Poland

May - June 2019
A 8-day adventure by Tim Lynette Read more
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  • 260kilometers
  • Day 6

    Long day sightseeing - 2

    June 4, 2019 in Poland ⋅ 🌙 20 °C

    After the Jewish quarter a tram ride back to the apartment, a cup of tea and a rest! Then to the national museum in Kraków to see one of my favourite paintings in the flesh - Leonardo's lady with an ermine. Painted in 1490, the lady is a seventeen-old mistress of Leonardo's patron the duke of Milan, and it's beautiful! But there we were again in a crowd - it's in a decent sized room, on its own, but the room was full of a school group, being lectured at, at great length, in polish of course, about the painting so nobody else could get near. Eventually we managed to see it, just before a party of Chinese tourists arrived, and yes it's wonderful, but I'm getting very fed up of the overcrowding here. There were supposed to be some fine mediaeval stained glass windows in the museum that we wanted to see, but we couldn't find them and none of the museum staff, including the information desk , knew anything about them so we decided that they must been moved somewhere else some time ago.

    Stopped on the way home and bought big slices of butterscotch cheesecake - the best thing we've done all day!
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  • Day 7

    Auschvitz - Birkenau

    June 5, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    We decided in the end that it would wrong to come here and not go to auschvitz. It was a long hot day at auschvitz, and birkenau, but I'm glad we went, even though we've seen the pictures and know the basics it just really underlines the deliberate planning of such horrors. Auschvitz was designed first as a slave labour camp, then birkenau, next to it, for mass extinction. Between 1941 and 1944 over 1,000,000 people were gassed or worked to death there. Some 75% of the people arriving didn't even get away from the trains before being herded into the gas chambers. Only men and women without children who were fit for work were taken into the camp, the rest, including all the children , were stripped of clothes and belongings and gassed.

    Today between 10,000 and 12,000 people a day make the journey to see for themselves.
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  • Day 8

    Leaving Krakow

    June 6, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Our flight wasn't due to leave till 18.45 so we had most of the day spare. We bought some stuff then went to the tiny church of st. Adalbert in the main square. It dates to before 1000 a.d., but was rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It's just one small room with a domed roof and some unusual frescos. Then we went to the archaeological museum which has a large collection from ancient Egypt, from early pre-dynastic to late periods. Most of the material was very late - from Greek and Roman times, and not really of great quality. The galleries were very, very dark and badly lit so it was difficult to make out what was there. They also have a good collection of Peruvian, pre-inca material, which was very good and much better displayed. It was one man's collection from his time working on engineering projects, and he clearly loved the civilisations that existed along all the river valleys along the west coast. It was great to see lots of things that we could recognise from our big trip there a few years ago. Also interesting was a floor of material showing the development of civilisation in the valleys and hills around Kraków. Didn't know the celts were there around 300 BC.

    Just time for a long, and very good, lunch and a sit in the park before catching our flight. It was delayed half an hour or so, but we were still home in time to see the end of England's footballers messing it up again!
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