CZECH REPUBLIC - I'm All Rocked Out

Another fantastic day - with good weather - at the Adrspach-Teplice rocks. This morning I went into the park at the Teplice end, much quieter than Adrspach yesterday (Adrspach is where the coach tours go). 

The highlight at Teplice is a board-walked part of the trail through an area called Siberia. The narrow pathway through the rocks is so deep down the sun rarely gets there so it is cold and damp. A thermometer mounted on the rocks only went up to 5 degrees celsius so I'm guessing that's as hot as it gets. Later, I took the path through the Wolfs Gorge - an area of peat bog - back to Adrspach where I was yesterday.

Here are some more pics ........

Walking through "Siberia"

Damp and dark

The climb up to the viewpoint 300 steps

The view was worth it

CZECH REPUBLIC - Lets Rock

Poland generally, is a fairly flat country and only really has serious hills on it's southern border - The Sudety Mountains on the border with the Czech Republic and the Tatra Mountains along the Slovakian one.  Heading south to the Czech Republic meant therefore that I had to cross the Sudetes. 

The local railway line that connects this part of Poland with the Czech Republic only operates in the summer, in fact this weekend (the last in September) was the final weekend of cross border trains from Wrocław to Adrspach (my next stop) for this year.

Why am I going to Adrspach? To visit the Adrspach-Teplice Rocks National Park. The Sudetes are a sandstone range, a rock that easily weathers, consequently over time weather and erosion have formed the rocks into weird shapes. Take a look at some pictures ......

In common with some other National Parks on the continent you have to pay an entrance fee (about £4) which goes towards the upkeep and probably helps keep the number of visitors in check. Here they are also quite strict in that you have to keep to way marked paths, because of the ease with which sandstone erodes. Several areas are board-walked to lessen the impact of tourist's feet.

The park is in two halves one at Adrspach and the other at Teplice with a trail linking the two. So tomorrow I will be exploring it more fully.

POLAND - More History For You .......

My final day in Poland sees me taking a train to Swidnica to visit one of the two remaining Peace Churches.

The "Peace" in this sense has nothing to do with hostilities in the 20th century but refers to the Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties which, in 1648, brought to an end the Thirty Years War.

As we have already learnt, this area of Poland has changed hands many times through it's history and therefore has had to change religions also. The Thirty Years War was your typical Protestant/Catholic conflict, that ended with this area and its then sizeable Protestant population ending up under a Catholic ruler. The Peace of Westphalia therefore made provisions for the Protestants, allowing them to build churches, but of course there were strings attached ........

They had to be built - within one year, outside the town walls, no stone or brick to be used in the construction and no stone foundations. There could be no tower, belfry or bells and the building must not look like existing church buildings.

The result - Swidnica has one of the largest wooden churches in Europe, that can seat 3000 people.

                 

For the church goers reading this you may be interested to know, that while the building can seat 3000, it is a Lutheran church and Poland is a very Catholic country. I asked how many people they get for an average Sunday service and the reply was "about 20" Fortunately the building is UNESCO listed so they get some outside funding towards its upkeep.

You have all had a bit of history overload over the past few days, so you now will be relieved to know that tomorrow I am travelling onwards to the Czech Republic where the trip will continue with a burst of hiking and the great outdoors. 

POLAND - The Great Escape

It was with much excitement and some trepidation that I started out on today's excursion. A two hour train journey from Wrocław brought me to the town of Żagań, a fairly nondescript place really but one that I have wanted to visit for some time. For this is the site of the Stalag Luft 3 Prisoner of War Camp, famous for "The Great Escape".

Now bear in mind that 

a) its Hollywood - Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasence & Co -  that have made this famous so it appeals first to the English speaking world and 

b) until the fall of Communism, Poland wasn't exactly at the top of Britain's holiday destination list  

What I am trying to say is don't expect an all singing all dancing multi media visitor centre because there isn't one - I was at the site for about 4.5 hours and only saw two other tourists! 

Walking south from Żagań's railway station (away from the town) you first come to a sign directing you to the memorial. Although 76 men escaped only 3 actually made it "home". Of the 73 that were recaptured, 50 of them were shot on the direct orders of the Führer.

The memorial was built by prisoners in the camp to hold the urns containing the ashes of the 50 who were murdered. After the war the ashes were taken to a military cemetery in Poznań but the memorial still stands in the woods and it is a very reflective place.

Further down the road is another sign this time pointing to a 1km walk up a dirt track to the site of the actual Stalag Luft 3 camp. Here the first thing you see is a stone marking where tunnel "Harry" came to the surface - Remember from the film - they started 3 tunnels Tom, Dick and Harry.  

Also remember from the film that when the end of the tunnel was opened, they found it was well short of the cover of the trees. There is a replica guard tower on the site of an original and this photo shows just how close to the tower they were.

