(Overnighting in Berlin - after Dresden, and before Amsterdam). After leaving the Sony Centre, I walk down Unter den Linden, and buy a few souvenirs. Arriving back at the hostel, I bump into Bob on the stairs, and we find a couple of palatial armchairs to relax in. We both have an interest in history, and he goes on a lot of camping and fishing trips, and we find a lot to talk about. He has this thick American accent, and bears quite a resemblance to Alan Alda, especially when he laughs, which is often, as we both have a very similar outlook on humour. At bedtime
it turns out that there are several women in the dorm, and there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to the loo as people go to get changed. Earlier, when we had booked in, I indulged in a bit of nifty footwork and managed to score one of the two single beds, whereas the remaining twelve are two-tier bunks with no ladders, and could be a lot of fun if the top bunk goes to the loo during the night.
My train to Amsterdam leaves at 8.39, but when I set my alarm the night before, I set it as though the train is leaving at 9.39. I don't realise this until we are half way through breakfast, when it's too late. We go to the main station, and I change my reservation to a 12.30ish train, which still gets me to Amsterdam by 7pm. Bob has already done quite a bit of travel in Europe,
while his wife has been doing likewise in Egypt, and they are catching up in Frankfurt in 3 days time. So he needs somewhere to stay, but isn't over-wrapped in the hostel. However, Berlin at the moment is chokkers, everything booked up. Finally the guy at the tourist information organises him a room at the same place where he (the tourist info guy) lives, at 50 euros a night. I have a couple of hours, and we leave our packs at the left-luggage. On the way out, 'National Lampoon's European Vacation' suddenly becomes the topic of conversation, and we are in fits, recalling moments from the movie as we reel out of the station. We go and have a look at the Soviet War Memorial, which I've already seen, and soon after I head back to the station alone. At the station there is a lot of police activity, areas being cordened off etc., and just before the train arrives there is a very loud noise, (that could be a detonation), at the rear of the station. I've just been reading about the latest developments in the New Delhi bombings, and as the train pulls out I can't help reflecting that it's a good time to be leaving Berlin.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
BERLIN-DRESDEN-BERLIN. 18th-21st September
(On train from Krakow to Berlin). A long time after, the (suspect) guy gets off the train, and the lady comes and talks to me again, voicing her suppositions as to where her money went, and I go through a pantomime of showing her how I think it happened. However, right from the beginning, a small part of me has been wondering if the whole thing (from when the guy picked up her purse from the floor), may be a set up to play on other people's sympathies and get a bit of cash. I reason that if she asks me for money by the end of the trip then that theory is right. Refreshingly though, I am wrong, and after we arrive at Berlin and I help her off the train, she farewells me like a long-lost relative.
Have a Macca's at the Hauptbahnhof, and to the hostel, where I fortuitously booked a 35 euro private room before I left on Monday. With this flu' I just want to be on my own for a couple of nights. I look at my e-mails at the one euro an hour internet cafe, and ring and book a private room at the youth hostel in Dresden for the following night. Returning to the hostel and feeling about as good as one usually does on the second day of the 'flu, I realise that I've left the 'euro' plug for my mobile phone still stuck in the wall of the dorm at Krakow. Then to finish off the evening, I drop my torch, (that I bought on the day I left, on the way to Tullamarine, and have grown very attached to), onto the floor, and it's no longer working.
Up early and off to the bus after a quick brekkie. Manage to mistake a big glass building near the Reichstag for the Hauptbahnhof, and get off two stops early. Uneventful trip to Dresden through some very attractive farming country. My Lonely Planet map shows a tourist information centre not far from the station, and decide to go there before walking to the hostel. Nearby is a '1 euro' shop, and I buy 3 pairs of 'comfort' socks for 3 euros, that is the ones with the loose tops, which all geriatric streetpersons wear. Also (what luck) another torch for 1 euro, which is only half the size (and weight) of the one I dropped. Regarding socks : despite my reasonably constant use of public transport to get to work, which always includes nearly two hours of walking, I wouldn't get a hole in a sock more than twice a year, at most. I brought what looked like 4 good pairs of socks with me on this trip, and have already got holes in 6 of the individual socks - hence the new additions to the sock supply. I can't imagine how long a $1-70 pair of socks will last, but who cares at that price? Anyway, I have a theory regarding the multiplicity of holes occurring. I blame it on all the ubiquitous cobblestone pavements in Europe. Unfortunately there is a big new development all around the railway station, and I only reach the hostel by a circuitous route, getting lost a couple of times, until a very unapproachable-looking guy that I ask takes matters in hand and goes out of his way to bring me there.
The hostel is run with teutonic efficiency, and I can't get access to the room till 4 o'clock. Also, I can't stay tomorrow night as they are booked out. I eat the second part of my breakfast (from the Berlin youth hostel), and ring another (non-international youth hostel) hostel, and book a room with a very disinterested-sounding lady for 38 euros. Leave my big backpack in the luggage room, and go for a stroll to look for a cheap internet shop. Find (what super-luck!) a mobile phone shop where the guy sells me another charger, plus a euro adapter for 20 euros (reduced from 26 euros -wink, wink, nudge, nudge). It is smaller and only half the weight of my old one. (the only place where I would be able to buy a euro adaptor for my Australian-plugged charger is in Australia). The internet shop is an unmanned coin-in-the-slot one, 5 euros an hour, and as you need to register and get a user name and password first, and all the instructions are in German, I give it a miss.
I stock up from a supermarket on the way back, and have one of my supermarket dinners : fruit, yoghurt, and loads of milk and orange juice (separately). Lights out at 8pm, with two doonas and my(plastic drink bottle) hot water bottles, as I am determined to try and sweat out my cold. It is as silent as the grave all night.
At breakfast I realise why it was so quiet. All the other breakfasters are teutonic, middle-aged, and silent as the grave, and no eye contact is made throughout the meal. I walk to the new place, which is probably about a twenty minute walk, but it takes me an hour after a couple of unscheduled detours (okay, I got lost). It is a great room, carpeted, and all the bed linen has been meticulously ironed - not one crease anywhere. And the most comfy feather pillows. But (for the first time ever on this trip), no hand-basin in the room, but a complete en-suite literally 6 inches from my door. This is now day 3 of my 'flu, and I just sit at the table and doze for over one and a half hours. Then I eat something, and venture out into Dresden (known pre-war as
'Florence on the Elbe').
I soon find myself in the Old Town, and pay 3 euros to go up, via two lifts, to a balcony at the top of the Rathaus, where you get sweeping views, and (I understand) are able to see the Saxon part of Switzerland on a fine day. Then to the Kreuezkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) only a few steps away, where another 3 euros got you to a similar balcony, by quite a number of steps this time, to see identical views. I was elated to notice that the climbing didn't affect my legs at all. In Paris, climbing the steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, (and also to the top of Sacre Coeur), caused agonising pains in my shins. Also viewed, from the outside, the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) built 1726-1743. It collapsed in the bombing raid of February 1945, and was left as an anti-war monument till the 1990's, but has been recently rebuilt to the original specifications, largely from donations from all over the world.
