seats we stumbled upon a plaque in the Holy Cross Church, that said “Here rests the heart of Frederic Chopin”. If it wasn’t for an Asian family excitedly taking pictures we may have missed it. Chopin died in Paris but his sister brought his heart back to Warsaw.

The next day the weather was once again threatening rain so we decided to be real tourists and try the hop-on hop-off sightseeing bus. It departed from outside the controversial Palace of Culture and Science, a rather garish gift from Stalin to the people of Poland in 1955, and did a circuit of the city past the main sights. At $45 NZD for the two of us it wasn’t expensive, but it was a disappointment. We could have covered the same ground in half the time on our bikes, and although the commentary was interesting, it provided no more information than we get from our guidebook. We stuck with it and went on the full circuit before getting off at Lazienki Park, also known as Royal Baths Park. This stunning park covers 76 hectares in the city centre and is filled with palaces, villas and monuments, including a statue of our friend Chopin. We were walking around one of the lakes and stopped to watch an elderly couple feeding bread to giant carp. They spoke perfect English and told us they were locals who often came to the park to feed the fish, birds, and to my delight, red squirrels. She kindly gave me a handful of hazelnuts in their shells to feed the squirrels by hand. They are just too cute!

The sun was finally shining and we decided to walk back into town rather than wait for the sightseeing bus. Outside the Presidential Palace a protest was taking place and Andrew asked one of the protestors what it was about. In broken English, he explained that the current far right government was planning to change the constitution bringing the supreme court and judicial system under government control.  We later read that the man behind the Gdansk shipyard protests of the 80’s, former Polish president Lech Wałęsa, has come out of retirement to protest against this too, as it’s seen as a reversal of their hard-fought fight to establish a true democracy.

We enjoyed Warsaw. It is a majestic and proud city which has risen from a turbulent past. But it is an international capital city, and we’re starting to realise we prefer the smaller, regional towns and cities. After all, we wouldn’t want people to say they experienced New Zealand after only visiting Auckland.

Krakow

We had only planned to stay two days in Krakow before heading to the European Eventing Champs in Strzegom. We both love horse sports and thought it a great opportunity to see some of the world’s best riders in action, like Germany’s Michael Jung. But we soon realised all that we wanted to see and do in Krakow and the surrounding area would take longer than two days, so we decided to forgo the eventing champs and stay six days in Krakow. We are sure we’ll find another top class equestrian event somewhere else in Europe while we’re here.

We didn’t regret our change of plan one bit. Our Krakow experience was amazing.

Krakow is in southern Poland near the border of the Czech Republic. It was the central site of Nazi control in Poland and was relatively unscathed by war. It has a gorgeous old town ringed by Planty Park and remnants of the city’s medieval walls, and at its centre is the stately and expansive Rynek Glówny (market square). This plaza is the site of the Cloth Hall, a Renaissance-era trading outpost, and St. Mary’s Basilica, a 14th-century Gothic church, and one of the most beautiful I have been in. Every hour bugles are played from the windows high up the church tower and everyone applauds loudly from the ground below. Restaurants and bars line the perimeter of the square, and were trading busily. Apparently, Krakow has more bars and restaurants than any other Polish city. While we were there a festival of Polish folk music and dance was taking place in the square, adding to the buzzing summer atmosphere.

For lunch, we indulged in street food from the market stalls, each time opting for pierogis, traditional Polish dumplings that are made with an assortment of fillings. They are delicious!

Not surprisingly Krakow has a castle. Wawel Castel covers a hill on the edge of the old town. It’s made up of an eclectic mix of buildings in architectural styles from across the centuries including medieval, baroque and renaissance. It’s a very popular attraction, when we visited it on a public holiday in glorious weather it was teeming with tourists.

One of the reasons we changed plans and stayed longer in Krakow was Auschwitz. We hadn’t done our homework and assumed we could turn up at the museum and memorial on any day we wanted. This was the case in the past, but because of the huge number of visitors you now must go online and register for a day and time, and you need to do this days if not weeks in advance. When we realised this we tried to book online, but all places for individual visitors were taken for the next week. Admission is free, but tour operators get allocated a certain percentage of spaces that they then on-sell in packages, so if we were going to visit Auschwitz we had to concede and book a tour from Krakow. There were plenty to choose from, and we secured our tickets for later that week.

To prepare ourselves for Auschwitz we visited Schindler’s factory and museum. Oskar Schindler was a Nazi who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the German occupation of Poland by employing them in his enamel factory. The story was made into the highly acclaimed movie Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg. The museum in Schindler’s enamel factory is not so much about Schindler and those he saved, but more an insight into life in Krakow during the years of Nazi occupation. It was very well done, and gave us a good understanding of that difficult time in history.

