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.

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

Swiss Saxony, and on to Poland

We had planned on a day in Swiss Saxony, an area where the Elbe has carved a canyon of unusual sandstone formations, table mountains, a rock-climbing center. But the recent rains, flooding, road closures, and on and on, changed our plans, so we drove straight on (sort of), through a bit of the Czech Republic, then back into Germany, then into Poland, and across a good bit of southern Poland, one vast fertile but very flat plain, all the way to Auschwitz. Driving 3 or 4 hours across this plain, mostly farms, fields, and forests, I was struck by the lack of natural impediments, all the way to the Vistula, and how easy it has been, for millenia, for armies to march or roll across Poland.

Weird formations in Swiss Saxony; and a climber on the

right side of the left-most column

There he/she is

The Elbe, still in flood, below Bad Schandau

Another Day in Dresden

In the baroque Residenz Schloss in Dresden--the royal castle--are more museums, most notably the so-called Green Vaults, the "historical" and the "new" (but both historical, acquired mostly by August the Strong and his 18th century successors). They are, quite simply, the largest royal treasuries in Europe. Room after room--the amber room, the ivory room, the porcelain room, the silver room, the gold room, the garniture room, and on and on. We absolutely rushed through in 4 hours (our timed ticket didn't star until 2 in the afternoon). How all this survived wars and revolutions, and communism, is a miracle. It is stunning, overwhelming. Alas no pix are allowed, but you can get a hint from the two below, or by going on the web. Next time, we'll allow 3 days for Dresden.

In the Green Vaults

Ditto

Old Dresden skyline, from the Elbe

East German crossing signals, as in Berlin

Ditto

The Pfunds Dairy, which we visited earlier

in the day

Renowned for its totally-tiled interior

Of course, not everything in Dresden has been restored; this

100m from the Frauenkirche

What if your car is not an erotic?