Showing posts with label Poland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poland. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Wawel Castle, Cathedral, and Environs

The big site in Cracow, however, is Wawel Hill, with its Wawel Castle and complex, cathedral, etc.  The cathedral is the counterpart of Westminster, where kings were coronated and later buried, etc. The whole complex is enormous, over-looking the wide Vistula River; we stuck to the castle state rooms, the cathedral, the dragon cave (see below), and just wandering around.
Approaching Wawel Castle


















In the large castle square, random tourists engage in Polish 
folk-dancing














You put your right foot in, you take right foot out...
meanwhile thieves make off with your bags, purses, 
cameras; that's what it all about!

















Local boy makes good; outside the Wawel
Cathedral; he was Archbishop of Cracow
before becoming John Paul II





















Cathedral Tower with King Kasimir


















Both the castle and cathedral have no-pix policies;
here's a clandestine shot in the throne room















And another looking out the window; the dragon is a really
big thing in Cracow, having to do with the founding of the 

city; toy dragons everywhere...















So we did visit the dragon's lair, a fairly large cave under the
castle, by the river
















The dragon sculpture, outside the cave


















Which spouts flames every six minutes or so


















Traditional boats on the Vistula














And traditional lunch for me (with a Zywiec) at the corner
grill; Vicki had a gelato

On the Square in Cracow

We promenaded the large square, taking in the church, the cloth market, numerous shoppes, before settling in to a street-side cafe, for a bier (and a screwdriver), to watch the parade.

The market square tower, 15th century












The Cloth Market, 16th century, though remodeled
frequently (every couple centuries or so), mostly souvenirs








Foretelling the future outside the Cloth Market











Pivo means beer, and this person is giving it
away, at a certain bar; I stuck to my favored
Zywiec













Horse-drawn carriage tours are a big deal, very popular, in
Cracow







But with horses come certain, um, emissions; in this
amazing photo (click to enlarge), the co-pilot is examining
 the recent contents of the horsepoopski catcher, which
he/she extends whenever the horse's tail is raised; in two
days' walking all over old Cracow, we saw only one
instance of errant poopski








Of course, there was a wedding carriage






And, on warm weather days like this, the Policie wear
t-shirts

Cracow

So we drove on from Oswiecim to Cracow, taking the blue highways, as we often do. The secondary roads we saw in Poland are pretty much as advertised: paved, wide enough, but very rough and heavily-trafficked. The one-hour drive to Cracow took two hours, but we got to see some "real" Poland that you don't see from the super-highway.

We spent a couple days in Cracow. The campground was near Borek, in the western outskirts, with the tram station and a huge shopping center a few hundred feet beyond the park. This campground also had free wifi, in the reception area only, however. Riding into the old city was a breeze. And cheap.

Cracow is the historic, cultural, and intellectual capital of Poland. Somehow, it avoided the ravages of two world wars. The modern capital, Warsaw, was pretty much destroyed in WWII. Old Cracow is beautiful, interesting, studded with fascinating architecture, some of it quite old. Of course, newer Cracow is old eastern bloc, neither beautiful nor interesting.... But then, most all cities are like this, everywhere.

The St. Mary Church, 14th century,
dominates the old city market square













Its best known feature is the large wood-carving alterpiece
by Veit Stoss of Nuremburg







Up closer; larger than life-size











Stained-glass window; extremely ornate
throughout; memorials of one sort or
another occupy just about every square
inch, sort of like Westminster Abbey





















Ceiling













Front of another church, down the street







Many beautiful buildings










And my personal favorite, the statue of
Copernicus, in the university area; he
was a student there; the U of Cracow is
one of Europe's very oldest













Typical Cracow tram

Oswiecim

The actual name of the place is Oswiecim. The Germans changed it to Auschwitz in 1939. Oswiecim is in the midst of a huge industrial area; lots of coal still being dug out of the earth, lots of old and new industry going on. The Germans liked Oswiecim initially for its ready coal. Auschwitz III included a huge synthetic rubber plant, the ruins still there, "employing" thousands of its captives, making rubber from coal.

















The "tourist center" in Oswiecim, located in the huge over-flow parking lot for Auschwitz, is the best such facility we have seen. In addition to inexpensive parking places for RVs, with water, WC, showers, etc., the center itself had a fully-staffed tourist information center, a gift/souvenir store, a tobacco/sundries store, a post office, a bank/automat, a bier garden, a restaurant, a casino, and billiards. The only thing missing was a small grocery, but it was right across the street. Best of all, the restaurant offered free wifi.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Birkenau

If Auschwitz were not chilling enough, Birkenau was overwhelming. The Germans were able to destroy much of it as they withdrew in 1944, so there are few exhibits. It is the scale of the thing--a square mile of barracks, the railroad, the gas chambers, the crematoria--that is staggering.
A USAAF photo of the Auschwitz complex
in May, 1944; Auschwitz II, Birkenau, is
the huge installation at the top













The scale is staggering, even with most of the buildings
destroyed; this is half the complex







The other half






Auschwitz III, a chemical plant and other industry, in the
distance, under the stacks









The railroad tracks led virtually to the gas chambers









One of the small railway cars, packing in 100 or so men,
women, and children, and their belongings, instruments
of murder themselves; in April/May of 1944, the
Germans occupied Hungary and forced its hitherto
reluctant government to allow deportation of nearly
500,000 Hungarian Jews, nearly all of whom died at
Auschwitz or Mauthausen, in Austria; Greek Jews
were forced to pay their own railway fares







Before the "selection," women and children on one side, men
on the other; typically, about 80% went directly to the gas
chambers









Remains of gas chamber and crematorium 3








As it appeared in 1944








At the Auschwitz/Birkenau Memorial

Auschwitz

We had not planned on visiting Poland, but a young Hungarian couple we met in Salzburg persuaded us that Cracow in particular was not to be missed. Auschwitz is just a hour's drive or so short of Cracow, and so we stopped there at a stellplatz in the visitor center parking lot. Vicki has read or taught a good bit of Holocaust literature and so was intent on the visit. It was a beautiful sunny day; it seemed almost wrong to visit this place of unimaginable suffering and perversion on such a day. There were thousands of other visitors, mostly tours from Cracow or Prague. People visit such places for many different reasons, I suppose. Some were carrying flowers for relatives lost at Auschwitz. Most, like us, come out of a sense of obligation, to witness, to share in the sense of despair, perhaps to gain some understanding or hope. But the Holocaust is not even the most recent instance of genocide.

Auschwitz was originally a Polish army base, taken by the
Germans in 1939 and thereafter converted first to a
concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, then
Russian POWs, then Jews, Gypsies, and others from all
over Europe; "arbeit macht frei" conveyed only this truth:
as long as you could work, you could live; life expectancy
was 3-4 months, although some few survived; when the
Red Army arrived, in January, 1945, Auschwitz had been
closed for several months; only 7000 or so inmmates
remained, most near death







The four-hour tour (English and many other language
choices) begins at Auschwitz I, the original camp, which
could house 15,000 or so; the gas chamber was first used
here; these are canisters of Xyklon B found by the Russians











Eyeglasses of those murdered



















Suitcases; the lie propounded was that everyone was being
"re-settled" and thus encouraged to bring along up to 50kg
of valuables per person; later "confiscated" and sent back
to the Reich









Shoes










Guardhouse











In the midst of the 30 or so barracks











The barbed wire fences, everywhere, were
electrified