A Day on a Bus

Vilnius to Riga on the bus. Our experiences with buses in the eastern block countries has been very pleasant. One bus was like travelling in an aeroplane, with a 'flight' attendant, magazines, food, hot drinks and onboard WC. The fares are cheap and the travel comfortable. The 'toi toi' was unpleasant for us all but bearable most of the time.
Vilnius to Riga meant travelling from Lithuania to Latvia, and it is further north, closer to Russia. It is a five hour trip and they do not serve food on this trip.

A change of currency - yet another one - and a change of countries - yet another one.

The trip went through fields and farms, villages and towns. The style of buildings changed slightly but it was all still lovely. One 'toi toi' stop - expensive for a hole in the ground.

The border between Lithuania and Latvia was marked by a small dilapidated sentry box. The guards boarded and checked our passports, the sniffer dogs checking the bus and the stowage hold. Burly girl guards with guns and dogs with badges.
We were deemed safe and allowed to go to Latvia. The landscape changed, a bit more forbidding and less pretty.
Riga is a large city, the horizon punctuated by a few tall steeples and a relay tower. The airport is new and modern. The bus station is older, the information girl (who spoke at least three languages) was very helpful. The tram would take us to the B&B... if we could work out where it was.

Tram lines everywhere. Trams everywhere. Stops, nowhere. Wheel away and watch. Much later, potential stop found, tram boarded, off we go.

A Day in Vilnius

Lithuania was one place that was a gamble. We had no idea about Lithuania, no idea of the place or what it had to offer people from the other side of the world. The only image I had was of an old place.
What a lovely place! The first impression was of lovely farms and fields, all tended lovingly. Rural places say much about a country and its peoples.

Vilnius has an old town nestled within a huge modern city. We stayed in the old town and walked many miles around the city, around cobbled alleyways, along busy highways, through huge art parks and along a river in the forest.
The people are nice, the dogs are gorgeous and extremely well behaved, the teenagers sit by the banks of the river and hang around the square and read books and are not particularly anything but blended in, the children are happy and do not need to tantrum and scream, buskers sing and add quality to the experience, and little stalls are set up everywhere with people plying their trade (gently) all through the very long day.

We went to Eropas Parkas - 55 hectares of wooded wonderment, where we wandered through tall trees and glades that have been made a microcosm of Europe. Vilnius is the centre of Europe and the vision was to create statues that reflect the nature of each country and dot them around the park in some sort of geographical proximity to the real place.

No less than four people helped us on the bus when we had to ask for a particular stop, they looked out for us and let us know when it was coming, reassuring us when the bus seemed to be heading way off course. Poland - not helpful and rude to boot. Lithuania - a four person help place.

The day ended with a long walk along the river savouring the late night light, listening to the babbling water, enjoying the quiet civility of the place and marvelling at how no one here has to stand out. There is no loud and brash anything. No squealing kids, no branded t shirts, no earphones and head sets, no yelling. Even the child in the park having its nappy changed just snuggled in to his fathers neck while mum cleaned him.
Lithuania - top on the list so far.

A Day on a Luggage Rack.

Well.....it was on our luggage, in a luggage hold, but we did spend the better part of a very long day in a luggage storage room on an extremely crowded train with many other people standing for hours in corridors and sitting on bags and nestled in between bikes.
We had booked our tickets the day before and as is typical with Polish trains, we arrived early with everyone else and we all waited until the few minutes before the train was due to check the platform and destination of the train. We had been told peron 2 (track 2) and it arrived and we could not find anywhere to sit and neither could many of our fellow passengers including women with children, old men and women and cyclists. The trip was 8 hours long with one change at the border where Lithuania has different gauge tracks - at Sestakoi.
A lovely lady (a music teacher ) helped us find a space in a luggage storage room and she guarded it for us, and talked to us in her halting English. She was travelling with her bike, many bags and her dog. She had to watch out for the ticket inspector as she had not paid for her bike or her dog.
We could not do anything to while away the time except look over the edge to the view outside. The diesel fumes were strong and nauseating, Richard was sick with hay fever and there was no table or back rest. We could stretch our legs though, and considered ourselves well off compared to the others squished in narrow corridors where perching on bags was awkward.
8 hours like this. The train did not serve food or drinks. We had planned and brought our own supplies.  We did not want to eat or drink too much; if this was what the carriage was like then what would the toilets be like. They were bearable but later we found a nicer one further down the train. When you use the floor flush pedal you can see the tracks wooshing by.
A few people got off along the way but not many. The cleaning ladies in their high heels and gypsy skirts cleaned the train when a large group got off at the second last station. One whole carriage of school kids with all their back packs and camp beds, phew!

There was a time change at Lithuania - one hour forward. The guard let us know to change our watches, catch the train and off we went - surprised that one guard knew or cared - and had a seat on a train to Vilnius. 

A seat at last and into Vilnius in an efficient, clean, spacious train, through lovely farm land and forests and over rivers.

A Day in Warsaw

A lovely rest day in Warsaw: a beautiful city with old and new co-existing comfortably. Everything was within walking distance from our bed and breakfast.

The streets are easily navigated despite being the venue for the spring fashion show, complete with television crew and balloon girls and fashionistas left and right.

The Pope featured on church walls, flowers were placed in every possible space, the streets were clean, the people were lovely and the food gourmet and well presented. 

Information was hard to come by and impolitely and resentfully given by those paid to dispense it, entirely typical for our travels in these countries.

We attended part of an orthodox church service outside, not sure of how to enter or behave once inside. The chanting and singing was broadcast outside and the adornments and lights coud be clearly seen through the glass.

The park was beautiful, sprawling and glorious in springtime bloomage. Well dressed young and old walked and played in the last of the daylight.

