Day 4 - Prague, Czech Republic.
We got up early to catch our train to Prague, a four and a half hour journey and the Dutchies were still not back. I guess that meant that they got in somewhere. We had said our goodbyes the night before, just in case.
As I've probably mentioned, train is my favourite way to travel and this time was no exception. We had good seats and it was a comfortable fast ride. When we arrived in the afternoon, it was pretty hot, a nice change from the greys and concrete skies of Berlin. It took a while, but we managed to find our hostel situated right next to the 'old town' and we couldn't have asked for a better location. Loads of old architecture, restaurants and cafes were about so there was never any shortage of ideas for food.
We decided to wander out into the city and were greeted by a bustling marketplace in the main square of St Wencelas (like the Christmas carol). Loads of stalls and people wandering around and no doubt, pickpockets. Luckily I always carry around infected syringes in my pockets, should any cheeky sod decide to lift my wallet. I call it my "porcupine surprise."
We wandered around the Old Town for a three or four hours until our stomachs demanded that we feed them. We found a classy floating boat/restaurant that was far more affordable than it looked. The exchange rate is 100 Euro = 2500 Korunas (or Crowns) so we had a big feed, a few beers each and tasty dessert for around 20 Euro. As I mentioned last time, the further east you go, the more affordable the beer becomes. In fact, it's cheaper to buy a beer in Prague than it is to buy a coffee.
Evening descended and we were still in the mood for exploring. We checked out the major landmark of the St Charles bridge, dotted with old statues, hawkers and somewhere in the realm of a bajillion tourists. There are several bridges spanning the river but this is by far the nicest.
Describing Prague as a place with old buildings, a fancy castle and stony bridges over a wide river doesn't really do it justice. Sure, you can reduce it to that, just as you can reduce Einstein to a guy who good at scientific equations. At night time it looks postcard picturesque as the sky darkens and the lights illuminate the buildings all around the city.
Day 5 - Prague, Czech Republic.
Our beds were superb so we felt a million bucks when we woke up the next morning. We decided to check out the castle and cathedrals as that's what you do when you visit medieval cities. Just as the Germans had invaded decades earlier, the German weather made its way to Prague and we were drizzled on all day. We shared some traditional Czech food -- goulash beef stew in a hollowed out bread bun and half a kilo of potatoes sliced into a kind of quiche. To call Czech food 'stodgy' is an understatement. Green vegetables are a myth used to scare children into behaving properly so if you're going to Prague, you'd better like meat and you'd better like bread and potatoes. Luckily I like all three.
There's no point in describing the Cathedral and castle we saw. They're always really impressive yet hard to define. The Wencelas (?) Cathedral was more ornate than most I've seen and was filled with detailed ornaments and stone statues of angels with golden-gilded swords. But like many cathedrals, it's the most impressive one you've seen until the next one.
The castle was more memorable but I found it hard to read the Czech history and get a feel for the country's struggle over the years for a couple of reasons. 1) There are lots of V's and W's in the language which can make it hard to concentrate and 2) Czech history doesn't really interlink with NZ or UK history so while I'm sure it's all very interesting (some royals got thrown out of a window and survived), it's like when Finland won the World Ice Hockey championships. Great for fans of Finnish ice hockey, kinda irrelevant for everyone else.
Afterwards, we strolled around some more, we went through some gardens looking for peacocks (nowhere to be seen) before we had to take shelter at the Senate to get out of the rain.
We then decided to do some beer tasting at a restaurant where we sampled a selection of 8 x 100ml beers with some not-so-normal flavours including; banana beer, coffee beer, nettle beer, and wait for it… bacon beer. Technically it wasn't bacon beer but rather a smoky beer. The coffee beer was my fave - I much preferred it to Guinness which was it's most similar flavour.
As far as beers go, Prague deserves it's reputation as Europe's best.
Day 6 - Krakow, Poland.
After failing to book seats on the fully booked overnight train, we decided to get a day train to Krakow the next day. It was quite a long journey; eight hours and thirty-eight minutes (to be exact) made longer by a fire in the front carriage of the train. Every time we pulled into a station, we could smell a kind of sulphurous smoke and then people would open the windows. A part of me thought that this was par for the course on a train heading to Eastern Europe but after a while, people began to move from the front carriage into our carriage as the smoke increased, so we knew it was no ordinary smoke.
This lead to a big delay as we apparently pulled into a station, removed the offending carriage before continuing on with our journey. I say 'apparently,' as I slept for the two hour period that this was happening.
Later, we had to change at a place called Katovice (Kat-toh-veech-chuh) which is the dreariest looking place I've ever seen. Old rusty tracks surrounded by buildings that looked like Communism never left. Old train notification boards that never knew electricity or digitalism. Everyone from the first train stood around on the platform as we waited for a joining train that never arrived. Eventually, we caught one a half hour later and we left the misty station.
So having started the day at 9am we got into Krakow about 8.30pm, and headed to the hostel apartments we booked. Unfortunately, we had the world's chattiest hostel staff member who told us what to do and where to go in Krakow for about an hour, which was pretty painful as we were starving from only eating breakfast that day. Anna and I can both talk a person's ear off, but I can guarantee you that we're nothing compared to this girl. Donkeys would be wary of their hind legs around her.