The Bruhlsche Terrasse was all that the guidebooks say, a terrace some 15 metres above the Elbe, long known as 'Europe's Balcony', and a very pretty walk, with views of the barges and paddle steamers stretching for miles. On to the opera house (Semperoper), with a magnificent
facade. It is reputedly the only opera house in the world to be named after it's architect. The Zwinger, 'Dresden's most famous architectural structure', is nearby, a grouping of large Baroque
buildings. There were a number of other classic buildings in the Old Town that I don't know the names of, and that was it for the day. If I hadn't caught the 'flu I could have visited more things, including the New Town. Another supermarket dinner (this time including a very nice egg/cheese/ham? salad), and lights out at nine, and another nocturnal sauna.
At breakfast, another crew of breakfasters that were a clone of the mob of the day before, except for an identical twin to Charlotte Rampling, (when aged about twenty). Basil himself would have approved of the breakfast : there were shortages of everything at one time or another, cups, plates, bowls, cutlery, and the kitchen seemed to have only one staff member, a very angry young blonde, who shouted at any of the guests who were foolish enough to ask for anything. There were no cereal bowls, and a few hardy souls, including myself, used cups instead. The closest edible cereal I could find was puffed wheat, and I raised a smile from Charlotte by pretending to drink it.
To the station for an eleven o'clock train, and the two hour trip back to Berlin. All the seats are reserved (nobody told me!) and I soon get edged out of my seat my two Asian girls who shyly show me their reservation. As I'm leaving, a teenage girl travelling with a family opens a rather effervescent can of Sprite and half the contents spray over her and around the carriage. I decide to camp out near the exit door, and am just decyphering a notice that says it is forbidden to ride there, when the father of the family offers me a lone seat that is covered in lemonade, which I gratefully accept, and then realise that it is the only non-reserved seat in the carriage. I doze most of the way, so that it feels as if the trip only takes about 15 minutes. Buy a ticket and reservation to Amsterdam at the Hauptbahnhof.
When I left the Berlin Youth Hostel 3 days ago I asked regarding accommodation on my return and was told that 300 odd schoolchildren were arriving on Sunday, and the only possibility was a 10 bed dorm. As schoolie's week is starting to wear a bit thin with me now, I don't book, and ring another youth hostel, where the disinterested man on the 'phone says they would have a bed in a six bed dorm, and to just turn up. I now enquire at the tourist information on how to get to this hostel, and find that I will have to take a train to one station, another train for 10 stations, and then a bus, so I ring my original hostel, and they have a bed in a 14 bed dorm 'all boys together,' which sounds a bit ominous. I get the bus, and there is a young Asian couple also on it, backpackers and looking lost, and I guess that they are on the way to the hostel, and it turns out they are from Thailand and only arrived in Europe yesterday. We walk to the hostel and they both have beds in Dorm One. I am in the dorm known as 'Berlin', and walk into after an old guy, and as soon as I say 'G'Day' he says 'Aha, another English speaker', and it turns out that he (Bob) is a Yank who married a Tassie girl, and has lived there for years.
Bob has given me the current copy of 'Time', and while I feel a lot better today, and think I may have turned the corner with my 'flu, I just want to do something decadently lethargic. So I make my way to the 'Corrobaree' (can't spell any more), the Australian cafe at the Sony Centre, and spend a delicious 2 hours eating the most delicious ice-creams and drinking schooner-size glasses of Assam tea, while devouring every article in 'Time'. It is amazing how much you miss reading English if you haven't had the chance for a while. Appropriately enough, it contains a review of Paul Theroux' latest book 'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star', which is an account of his re-visiting a trip that he made 30 years ago through Europe, Russia, Central Asia,India, Southeast Asia and Japan, by various modes of transport, but mainly by rail. The earlier book was 'The Great Railway Bazaar'. What made me smile was that the reviewer quoted the first sentence of the later book, which is : ''You might think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time". Which is a sentiment that has been occurring to me lately, and no more so than on this very lazy afternoon.
Have a Macca's at the Hauptbahnhof, and to the hostel, where I fortuitously booked a 35 euro private room before I left on Monday. With this flu' I just want to be on my own for a couple of nights. I look at my e-mails at the one euro an hour internet cafe, and ring and book a private room at the youth hostel in Dresden for the following night. Returning to the hostel and feeling about as good as one usually does on the second day of the 'flu, I realise that I've left the 'euro' plug for my mobile phone still stuck in the wall of the dorm at Krakow. Then to finish off the evening, I drop my torch, (that I bought on the day I left, on the way to Tullamarine, and have grown very attached to), onto the floor, and it's no longer working.
Up early and off to the bus after a quick brekkie. Manage to mistake a big glass building near the Reichstag for the Hauptbahnhof, and get off two stops early. Uneventful trip to Dresden through some very attractive farming country. My Lonely Planet map shows a tourist information centre not far from the station, and decide to go there before walking to the hostel. Nearby is a '1 euro' shop, and I buy 3 pairs of 'comfort' socks for 3 euros, that is the ones with the loose tops, which all geriatric streetpersons wear. Also (what luck) another torch for 1 euro, which is only half the size (and weight) of the one I dropped. Regarding socks : despite my reasonably constant use of public transport to get to work, which always includes nearly two hours of walking, I wouldn't get a hole in a sock more than twice a year, at most. I brought what looked like 4 good pairs of socks with me on this trip, and have already got holes in 6 of the individual socks - hence the new additions to the sock supply. I can't imagine how long a $1-70 pair of socks will last, but who cares at that price? Anyway, I have a theory regarding the multiplicity of holes occurring. I blame it on all the ubiquitous cobblestone pavements in Europe. Unfortunately there is a big new development all around the railway station, and I only reach the hostel by a circuitous route, getting lost a couple of times, until a very unapproachable-looking guy that I ask takes matters in hand and goes out of his way to bring me there.
The hostel is run with teutonic efficiency, and I can't get access to the room till 4 o'clock. Also, I can't stay tomorrow night as they are booked out. I eat the second part of my breakfast (from the Berlin youth hostel), and ring another (non-international youth hostel) hostel, and book a room with a very disinterested-sounding lady for 38 euros. Leave my big backpack in the luggage room, and go for a stroll to look for a cheap internet shop. Find (what super-luck!) a mobile phone shop where the guy sells me another charger, plus a euro adapter for 20 euros (reduced from 26 euros -wink, wink, nudge, nudge). It is smaller and only half the weight of my old one. (the only place where I would be able to buy a euro adaptor for my Australian-plugged charger is in Australia). The internet shop is an unmanned coin-in-the-slot one, 5 euros an hour, and as you need to register and get a user name and password first, and all the instructions are in German, I give it a miss.
I stock up from a supermarket on the way back, and have one of my supermarket dinners : fruit, yoghurt, and loads of milk and orange juice (separately). Lights out at 8pm, with two doonas and my(plastic drink bottle) hot water bottles, as I am determined to try and sweat out my cold. It is as silent as the grave all night.
At breakfast I realise why it was so quiet. All the other breakfasters are teutonic, middle-aged, and silent as the grave, and no eye contact is made throughout the meal. I walk to the new place, which is probably about a twenty minute walk, but it takes me an hour after a couple of unscheduled detours (okay, I got lost). It is a great room, carpeted, and all the bed linen has been meticulously ironed - not one crease anywhere. And the most comfy feather pillows. But (for the first time ever on this trip), no hand-basin in the room, but a complete en-suite literally 6 inches from my door. This is now day 3 of my 'flu, and I just sit at the table and doze for over one and a half hours. Then I eat something, and venture out into Dresden (known pre-war as
'Florence on the Elbe').