A Day in Krakow

Krakow is an old city, with a history, hidden towns and woods around the main city, wooden churches, a salt mine and Oskar Schindler's enamel factory.
It was there we decided to go this day.

We walked through the old town centre, where the markets were setting up, admired the stone walls and tall clock tower with the bugler sounding the hour, noticed the dark, decayed facades of the apartment blocks, meandered through leafy parks, passed the Jewish ghetto area from the war, over the river and to the factory.
It looked like any other factory from the outside. Metal and glass, peaked roofs and concrete. The factory is now a museum; the faces on the deco window smiling - his legacy - faces smiling and happy and they had no numbers underneath them.
The museum documents the holocaust and the war. The inside does not resemble a factory. It is a maze of displays almost like a fun parlour. You cannot look over the factory floor and see the machinery. You cannot see the barracks where they slept. You cannot see the hands at work. You can see pretty windows of displays and relics.
There is a movie to watch and a maze to run. There are seats on which to sit and contemplate. There is a door at the end that lands you on the street near the gate - the original gate to the enamel and munitions factory.
The river is next to the factory with a wide bridge with trams and buses and little city tour carts. The walk is good - about half an hour back to the centre of town.
Today is Saturday and the markets are busy. The Falun Gong are meditating and the young men are marching with flag held high.
Contemplation and protest, a fitting end to a day in Krakow.

A Day At Auschwitz/Birkenau (not suitable for children)

I saw the sign, with all its connotations. There really is a place called Auschwitz and it lies in a field, and there really is a Birkenau and it lies in a field next to it, where a village once stood. They used the village material to build the barracks that housed thousands of people from all over Europe. There was only mud and empty space then.

I saw the shoes. The little tiny leather toddlers' shoes, the strappy smart summer shoes, sensible old lady lace-ups. Piles and piles and hundreds and hundreds of shoes. Abandoned at the last minute. A remnant of years of 'recycling'.

I saw the faces - of the women - of the men; before they became more efficient. Tattoos were better. The corpses were too hard to recognise (the before so different to the after) and the soldiers could not keep good records...and the dead cannot say who they are.

I saw the little pots of hair cream. I saw 7 tonnes of human hair shaved from heads of women piled high, bound for textile factories, plaits cut off and lying there. We gazed in silence, no photo taken from respect. 7 tonnes - and that was just what was found - left - discarded - no time to burn this evidence - by shamed faces on the run in the last days.

I saw the beds, the bunks, the barracks. The stables turned into shelter for hundreds af starving, beaten, wondering souls. The fate for teachers, priests, scholars, wandering Romas, criminals, people of a faith, families of a region, less than perfect people, POWs, whoever...

I saw the wire, the current off now. The fences, bricks and bars. The 'no way out except by air'.

I saw the tracks. The trains that led to the convenient place - Auschwitz - the centre. The tracks and carriage. The carriage that held 80 at a time. Get off after paying your own fare, standing for days with no toilet, air or water; get off and go left, or right, get sorted. Selected. The doctor is there to watch out for you.

I saw the ovens.

                                                      LEST WE FORGET


1940 - Nazi commission decides to open Auschwitz (once polish barracks) for 728 Polish political prisoners at first then 12,000 Soviet POWs.
1941 - Zyklon B experiments.
1942 - Auschwitz 2 and Auschwitz 3 built
1944 - Birkenau crematoria workers blow up crematorium 4
1945 - Germans evacuate up camp making 58,000 walk on the death march (15,000 died). 7,000 were left behind for the Russian soldiers to find.
Over a million and a half people died there.

Prisoners arrived and were selected. Those fit for work walked under a sign 'work makes you free' to their barracks. Others were never seen again.
They lasted a few months. Given 300g of bread a day and some liquid (soup made from rotten vegetables) and made to work for 12 hours, walking there and walking back. Their rest at night meant sleeping many in a bed, with lice and filth and stench with little water and poor sanitation. There were toilets and basins but that was for show. They really had to use latrines and their time was regulated and limited and guarded.

I saw these things.

A Day on a Train

The trip from Prague to Krakow took all day. The train was all we expected and more. The station and attendants, the process and the boarding was all that we expected and more. We booked the day before and arrived about 9.30 with an hour to find the platform and be ready. We, along with about 80 other people waited for the board to tell us which platform to go to. We waited. More people gathered and we waited. We asked - watch the board she said - and less than five minutes before the train was due to leave the sign came up and a sea of people toted luggage and pushed and rushed the 300m along corridors and up stairs to meet the train. No idea which carriage, no idea about anything, so we just got on and waited to be yelled at (if anyone bothered).

Jozef (a lovely man in our carriage) told us the system and we wove our way to the right seats five cars up, past luggage in the corridors, around bends, swaying and bumping all the way. The train was clean and comfortable, quite different to the stations.

We entertained ourselves for a while reflecting on how unhelpful any public servant was in the Czech Republic and how unlikely it was that information could be obtained from information booths.

Katowice was the station where we changed trains for Krakow. Had no idea of the platform, no precise time for departure, and had to wait amidst smoke, urine smells, beer drinking commuters and dirt. Had no Zloty to pay for a toilet stop, was yelled at by toilet attendant, waited and waited. A nice man holding a sunflower told us the platform and we waited....and waited.

The train waiting on another platform was it. Quick, run.

A clacketty old train, rocking and rolling with questionable facilities took us to Krakow and we arrived at the end of the day, nearly an hour late. Our trip took us from the seediest parts of the country, through fields and towns, past forests and ponds, to a station that had a smelly underground tunnels of second hand book stalls, little windows selling food, and a small bankomat hidden in a dark corner.

Withdraw money, head for a taxi and a new adventure.