On the hostess' advice (we did listen to some of it, after all), we strolled around to an oldish part of town and tried the local Polish dish of Pirogi; a kind of dumpling that can be filled with anything from sauerkraut, cheese, meat, potato, or minced vegetables. We couldn't decide which ones to get, so we got a bowl of thirty pirogi filled with all the types to share.
Then we waddled home.
Day 7 - Krakow, Poland.
Took it pretty easy in the morning and did some washing. I'm not sure why I'm mentioning doing washing in this blog. Maybe because Mum will read it, and that's the sort of things that Mum's like to know.
Big event for the day was our day trip out to the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone is familiar with Auschwitz, but you may not be familiar with the second, much larger camp of Birkenau and a third one Monowitz were constructed to 'cope with the demand' (for want of a better term).
It was pretty much a perfect day to visit such a place. The sky was monotone grey and the rain drizzled throughout. We got on the bus which played a 50 minute video about the camp -- to prepare us, I suppose. Apparently, much of the footage that we see about Auschwitz was taken by a lone Russian cameraman who volunteered to film it despite no military or camera experience. As the Nazi's burned much of the evidence about the camps, his footage became quite crucial in providing evidence for the Nuremburg trials, after the war had finished.
Auschwitz itself was quite busy, with several tour groups there. We saw what looked to be a school tourgroup of Israeli teenagers, some draped in Israeli flags, others looking decidedly bored. No doubt, this part of the tour was an important part of their historical curriculum so you think they'd be a little more interested but rampant hormones have a way of stopping teens from thinking straight.
Above the entrance gate, in wrought iron, are the words "Arbeit Macht Frei", ironically meaning 'work brings freedom.' I assume this was the kind of cruel joke that the Nazi's became famous for because the mass deception of the whole place was quite astounding. Jewish people were mislead that they were being relocated to these camps for a better life, so it was not uncommon for them to pack suitcases full of belongings, only for the contents to be sent away a week later, minus the original owner.
Specifics of the the tour are probably not worth going into too much detail. The whole place was, unsurprisingly, quite morbid and very affecting for most people. As we moved from room to room around the camp, our guide filled us in on the history and happenings of the place and it wasn't difficult to be saddened by it all. The statistics are bad enough, but I thought one of the worst rooms was a window display filled with thousands of children's shoes. Then in the adjoining room, a similar display of adult shoes. Only this time, tens of thousands of them.
No item belonging to the prisoners was not worth keeping. Suitcases of clothes were sorted, rings, jewellery and even tooth fillings were melted down to fund the war effort. Women even had their heads shaved and it was used to make soldier's socks. Pretty gross, really.
Many of the rooms had documents detailing experiments on patients. Often they were injected with Phenol, used to stop their heart, but other experiments included injecting syphilis and even leprosy into prisoners. If it makes for harrowing reading, it's even worse hearing in person.
Yet it gets worse. In a case of German efficiency gone horribly wrong, eventually they worked out a way to gas Jews, Gypsies and Slavic people en masse, so in some rooms they had the piles and piles of canisters of Cyklon-B, followed afterwards by the actual rooms where prisoners were killed. These concrete rooms seemed relatively unassuming, until you realise that the scratches and gouges on the wall are about the same dimensions as human hands…
You kinda wonder, why didn't they just fight back, or organise resistances? Well, they did, but the Nazi's had an answer for everything and one answer was "collective responsibility." If prisoners were presumed guilty of collusion, then 10 people close to them would be killed. Hard to plan escape when you're gambling with other people's lives.
Despite all the morbidity, there was a quiet dignity about Auschwitz. The buildings are well maintained, the grass is well kept and there are a few rooms where people have left roses on displays or flowers under memorials. (Special mention is made of a priest who volunteered to swap places with another prisoner who was sentenced to death by starvation). In a rare victory of poetic justice, there is a specially constructed hanging post out back where Nazi Commander Rudolph Hoess was sentenced to death by hanging. It rests upon the old site where interrogations were conducted.
After all that, we climbed onto the bus again and headed over to Birkenau.
It's simply enormous. Scarily so. The iconic railway track divides the camp through the middle - an image you may have seen in pictures or films. To give you an idea of the scale, you can't even see the end of the camp in any direction. It's 1.5km wide and over 800m long and covers 400 acres.
It was getting a bit cold in the evening, and the ever constant drizzle was adding to the lowering temperature, so we were glad to get back on the bus. The irony of feeling cold wasn't lost on us as Anna noted that this would be the worst place to be in the middle of winter. Prisoners wore outfits that were little more than pyjamas and usually didn't even have shoes, let alone socks.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was an incredible experience and well worth the relatively inexpensive outlay. On the bus back, the guide thanked everyone for their good behaviour at such an important site and reminded us that there is much more to see in Krakow and Poland, than just the camps.
When we arrived back in town, it was unanimously agreed that we should have a stiff drink and we found this amazing Mexican restaurant that served the most delicious food we have ever tasted. I always find it it a bit of a pointless exercise to describe food tastevia words - it's like trying to describe colour via smell but it was there was definitely a taste party in my mouth and I'm salivating as I type this.
As rapper Ice Cube put it; "Today was a good day."