I soon find myself in the Old Town, and pay 3 euros to go up, via two lifts, to a balcony at the top of the Rathaus, where you get sweeping views, and (I understand) are able to see the Saxon part of Switzerland on a fine day. Then to the Kreuezkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) only a few steps away, where another 3 euros got you to a similar balcony, by quite a number of steps this time, to see identical views. I was elated to notice that the climbing didn't affect my legs at all. In Paris, climbing the steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, (and also to the top of Sacre Coeur), caused agonising pains in my shins. Also viewed, from the outside, the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) built 1726-1743. It collapsed in the bombing raid of February 1945, and was left as an anti-war monument till the 1990's, but has been recently rebuilt to the original specifications, largely from donations from all over the world.
The Bruhlsche Terrasse was all that the guidebooks say, a terrace some 15 metres above the Elbe, long known as 'Europe's Balcony', and a very pretty walk, with views of the barges and paddle steamers stretching for miles. On to the opera house (Semperoper), with a magnificent
facade. It is reputedly the only opera house in the world to be named after it's architect. The Zwinger, 'Dresden's most famous architectural structure', is nearby, a grouping of large Baroque
buildings. There were a number of other classic buildings in the Old Town that I don't know the names of, and that was it for the day. If I hadn't caught the 'flu I could have visited more things, including the New Town. Another supermarket dinner (this time including a very nice egg/cheese/ham? salad), and lights out at nine, and another nocturnal sauna.
At breakfast, another crew of breakfasters that were a clone of the mob of the day before, except for an identical twin to Charlotte Rampling, (when aged about twenty). Basil himself would have approved of the breakfast : there were shortages of everything at one time or another, cups, plates, bowls, cutlery, and the kitchen seemed to have only one staff member, a very angry young blonde, who shouted at any of the guests who were foolish enough to ask for anything. There were no cereal bowls, and a few hardy souls, including myself, used cups instead. The closest edible cereal I could find was puffed wheat, and I raised a smile from Charlotte by pretending to drink it.
To the station for an eleven o'clock train, and the two hour trip back to Berlin. All the seats are reserved (nobody told me!) and I soon get edged out of my seat my two Asian girls who shyly show me their reservation. As I'm leaving, a teenage girl travelling with a family opens a rather effervescent can of Sprite and half the contents spray over her and around the carriage. I decide to camp out near the exit door, and am just decyphering a notice that says it is forbidden to ride there, when the father of the family offers me a lone seat that is covered in lemonade, which I gratefully accept, and then realise that it is the only non-reserved seat in the carriage. I doze most of the way, so that it feels as if the trip only takes about 15 minutes. Buy a ticket and reservation to Amsterdam at the Hauptbahnhof.
When I left the Berlin Youth Hostel 3 days ago I asked regarding accommodation on my return and was told that 300 odd schoolchildren were arriving on Sunday, and the only possibility was a 10 bed dorm. As schoolie's week is starting to wear a bit thin with me now, I don't book, and ring another youth hostel, where the disinterested man on the 'phone says they would have a bed in a six bed dorm, and to just turn up. I now enquire at the tourist information on how to get to this hostel, and find that I will have to take a train to one station, another train for 10 stations, and then a bus, so I ring my original hostel, and they have a bed in a 14 bed dorm 'all boys together,' which sounds a bit ominous. I get the bus, and there is a young Asian couple also on it, backpackers and looking lost, and I guess that they are on the way to the hostel, and it turns out they are from Thailand and only arrived in Europe yesterday. We walk to the hostel and they both have beds in Dorm One. I am in the dorm known as 'Berlin', and walk into after an old guy, and as soon as I say 'G'Day' he says 'Aha, another English speaker', and it turns out that he (Bob) is a Yank who married a Tassie girl, and has lived there for years.
Bob has given me the current copy of 'Time', and while I feel a lot better today, and think I may have turned the corner with my 'flu, I just want to do something decadently lethargic. So I make my way to the 'Corrobaree' (can't spell any more), the Australian cafe at the Sony Centre, and spend a delicious 2 hours eating the most delicious ice-creams and drinking schooner-size glasses of Assam tea, while devouring every article in 'Time'. It is amazing how much you miss reading English if you haven't had the chance for a while. Appropriately enough, it contains a review of Paul Theroux' latest book 'Ghost Train to the Eastern Star', which is an account of his re-visiting a trip that he made 30 years ago through Europe, Russia, Central Asia,India, Southeast Asia and Japan, by various modes of transport, but mainly by rail. The earlier book was 'The Great Railway Bazaar'. What made me smile was that the reviewer quoted the first sentence of the later book, which is : ''You might think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time". Which is a sentiment that has been occurring to me lately, and no more so than on this very lazy afternoon.
KRAKOW-BERLIN. 18th September
(Leaving Krakow) - Have a compulsory-reserved seat, which at 12 zlotys for this trip is a bit of a rip off, as the train is almost three-quarters empty. I am sitting in my correct seat and a l.o.l. of possibly Jewish or Roma appearance comes in and sits across the aisle from me. Then she realises about the reservation system, and I find the correct seat for her, which is two seats from mine. I notice that she's looking at the ''Deutsche Bahn'' monthly, which they leave on every seat, and which is probably about as interesting as "'Who Weekly'', so when one of the station staff leaves a stack of (German) newspapers at the back of the carriage, I take one and give it to her. A big guy gets on and sits in her old seat. Half an hour goes by, and suddenly she's jumping around like a cat on hot bricks, and comes back, looking around where this guy is sitting, and giving me a long spiel in Polish, which might just as well have been in Martian, but it becomes obvious that she's lost her purse. The guy, and two tall and blonde middle-aged women who have just got on, stare at her as if she's from another planet, saying nothing. She looks at me imploringly, so I gesture towards the end of the carriage, as she'd gone out to the loo earlier. With that the big guy looks back too, and suddenly bends down and picks up her wallet from the floor, to the rear of her old seat. She thanks him profusely, and all is well for another half hour, then she appears to realise that there is now no money in it. She comes back and obviously accuses the guy, while he denies it, and she tries to get a passing ticket inspector involved, but he's quite disinterested, and eventually she goes back to her seat.
I hadn't seen much of the countryside on the way to Krakow, mainly because it rained all the time, and the windows were fogged up. Note today that while there are a fair number of recently ploughed fields, there are hardly any maturing crops, although I did see some guys hand-cutting what looked like a field of sugar cane. Don't see any farm animals at all. Once into Germany the land all seems to be utilised, with plenty of cattle about.
You never know your luck. On the train from Muenster to Berlin, in my carriage it was unadulterated schoolie's week all the way. From Berlin to Krakow there are a couple of young guys sitting a bit further up the carriage, and a procession of young women keep coming from other carriages to talk with them, and this young guy spends the whole trip either trying to impress them or other young females in the carriage. This trip it's like the reading room of the British Museum, as all the passengers that are travelling are on their own, with their heads stuck in magazines or books.