The next day we were off to Auschwitz. We travelled in a very comfortable late model 22-seater bus for the 1 hour 20 drive. On the way, we were shown a documentary on the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army containing original footage of what they found at the camps. It helped us understand the scale of the camps and what to expect. Auschwitz is the name given to a cluster of Nazi concentration camps and we were to visit two, Auschwitz 1 and Birkenau.

We arrived at Auschwitz 1 and were greeted by our local guide. He lives in the village nearby and spends two days a week taking tours through Auschwitz because he is passionate about making sure the story is told. He was brilliant. His delivery was compassionate and thoughtful, and he allowed us time to digest and reflect on the enormity of what happened here.

2017 marks the 70^th year that Auschwitz has operated as a museum and memorial to the 1.1 million men, women and children who lost their lives here. Outside the entrance is a shiny new plaque recognising those countries that contributed all those years ago to making sure this site was preserved as a museum. It was good to see New Zealand on the list.

Auschwitz 1 was predominantly a labour camp, firstly for the Polish and then for Jews and all other minority groups targeted by the Third Reich. Above the gate into the camp is the infamous slogan “Arbeit macht frei”– work sets you free.  We walked through these gates and into the camp. It is almost as it was at the time of liberation. The barbed wire fences still intact and the barracks mostly unchanged. The tour takes you through some of the barracks where there are exhibits and photos. The vast pile of human hair and the 50,000 pairs of shoes is confronting. The long narrow hallway lined with rows of mugshots of prisoners, each with their date of birth, date of imprisonment, and date of death hit me hard. Women on one side, men on the other, hair shaven, eyes defiant despite the degrading treatment they had faced and the fear they must have felt. There are so many faces, they start to look familiar. It is overwhelming. Most only lasted 2 or 3 months in the camp, such were the conditions. These mugshots were only taken in the first two years of the camp’s operation, after that there were just too many prisoners arriving.

The museum was designed to cope with 500,000 visitors annually, last year there were 2 million. There are plans underway to make changes to cope with the increase, but now it is crowded, and in the heat of the day inside those barracks it becomes unbearable, which is apt considering the conditions the prisoners were kept in.

We asked the guide about the increase in visitors. He puts it down to more countries teaching the history of the holocaust in schools, young people are visiting in droves, and also Poland has become a popular tourist destination, so there are simply more people here.

From Auschwitz 1 we drove 5 minutes down the road to the Birkenau camp. Birkenau is huge, covering 171 hectares. It was at this camp where four gas chambers operated during the latter part of the war, killing hundreds of thousands of predominantly Jewish people. A railway track runs through the middle and ends at a dusty platform. This is where trains arrived jammed with Jews from all over Nazi occupied Europe, and where the decision was made on the spot whether they would be put to work or sent to their deaths. We stood there silently in the stifling heat.

The guide told us that some more fundamental Jews want the camp to be pulled down and closed off, as the ashes of the dead cover the fields and it should be considered sacred land. In some ways I can understand this viewpoint, does it need to be kept exactly as it was for us not to forget? It’s such an emotive subject, there will never be full consensus on the future of a place like this. What there is agreement on is the shared hope that this never happens again.

After a big day, we sat in the lively town square, people watching, drinking beer, and eating the best pierogis we’d ever tasted.

On our last day in Krakow we visited the Salt Mines of Wieliczka, 14kms out of the city. We were taken on a tour through a labyrinth of passages deep underground. Through giant caverns, into beautiful underground chapels with chandeliers made of salt, and past tranquil lakes. Everything is made of salt; the walls, the floors, the statues. And if you need proof you can even lick the walls.

The mine was worked for 900 years, finally closing in 1996. It used to be one of the world’s biggest and most profitable industrial establishments when common salt was the medieval equivalent of today’s oil. Nine centuries of mining in Wieliczka produced a total of some 200 kilometres of passages as well as 2,040 caverns of varied size. The tourist route starts 64m deep, includes twenty chambers, and ends 135m below the earth surface, where the world’s biggest museum of mining is located with the unique centuries-old equipment among its exhibits. Occasionally concerts and other events take place in the Wieliczka mine’s biggest chambers. It was a fascinating two hours.

In the grounds of the mine is a new attraction, the Graduation Tower. This architecturally designed structure looks like a wooden castle but when you get closer you see it’s covered in sticks with salt brine tumbling down every surface, creating a salt mist. The mist produced is creates a type of inhalation therapy. It is supposed to have great health benefits, especially for those with asthma and breathing difficulties. It was really quite odd, but we think it worked.

Our time in Poland has drawn to a close and planning for our next leg is complete.

We loved what we saw of this country – the history and culture it shared with us, the surprisingly delicious food, and the people. Yes, the Polish may come across as brusque, and stand-offish, but once you laugh with them they let their guard down and have a great sense of humour, and a twinkle in their eye.

Tomorrow we head to Czechia.