Tunnel "Harry" is then marked out with stones and these photos hopefully give you an idea of just how long it was - over 100 metres. The entrance to the tunnel was under the stove in hut 104.

The rest of the site simply consists of foundations, a few with interpretation panels, that are gradually being given back to nature. 

This photo shows all that remains of "The Cooler", the solitary confinement black - think Steve McQueen and his baseball.

OMG - I've stood in "The Cooler" !!

Back out on the main road and a further 100 metres or so along you come to the museum. This is on the site of Stalag VIIIC camp that held Polish prisoners which explains why its here and not at Stalag Luft 3. Inside there are exhibits relating to all the camps, a model of Stalag Luft 3 and various artifacts found on the site. In the grounds a replica of Hut 104 where the escape started has been built and inside it has replicas of things like the trolleys they used, the air pump etc.

Model of the Stalag Luft 3 camp

Amazingly some of the escapees travelled long distances - Escape mastermind Roger Bushell - (Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough) in the film) was recaptured at Saarbrucken which is near the French border not far from Strasbourg. Dennis Cochran another of the 50 executed men, was caught at the Swiss border. The three that did safely get to Britain were two Norwegians who reached Sweden via a boat across the Baltic and a Dutchman who somehow made it all the way to Spain. 

And lastly the answer to the question you are all wanting to ask .................

Yes I was humming the theme music from the film all day ............. and I bet you are now too!

POLAND - The Gnomes of Wrocław

Wrocław is famous for it's gnomes - they are all over the centre of the city around 400 in all.

Although a tourist attraction now, they are a nod back to the Communist years and a resistance movement known as the Orange Alternative in the 1980's. Protest marches were organised advocating "Dwarves Rights" "Freedom of Speech for Dwarves" etc. - in fact all the things the locals were forbidden to protest about for themselves. When the authorities tried to crack down on the protests, the resulting publicity simply made them look stupid.

In 2001 the city wanted to commemorate the movement with a single gnome - then a local sculptor suggested making some more and the whole thing proved so popular the city kept commissioning them.

These days you can buy a map showing where they all are and some people come to Wrocław just to find the gnomes.

POLAND - Greetings from Wrocław

Let's start our trip to Wrocław with a bit of history. Over the years the city has been Polish, Bohemian (Czech), Habsburg (Austria/Hungary) and Prussian (German). Essentially until the end of the Second World War it was a German speaking city called Breslau. After the war most of the area known as Lower Silesia became part of the new Polish state, the Germans were evicted and moved further west and the city of Breslau became Wrocław. It was then repopulated with displaced people from Lviv, a former Polish city that now found itself in Ukraine. Consequently there are strong links between this part of Poland and Ukraine. 

Wrocław is Poland's fourth largest city and sits on the River Oder/Odra just north of the Czech border.

The City Hall

The weather here today has been a bit grey and damp so unfortunately the colours in the pictures are not as vibrant as I would like, but that is the trade off you get with late September having less tourist crowds.

The Market Place

The River Oder with the cathedral on the right

Wrocław is also home to another of those big panorama paintings - like we saw in The Hague and at Waterloo. This one depicts the Battle of Racławice in 1794. The painting was originally in Lviv and later moved to Wrocław, but was not restored and put on show during the Communist years because it was not politically correct at the time - the painting shows a battle where Polish insurgents beat the Russians! Today it is very popular with patriotic Poles.

Prologue - A Two Day Trek

Hi everyone and welcome back to the blog. 

You now find me in the Polish city of Wrocław pronounced Vrotswov as the L with a line through it - Ł or ł - changes the pronunciation completely.

It has taken me two days of fairly intensive train travel to get here from Kent with an overnight stop in Frankfurt.  The traditional route from London to Frankfurt is via Brussels and Cologne but as I am using an Interrail pass, so am not really tied to a set route, I decided to travel via Paris and the high speed train that links France with Germany via Strasbourg - ideal for travelling to Southern Germany. Paris to Frankfurt takes about 3.5 hours.

The ICE from Paris at Frankfurt's Main Station

If, like me, you are a fan of Premier Inn you will be pleased to know that they are now expanding into Germany, so I spent the night in their relatively new hotel in Frankfurt - a short walk from the main station - very comfortable and being a British company no language barriers what so ever.

This morning I got a German ICE from Frankfurt to Dresden. ICE stands for Inter City Express and yes, the Germans really did copy the Inter-City brand from good old British Rail. A great feature of some high speed trains in Germany is that you can book a seat in a compartment behind the driving cab so you can pretend you are driving the train!

From Dresden it was a local train to Goerlitz to connect with a series of Polish trains to bring me here to Wrocław. And the Polish trains were nice and comfy too.

I am in Wrocław for 4 nights then I will cross the Sudety Mountains into the Czech Republic for 4 nights before returning to Dresden for 4 nights. The journey back from Dresden will be again via Frankfurt so hopefully we will have time for a quick look round there on the way.