I hadn't seen much of the countryside on the way to Krakow, mainly because it rained all the time, and the windows were fogged up. Note today that while there are a fair number of recently ploughed fields, there are hardly any maturing crops, although I did see some guys hand-cutting what looked like a field of sugar cane. Don't see any farm animals at all. Once into Germany the land all seems to be utilised, with plenty of cattle about.
You never know your luck. On the train from Muenster to Berlin, in my carriage it was unadulterated schoolie's week all the way. From Berlin to Krakow there are a couple of young guys sitting a bit further up the carriage, and a procession of young women keep coming from other carriages to talk with them, and this young guy spends the whole trip either trying to impress them or other young females in the carriage. This trip it's like the reading room of the British Museum, as all the passengers that are travelling are on their own, with their heads stuck in magazines or books.
AUSCHWITZ-KRAKOW. 16th-17th September
(Still at Auschwitz) - On both sides of the railway track, seemingly stretching to the skyline, were the remains of the wooden huts that weren't preserved, just scores and scores of brick stoves and chimneys marking where they had been. Beyond the end of the railway track were the remains of gas chambers/crematoria 1 and 2. I imagine that these may have still been in use until late in the piece, because apparently they were dynamited just ahead of the advancing Russians. As the base of these structures was 3 or 4 metres below ground level the whole thing just collapsed into a large hole. The re-inforced concrete roofs were about 18 inches thick, and it all looked as if it hadn't been touched since 1945.
Further along were the sites of gas chambers/crematoria 3, 4 and 5, more or less just the outlines of where they had been. Apparently numbers 3 and 5 were dismantled in the second half of 1944, to destroy the evidence, once it seemed obvious that the war was going to be lost. Number 4 was destroyed by about 250 sondercommando (prisoners who worked clearing the gas chambers and cremating the bodies), in the only ever armed revolt in the camp, which ended in execution for the survivors. A surprisingly large area of the camp was known as 'Çanada', where a large number of prisoners worked sorting through the belongings taken from murdered prisoners, and packing them up for transit to Germany. Completely intact were the buildings where the working prisoners were periodically taken to be de-loused, (the SS didn't want the prisoners to catch infectious diseases that could spread to them). There was this extremely large room with a smooth concrete floor, and I noticed a framed photo on the wall of the room, empty except for three SS sitting at a table, and looking behind me I could see that the fault lines in the cement floor were mirrored in the photograph, and that I was standing right in front of where that table had been. That caused a dog to walk over my grave, I assure you.
Although in one sense, the camp, after all those newsreels, seemed smaller than I imagined it would be, it came across as large when I walked to one of its furthest corners, hard up against a wooded slope. Once there, I suddenly remembered that the last bus went at six, and I indulged in some power walking for the next half an hour, as I didn't really want to spend the night there.
Got not only the last shuttle bus, but also the last bus back to Krakow. I was cold and ravenous when I arrived at the bus station, and soon found a nice warm cafe where I indulged in soup and kebab and fries and lots of tea. An unusual feature of the cafe was that as each item that you had ordered became ready, the girls behind the counter smartly called you up to come and collect it.
And there was a little servery at the side of the kitchen where everybody had to go and leave their plates etc before leaving.
Back at the hostel, I meet Kylie and Mark, (from Cranbourne) who will be my dorm-mates tonight. They were on a bus trip of 17 countries in 27 days, and came back after the trip to have a closer look at Krakow. While Kylie is busy surfing the net for accommodation in Berlin,
Mark is making a hole in the local supply of vino, and we swap traveller's tales for an hour or so,
and I suddenly realise that, with the exception of Norman at the Namur hostel, Kylie and Mark are the first native English speakers that I've spoken with since before Paris (and in Norman's case it was a rather one-sided conversation). Mark has a rather bad cough, and says that everybody on their bus trip caught the same bug. Later, when we're all abed, he gets an unstoppable coughing fit, and decides to sleep on a couch in the hostel lounge. But I can hear that the coughing is going on and on, and finally I get up and give him some 'Tiger Balm' to rub on his chest, and explain about a pressure point at the top of the breastbone which, when depressed, makes it impossible to cough, and helps to settle you down. Anyway it seems to work, and don't hear him the rest of the night. They have to get up about six for the train, and I decide on a long lay-in.
Unfortunately, at 8am Eva is at the door, in a panic - two sisters from northern Poland, who have this room booked for tonight, have arrived already, because one of them is having surgery today, and goes under the knife at 10am. Apparently they are none too pleased, as they were expecting a hotel. Still half asleep, I crash about, collecting all my belongings together, and Eva takes me to the 5-bed dorm, which is up the street, in another building, and on the 4th floor.
Talk about either a famine or a feast - on going back to the main building, I find that my fellow-breakfasters are a couple from Surry Hills, an American couple from Chicago, and 2 young sisters from the Gold Coast. The 2 young sisters talk entirely through their noses, the very embodiment of Strine. The American is a big guy, a lawyer, very well-informed and amusing, and in manner very like Philip Seymour Hoffman, but without the obnoxiousness, and breakfast is a long affair.
I walk to the town centre, where there are incredible buildings, and I walk around some of the very old streets around there. The night I arrived Eva told me the weather forecast for the next two days was rain - and it hasn't let up. Which makes the subject of the pit-stop all-important.
I'll swear that Krakow has a policy that all who want to pass water must pay a fee. I look in vain for a public loo (Alright, I'll pay!) and even in a park that I discover, every tree is strategically planted so that you can only take a leak by committing indecent exposure. (Berlin was the place - you're never very far away from the Tiergarten, where you can race off into the bushes just about anywhere). Finally, just as I am thinking that I'm going to sustain permanent injury, I come upon a public loo, at 50 whatevers, half a zloty anyway. Later I find a snug hostlery, full of smoke and fug, but with a completely empty non-smoking area, and I have a nice blow-out for about 20 zlotys (less than 7 euro). A notice in the bar says that the toilets (for which you need a key) are for customers only, but that others can use them on payment of a fee of 2 zlotys. There are lots and lots of passable cafes etc in Krakow, but unlike Paris or Berlin say, where they are full of locals, here they are more or less empty, as if waiting for tourists. One thing I've noticed on the street here is that most of the tourists sound English.
I walk through the very old streets of the Jewish quarter. I haven't seen the movie 'Schindler's List', but understand that it was shot around Krakow, and I see into a courtyard that my tourist map says was where a pivotal scene in the movie was filmed. Incredibly, the map shows 8 synagogues (of varying levels of the faith) in an area that I calculate as about 400 metres by 300 metres. Maybe one or two of them are no longer used, but that's a lot of synagogues. There was a good museum there, very modern, with records and photographs of Jewish communities throughout Poland. Very chilling was the fact that a lot of these communities, which were often of 10,000 or 20,000 or perhaps 40,000 Jewish inhabitants, have vanished without trace. Not only not one survivor, but not a synagogue or even a gravestone in a cemetery to indicate that all or any of these people ever existed there.
On the night that I arrived at the hostel, Eva explained that Poland won't be on the euro until 2012, and that I'll need to change money into zlotys to pay. I did this, but forgot to pay her the first day I was there, and realise now that I will need more zlotys. Have to hoof it to the railway station to find a money changer still open, as it's now 7pm. On the way back to the hostel I realise that I've caught Mark's 'flu or whatever.
