The last week or so of this trip heads east into the former Eastern Bloc, starting with Krakow in Poland. Spoilt by the high speed rail network further west, the 9 hour bus trip from Berlin left me feeling very greasy at the end.
Adding to this, the weather also has turned cold. Single-digit highs and near negative lows meant that once I reached my digs there was little incentive but to crash. I was using Krakow as base for seeing Auschwitz and Birkenau, the notorious concentration camps from the second world war. Oświęcim, the town whose name was Germanised to give the name of the camps, might be of interest to a curious traveller, but the mecca is the camps on the edge of town. There’s a sense of resignation of this amongst the locals involved in the industry set up to support it.
Intentionally or not, the way a visit to the camps is arranged is really clever. Auschwitz was originally an army barracks, and even during the war was used for internment rather than genocide. At odds with its history, it’s almost a pleasant environment with avenues of trees lining the paths between the accommodation blocks. This is where the bulk of the narrative is given, with explanatory information and interpretative displays all supported by an excellent tour guide.
Birkenau is a bit different. Far larger and purpose built, it’s also where the bulk of the gas chambers were situated (they were destroyed by the Nazis as the Russian Army approached). The railway line where so many people arrived into the place is still intact. The buildings here were mostly made of timber, apart from their brick footings and fireplaces. This rotted away during the communist era, leaving a massive field of stele-like chimneys still ringfenced by barbed wire. The gas chambers themselves still remain as piles of rubble. Our guide seemed almost embarrassed by the 1950s memorial near the chambers and she was correctin saying it’s superfluous. What’s left of the fabric of the camp is monument enough itself.
In Prague, I was staying out in the sticks in an area with limited dining options. So of course the one restaurant nearby still allowed smoking inside – from our Australian bubble you forget that this exists elsewhere. I chose smoke over cold and sat inside, only to regret the next day, my clothes reeking of the restaurant’s ambience despite as generous airing as I could manage. Hung around the better options in the centre of town after this.
Maybe my brain was full from the previous weeks but for some reason orientation was impossilbe for me here. I guess travelling around by metro dissociates you from an awareness of the surface somewhat, but even then I found myself turning the wrong way and not being able to draw a bead on where I was generally. I’m also normally pretty good at this stuff, so if anyone reading this wants to engage in a bit of schadenfreude at my expense, please go ahead.
Higlights for me were looking down over the city skyline from Letna, a ridgetop park across the river from the old town, the Dox Centre for Contemporary Art with a cool exhibition based around three famous dystopian works, Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, and breakfast at the Savoy Cafe set in a renaissance ebuilding in the new town (best coffee on this trip outside Italy).
Still cold in Pilsen but at least I could self cater in warm smoke-free comfort of the AirBNB accommodation. Little incentive to get out and about during the morning drizzle, but the afternoon cleared up enough for me to go and wander about before the tour of the Pilsner Urquell factory tour.
The factory tour contained some great contrasts including the hyper modern fully industrialised bottling plant to the underground caves where barrels and barrels of the unfiltered were once kept, now empty. The original vat with its patina crust, versus the shiny new brew tanks virtually gleaming seduction. I’m sure Pilsen has lots more to offer, being EU2015 Cultural Capital, but wasn’t obvious in the wintry middle of the week. My mind was also on the trip home I guess, and with that I’ll sign off.