I have the 5-bed dorm to myself for tonight, and go down to the other building to make a couple of cups of tea to take with some aspirin and antibiotic. Everybody else seems to have left, except the 2 girls from the Gold Coast, who are taking the night-train to Vienna tonight, and desperately want to get into the hostel internet to book accommodation there. Unfortunately, the modem, apparently hidden away in the now-locked office, is switched off. The old sweat attempts to mollify them with tales of all the places he has landed in this trip without pre-booked accommodation, but they're not having any (they arrive at 6am).
Bit of a drama when I leave in the morning around 6.30, as it's too early for Eva to be there, and I want to leave the money under the office door. But the keys to the main part of the hostel
(kept in the other building), won't fit the lock. Have to race up the 4 floors again to leave the money under a clock in the dorm, then go back and alter the note that I'd originally meant for Eva to explain that I'd ring her and let her know where the money is. Do manage to get her on the phone from the railway station and explain.
Further along were the sites of gas chambers/crematoria 3, 4 and 5, more or less just the outlines of where they had been. Apparently numbers 3 and 5 were dismantled in the second half of 1944, to destroy the evidence, once it seemed obvious that the war was going to be lost. Number 4 was destroyed by about 250 sondercommando (prisoners who worked clearing the gas chambers and cremating the bodies), in the only ever armed revolt in the camp, which ended in execution for the survivors. A surprisingly large area of the camp was known as 'Çanada', where a large number of prisoners worked sorting through the belongings taken from murdered prisoners, and packing them up for transit to Germany. Completely intact were the buildings where the working prisoners were periodically taken to be de-loused, (the SS didn't want the prisoners to catch infectious diseases that could spread to them). There was this extremely large room with a smooth concrete floor, and I noticed a framed photo on the wall of the room, empty except for three SS sitting at a table, and looking behind me I could see that the fault lines in the cement floor were mirrored in the photograph, and that I was standing right in front of where that table had been. That caused a dog to walk over my grave, I assure you.
Although in one sense, the camp, after all those newsreels, seemed smaller than I imagined it would be, it came across as large when I walked to one of its furthest corners, hard up against a wooded slope. Once there, I suddenly remembered that the last bus went at six, and I indulged in some power walking for the next half an hour, as I didn't really want to spend the night there.
Got not only the last shuttle bus, but also the last bus back to Krakow. I was cold and ravenous when I arrived at the bus station, and soon found a nice warm cafe where I indulged in soup and kebab and fries and lots of tea. An unusual feature of the cafe was that as each item that you had ordered became ready, the girls behind the counter smartly called you up to come and collect it.
And there was a little servery at the side of the kitchen where everybody had to go and leave their plates etc before leaving.
Back at the hostel, I meet Kylie and Mark, (from Cranbourne) who will be my dorm-mates tonight. They were on a bus trip of 17 countries in 27 days, and came back after the trip to have a closer look at Krakow. While Kylie is busy surfing the net for accommodation in Berlin,
Mark is making a hole in the local supply of vino, and we swap traveller's tales for an hour or so,
and I suddenly realise that, with the exception of Norman at the Namur hostel, Kylie and Mark are the first native English speakers that I've spoken with since before Paris (and in Norman's case it was a rather one-sided conversation). Mark has a rather bad cough, and says that everybody on their bus trip caught the same bug. Later, when we're all abed, he gets an unstoppable coughing fit, and decides to sleep on a couch in the hostel lounge. But I can hear that the coughing is going on and on, and finally I get up and give him some 'Tiger Balm' to rub on his chest, and explain about a pressure point at the top of the breastbone which, when depressed, makes it impossible to cough, and helps to settle you down. Anyway it seems to work, and don't hear him the rest of the night. They have to get up about six for the train, and I decide on a long lay-in.
Unfortunately, at 8am Eva is at the door, in a panic - two sisters from northern Poland, who have this room booked for tonight, have arrived already, because one of them is having surgery today, and goes under the knife at 10am. Apparently they are none too pleased, as they were expecting a hotel. Still half asleep, I crash about, collecting all my belongings together, and Eva takes me to the 5-bed dorm, which is up the street, in another building, and on the 4th floor.
Talk about either a famine or a feast - on going back to the main building, I find that my fellow-breakfasters are a couple from Surry Hills, an American couple from Chicago, and 2 young sisters from the Gold Coast. The 2 young sisters talk entirely through their noses, the very embodiment of Strine. The American is a big guy, a lawyer, very well-informed and amusing, and in manner very like Philip Seymour Hoffman, but without the obnoxiousness, and breakfast is a long affair.
I walk to the town centre, where there are incredible buildings, and I walk around some of the very old streets around there. The night I arrived Eva told me the weather forecast for the next two days was rain - and it hasn't let up. Which makes the subject of the pit-stop all-important.
I'll swear that Krakow has a policy that all who want to pass water must pay a fee. I look in vain for a public loo (Alright, I'll pay!) and even in a park that I discover, every tree is strategically planted so that you can only take a leak by committing indecent exposure. (Berlin was the place - you're never very far away from the Tiergarten, where you can race off into the bushes just about anywhere). Finally, just as I am thinking that I'm going to sustain permanent injury, I come upon a public loo, at 50 whatevers, half a zloty anyway. Later I find a snug hostlery, full of smoke and fug, but with a completely empty non-smoking area, and I have a nice blow-out for about 20 zlotys (less than 7 euro). A notice in the bar says that the toilets (for which you need a key) are for customers only, but that others can use them on payment of a fee of 2 zlotys. There are lots and lots of passable cafes etc in Krakow, but unlike Paris or Berlin say, where they are full of locals, here they are more or less empty, as if waiting for tourists. One thing I've noticed on the street here is that most of the tourists sound English.
I walk through the very old streets of the Jewish quarter. I haven't seen the movie 'Schindler's List', but understand that it was shot around Krakow, and I see into a courtyard that my tourist map says was where a pivotal scene in the movie was filmed. Incredibly, the map shows 8 synagogues (of varying levels of the faith) in an area that I calculate as about 400 metres by 300 metres. Maybe one or two of them are no longer used, but that's a lot of synagogues. There was a good museum there, very modern, with records and photographs of Jewish communities throughout Poland. Very chilling was the fact that a lot of these communities, which were often of 10,000 or 20,000 or perhaps 40,000 Jewish inhabitants, have vanished without trace. Not only not one survivor, but not a synagogue or even a gravestone in a cemetery to indicate that all or any of these people ever existed there.
On the night that I arrived at the hostel, Eva explained that Poland won't be on the euro until 2012, and that I'll need to change money into zlotys to pay. I did this, but forgot to pay her the first day I was there, and realise now that I will need more zlotys. Have to hoof it to the railway station to find a money changer still open, as it's now 7pm. On the way back to the hostel I realise that I've caught Mark's 'flu or whatever.
I have the 5-bed dorm to myself for tonight, and go down to the other building to make a couple of cups of tea to take with some aspirin and antibiotic. Everybody else seems to have left, except the 2 girls from the Gold Coast, who are taking the night-train to Vienna tonight, and desperately want to get into the hostel internet to book accommodation there. Unfortunately, the modem, apparently hidden away in the now-locked office, is switched off. The old sweat attempts to mollify them with tales of all the places he has landed in this trip without pre-booked accommodation, but they're not having any (they arrive at 6am).
Bit of a drama when I leave in the morning around 6.30, as it's too early for Eva to be there, and I want to leave the money under the office door. But the keys to the main part of the hostel
(kept in the other building), won't fit the lock. Have to race up the 4 floors again to leave the money under a clock in the dorm, then go back and alter the note that I'd originally meant for Eva to explain that I'd ring her and let her know where the money is. Do manage to get her on the phone from the railway station and explain.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
KRAKOW-AUSCHWITZ. 15th-16th September
Monday and leaving for Krakow. Bought ticket at Hauptbahnhof - 52 euros. Leaving Berlin 7.31am, arriving Krakow 8.07pm. Had booked hostel on internet last Friday, 4-bed dorm first 2 nights, and 5-bed dorm on the third night. Train stopped in Warsaw, which looked fairly unimpressive, and arrived in Krakow without incident. Had downloaded a map on how to get to the hostel, along with my receipt (you have to pay 10% deposit by credit card + if you don't front, they can also deduct the first night's fees from your credit card). I should have been suspicious of the age of the map when I noticed that the name of the main station on it was different from its present day name. The map said get a 4 or a 13 tram and to get off at the third stop, but I could see roughly how to walk it, and was decided on that. Then I found that when I walked up to the road where the trams were supposed to be, that there were no trams, and none of the street names tallied with those on the map.
I decided to ask for directions from a lady who appeared to be out walking her dog. After a few words, I handed her the map, and suddenly the dog, which I hadn't really noticed up till now, but which I soon realised was a bloody great bull mastiff, went for me, leaping onto my stomach and burying it's jaw into my parka. It was really lucky that it didn't go for my throat or my (bare) hands. However, at that stage I was most interested in the directions, and was still conversing with the lady, albeit over a distance of about 5 feet, but she eventually gave up and handed me back the map, with the dog snapping its slobbering jaws inches from my fingers. Two ladies also standing on the street corner had by now flattened themselves against the side of a building, and I went and asked them. They pointed up another street, and I could see a tram going by. I should add that it was pitch dark and raining and cold, and all street signs etc were completely unintelligible, and I soon decided that I would take the tram rather than walk. On the advice of people on the tram I got off at the fourth stop, Batorego, which was the name of the street where the hostel was. And I have to go about 3 or 4 hundred metres up Batorego. It was one of those old-fashioned curving and narrow European streets, with high buildings on each side and plenty of darkened doorways, and my fevered imagination starts to recall every cold-war movie I've ever seen - I was half-expecting Harry Lime to suddenly step out of the shadows. Plus by now my chest and stomach were feeling sore where I'd been savaged by the dog, (but it only lasted about a day, and didn't bruise). Suddenly I come to the 'Jump Inn' Hostel, and find that the door is locked, and the place in darkness. Checking the map, I ring on my mobile to two numbers on it, and I precede the number with the country code, but not preceded by '00' and nothing happens. Then I try it with '00' in front, and it appears to ring, but still no result (never occurred to me to ring without the '00' or the country code). By now a squall is blowing the rain along the street, and I'm stuck up this dark wet alley in the middle of Poland, late in the evening, with nowhere to stay. 'xxxx, xxxx, xxxx - what the xxxx am I going to do?' Suddenly I recall a notice on the door that asks hostel residents to be considerate of other people who live in the building, and I notice several buzzers with names alongside them. At the top is '2a' which is the hostel (2a/6 Batorego), and I press this. Suddenly the security door gives out that rasping answering noise, and never did one sound sweeter.
Eva, the comely and vivacious young blonde who runs the hostel, comes out and leads me to a seat in the office, and soon I am being bombarded with unsolicited information regarding tours and restaurants ('you have to try Polish food' - the description of which starts to make my stomach churn), and much information besides. I mention that I'm thinking of looking at Auschwitz while I'm here, preferably on the morrow. And she's really good, once I explain that I don't want to go on any tour but just look around on my own, and explains what bus to get, and where. It turns out that I have the 4-bed dorm to myself on this first night. In the room is a sign advising that there is a curfew in the hostel from 10pm to 6am, and I wonder to myself how schoolies week would survive in Krakow. It is pretty cold, and I make 2 hot water bottles for bed (500 ml plastic mineral water bottles, filled with 'too hot to touch' water from the tap).
Breakfast next morning is forgettable, slightly stale white cut-bread, with strange tasting jam, and what I thought was corn flakes turned out to be over-sweetened stuff that I can't stomach. The 'Darjeeling' tea was beaut though, and I reflect that I have been spoiled for the past week at the Berlin Youth Hostel, where the very palatable breakfasts easily set you up for a day's sightseeing.
I walk to the underground bus station near the railway, and find the white minibus going to Oswiencin, exactly as explained by Eva. The bus is overcrowded, but I am lucky enough to have a seat for the one and a half hour journey. A lady who had been standing for much of the way
finally sits next to me, and she seemed quite distressed. I think she may have been asthmatic.
Auschwitz didn't affect me the way that Saschenhausen did, although I still couldn't bring myself to take any photos. I guess one reason it didn't affect me overmuch was that virtually everything I saw I had seen already, either in photos or documentary movies. Also, when I arrived there were between 15 and 20 tour buses pulled up outside. When I left about 5 hours later there were still 15 or 20 buses outside, but different ones. So you can imagine the virtual hordes of people wandering about. Nearly everyone there was on a bus tour, or joined a tour when they got there. Only a few mavericks wandered around on their own. At Auschwitz One, about 25 brick barracks, built in 1942, are still in good condition, and each houses an exhibit relating to a particular country (or a group, such as the Roma) that suffered the holocaust. From there, a free shuttle bus takes you about 3 kms to Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau). A few of the wooden barracks have been retained, and still have in them the three-tiered sleeping platforms where hundreds lived in one hut. (Apparently the huts were all built to a specification that was originally for stables for 25 horses). I walked the length of the railway line inside the camp and along 'the ramp', and realised that those pictures that you always see of Birkenau are taken from inside the camp, not on approaching the camp. It's been a few years since I saw the movie 'Shoah', but I think that the scene in it where a railway engine and train takes about 10 minutes to travel the last few hundred yards into the camp would have actually been filmed from INSIDE the camp.
I decided to ask for directions from a lady who appeared to be out walking her dog. After a few words, I handed her the map, and suddenly the dog, which I hadn't really noticed up till now, but which I soon realised was a bloody great bull mastiff, went for me, leaping onto my stomach and burying it's jaw into my parka. It was really lucky that it didn't go for my throat or my (bare) hands. However, at that stage I was most interested in the directions, and was still conversing with the lady, albeit over a distance of about 5 feet, but she eventually gave up and handed me back the map, with the dog snapping its slobbering jaws inches from my fingers. Two ladies also standing on the street corner had by now flattened themselves against the side of a building, and I went and asked them. They pointed up another street, and I could see a tram going by. I should add that it was pitch dark and raining and cold, and all street signs etc were completely unintelligible, and I soon decided that I would take the tram rather than walk. On the advice of people on the tram I got off at the fourth stop, Batorego, which was the name of the street where the hostel was. And I have to go about 3 or 4 hundred metres up Batorego. It was one of those old-fashioned curving and narrow European streets, with high buildings on each side and plenty of darkened doorways, and my fevered imagination starts to recall every cold-war movie I've ever seen - I was half-expecting Harry Lime to suddenly step out of the shadows. Plus by now my chest and stomach were feeling sore where I'd been savaged by the dog, (but it only lasted about a day, and didn't bruise). Suddenly I come to the 'Jump Inn' Hostel, and find that the door is locked, and the place in darkness. Checking the map, I ring on my mobile to two numbers on it, and I precede the number with the country code, but not preceded by '00' and nothing happens. Then I try it with '00' in front, and it appears to ring, but still no result (never occurred to me to ring without the '00' or the country code). By now a squall is blowing the rain along the street, and I'm stuck up this dark wet alley in the middle of Poland, late in the evening, with nowhere to stay. 'xxxx, xxxx, xxxx - what the xxxx am I going to do?' Suddenly I recall a notice on the door that asks hostel residents to be considerate of other people who live in the building, and I notice several buzzers with names alongside them. At the top is '2a' which is the hostel (2a/6 Batorego), and I press this. Suddenly the security door gives out that rasping answering noise, and never did one sound sweeter.
Eva, the comely and vivacious young blonde who runs the hostel, comes out and leads me to a seat in the office, and soon I am being bombarded with unsolicited information regarding tours and restaurants ('you have to try Polish food' - the description of which starts to make my stomach churn), and much information besides. I mention that I'm thinking of looking at Auschwitz while I'm here, preferably on the morrow. And she's really good, once I explain that I don't want to go on any tour but just look around on my own, and explains what bus to get, and where. It turns out that I have the 4-bed dorm to myself on this first night. In the room is a sign advising that there is a curfew in the hostel from 10pm to 6am, and I wonder to myself how schoolies week would survive in Krakow. It is pretty cold, and I make 2 hot water bottles for bed (500 ml plastic mineral water bottles, filled with 'too hot to touch' water from the tap).
Breakfast next morning is forgettable, slightly stale white cut-bread, with strange tasting jam, and what I thought was corn flakes turned out to be over-sweetened stuff that I can't stomach. The 'Darjeeling' tea was beaut though, and I reflect that I have been spoiled for the past week at the Berlin Youth Hostel, where the very palatable breakfasts easily set you up for a day's sightseeing.
I walk to the underground bus station near the railway, and find the white minibus going to Oswiencin, exactly as explained by Eva. The bus is overcrowded, but I am lucky enough to have a seat for the one and a half hour journey. A lady who had been standing for much of the way
finally sits next to me, and she seemed quite distressed. I think she may have been asthmatic.
Auschwitz didn't affect me the way that Saschenhausen did, although I still couldn't bring myself to take any photos. I guess one reason it didn't affect me overmuch was that virtually everything I saw I had seen already, either in photos or documentary movies. Also, when I arrived there were between 15 and 20 tour buses pulled up outside. When I left about 5 hours later there were still 15 or 20 buses outside, but different ones. So you can imagine the virtual hordes of people wandering about. Nearly everyone there was on a bus tour, or joined a tour when they got there. Only a few mavericks wandered around on their own. At Auschwitz One, about 25 brick barracks, built in 1942, are still in good condition, and each houses an exhibit relating to a particular country (or a group, such as the Roma) that suffered the holocaust. From there, a free shuttle bus takes you about 3 kms to Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau). A few of the wooden barracks have been retained, and still have in them the three-tiered sleeping platforms where hundreds lived in one hut. (Apparently the huts were all built to a specification that was originally for stables for 25 horses). I walked the length of the railway line inside the camp and along 'the ramp', and realised that those pictures that you always see of Birkenau are taken from inside the camp, not on approaching the camp. It's been a few years since I saw the movie 'Shoah', but I think that the scene in it where a railway engine and train takes about 10 minutes to travel the last few hundred yards into the camp would have actually been filmed from INSIDE the camp.
BERLIN. 14th September
Saturday night the only bed available is in a 10-bed dorm (18euros). I feel that only a supreme optimist would expect to get an undisturbed night's sleep in a 10-bed dorm, on a Saturday night, in a city that prides itself on being party-central, and I'm not disappointed. Not that there was any ya-hooing, but there just seemed to be people coming and going and whispering in the room throughout the night. That wouldn't have been so bad, but the guy in the bunk above me has a really loud snore, and as soon as the transients quieten down, he starts up. He doesn't only bother me, every time he starts up I can hear bodies turning in other bunks. When I drag myself upright at about 8.30, this guy, who looks all of 16 or 17, gets up too. I gaze myopically at him as I reach for my glasses and I notice that as other guys get up, they make a point of directing dirty looks in the direction of this kid. At breakfast he is sitting on his own, with a mystified look on his face, obviously wondering why he is receiving all these negative vibrations.
I do my washing, and ask at the desk about a private room. There is one available for Sunday night only, and I lash out 35 euros for this, as I'm booked into a dorm in Krakow for 3 nights from Monday night, and very much crave a good night's sleep. I can't move in till one o'
clock, so store my gear in the baggage room, and go for a walk through a nearby suburb where I haven't been before, until 1pm. I had some vague plan for the afternoon of going out to the Olympia Stadium (originally built for the 1936 Games), but instead I sleep in solitary splendour until 5pm. Apparently Adolph and company assumed that Aryan supermen would walk off with all the medals, and were a tad choked when the African-American Jesse Owens walked off with 4 golds. A poetic touch is that the road south of the stadium complex is now called Jesse Owens Allee (Avenue).
In the evening I have a whim to visit the site of the Hitler Bunker. Anything to do with the 3rd Reich is usually kept very low key, in complete contrast to anything to do with 'the Wall', but I ask my friend at the desk (the one who usually undercharges me), and he has an idea that it is now UNDER the Holocaust Memorial. I couldn't quite accept the irony of this, and went to investigate, as he said there was a Jewish Museum under the Memorial as well. The Museum is free, but beforehand you get a little pep talk about 'appropriate behaviour' in the museum, and have to switch off mobile phones before being allowed in in groups. I manage to embarrass the young lady giving us this spiel, as she addresses a few people in front of me in English, and then turns to your humble narrator, who is probably wearing his habitually-puzzled expression, and gives it all to me in German, while I unashamedly nod my head in all the right places, with a couple of 'Ýa's' thrown in. But then I get sprung as she starts handing out brochures about the museum, and I need one in English. But she takes it in good part, saying that she will 'have to be more careful in future'. The museum is rather an unusual one. It has about 100 metres of wall with a photographic account of the history of Berlin's Jews from 1933 to 1945, with written commentary. Then a large room with the family history of individual victims, and another room containing original last letters (and translations) from persons writing to their families while on the way to the camps. Many seemed to have been put in bottles and thrown from railway wagons. I learn from the brochure that the north-east corner of the memorial is built over Goebbel's bunker, and that a plaque marking the Hitler bunker is some 300 metres south of the memorial. Apparently it was filled in and deliberately left unmarked for fear of it becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, but in the 1990's a plaque was laid. An ex-soldier who was one of Hitler's bodyguards in the Bunker was invited to speak at the laying ceremony, and said that although the man was a bestial monster, that it was wrong to ignore history. Anyway I couldn't find it, and I suspect it is about to disappear under a big building development. Back to the hostel and in bed by 8pm. Sleep like the dead until 5.30 when outside my window the laundryman starts trundling away the many big trolleys of sheets and pillowcases that amass over the week in a 350 bed hostel.
I do my washing, and ask at the desk about a private room. There is one available for Sunday night only, and I lash out 35 euros for this, as I'm booked into a dorm in Krakow for 3 nights from Monday night, and very much crave a good night's sleep. I can't move in till one o'
clock, so store my gear in the baggage room, and go for a walk through a nearby suburb where I haven't been before, until 1pm. I had some vague plan for the afternoon of going out to the Olympia Stadium (originally built for the 1936 Games), but instead I sleep in solitary splendour until 5pm. Apparently Adolph and company assumed that Aryan supermen would walk off with all the medals, and were a tad choked when the African-American Jesse Owens walked off with 4 golds. A poetic touch is that the road south of the stadium complex is now called Jesse Owens Allee (Avenue).
In the evening I have a whim to visit the site of the Hitler Bunker. Anything to do with the 3rd Reich is usually kept very low key, in complete contrast to anything to do with 'the Wall', but I ask my friend at the desk (the one who usually undercharges me), and he has an idea that it is now UNDER the Holocaust Memorial. I couldn't quite accept the irony of this, and went to investigate, as he said there was a Jewish Museum under the Memorial as well. The Museum is free, but beforehand you get a little pep talk about 'appropriate behaviour' in the museum, and have to switch off mobile phones before being allowed in in groups. I manage to embarrass the young lady giving us this spiel, as she addresses a few people in front of me in English, and then turns to your humble narrator, who is probably wearing his habitually-puzzled expression, and gives it all to me in German, while I unashamedly nod my head in all the right places, with a couple of 'Ýa's' thrown in. But then I get sprung as she starts handing out brochures about the museum, and I need one in English. But she takes it in good part, saying that she will 'have to be more careful in future'. The museum is rather an unusual one. It has about 100 metres of wall with a photographic account of the history of Berlin's Jews from 1933 to 1945, with written commentary. Then a large room with the family history of individual victims, and another room containing original last letters (and translations) from persons writing to their families while on the way to the camps. Many seemed to have been put in bottles and thrown from railway wagons. I learn from the brochure that the north-east corner of the memorial is built over Goebbel's bunker, and that a plaque marking the Hitler bunker is some 300 metres south of the memorial. Apparently it was filled in and deliberately left unmarked for fear of it becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, but in the 1990's a plaque was laid. An ex-soldier who was one of Hitler's bodyguards in the Bunker was invited to speak at the laying ceremony, and said that although the man was a bestial monster, that it was wrong to ignore history. Anyway I couldn't find it, and I suspect it is about to disappear under a big building development. Back to the hostel and in bed by 8pm. Sleep like the dead until 5.30 when outside my window the laundryman starts trundling away the many big trolleys of sheets and pillowcases that amass over the week in a 350 bed hostel.
Berlin. War Memorial on 17 Juni Strasse, a street that bisects the Tiergarten, (allegedly largest urban park in world). Now called 17 Juni Strasse
to commemorate workers strike against East German government in 1953, the road was widened in 1942 to form part of the east-west axis of the planned 'monumental' Berlin. Apparently the Soviets had the memorial built right in the middle of the site planned for Speer's 250,000 seat 'Hall of the People'.
Berlin. Crosses commemorating the 80 odd Berliners killed trying to get over the Wall. Anything to do with the Wall and the old East Berlin days is pushed to the limit apropos the tourist dollar, except this memorial, which the government wants dismantled. There is a lot of opposition to this, especially from a guy who keeps a lone vigil there every day, and who I think was himself wounded getting over the Wall.
Berlin. The Reichstag. You can just see the tip of the glass dome to the right of top, centre.Built 1894. The proclamation of the Weimar Republic was made from one of its windows after WW1. Reichstag fire in 1933 was blamed on communists, and enabled the Nazis to seize power. Nearly obliterated 1945. Restoration (minus dome) by 1972. In 1990 reunification of Germany enacted here. Plastic wrapped by Christo in 1995. By 1999 completely renovated, including glass dome, by British architect Lord Norman Foster. Since then, seat of the Bundestag (German Parliament).
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
BERLIN 8th-13th September
Monday 8 September. Arrive at the hostel about 5pm. I had been promised a bed in a 10-bed dorm, but the man at the desk asks if I'd like a 2-bed room, no extra charge, (€24-50) including brekkie), and it has its own shower and toilet. They have an all-you-can-eat dinner for €6, and I am soon unashamedly pigging out on a massive plate of fresh salad, then an excellent thai-style curry and rice, two desserts, and lashings of Darjeeling tea. After this I deserve to be kept up half the night with tummy ache, but strangely enough there are no after-effects. You can use the washing machine and drier at the hostel, and just have to pay €5 for tokens for them. Do my washing, and then I think about bed. My room companion is a stocky little man from Barcelona, who explains to me with the aid of a map how he has circumnavigated through all the Scandinavian capitals in the last 10 days. He is returning home the next day, and gives me the comical news that the airport bus will be picking him up from the hostel at 4.30am. I suggest that we should both get some shuteye, but sleep is initially difficult, as uncontrolled schoolies week is also resident at the hostel, in the shape of a couple of hundred of unihibited teenagers (this is the last week of the the long summer holidays). There are dozens of them running around and shrieking outside the hostel, and intermittent shouting and door-slamming in the corridors until about 1am. This is a pattern throughout the week, but you soon adapt to going to sleep at 1am and waking up at 8.30am (in time to get to a late breakfast). My Iberian companion is soon away at 4.30, and I sleep like the dead till my alarm at 8.30.
The next two days I feel very lethargic, and fall into a routine of resting up, and most importantly, resting up the still-tender portions of my anatomy ; going to the 'Corroboree' Australian cafe in the Sony Centre and having latte's and things like 'Death by Chocolate' ; and hanging out at an internet cafe I stumbled on only a half a kilometre from the hostel, which only charges1€ an hour, and about 20 cents a minute to call Oz.
For Tuesday night my room is already booked, so I have to move to another 2-bed room without toilet, but this costs €29-50. When I mention that I would have thought it would be cheaper, the girl on the desk says that is the right price, and that I should have been charged €35 for the room I had the night before, which shuts me up. She says that a man from China is also booked into my room tonight, but I never see him. I hear him come home and get into the bunk above me at about 2-ish, but when I awake at 8.30 he is gone. I am left alone in the room in solitary splendour for the next two nights, dropping off about one-ish when it quietens down outside. Strangely enough, there is a guy on the desk on morning three, who only charges me €24-50, and a girl on the desk on morning four, and I get charged €29-50 again. Then on morning five (for Friday night) I am put in a 4-bed room for €24-50. One man is fast asleep and snoring when I get into bed at elevenish. Schoolies week seems to have left, and am soon asleep, but I hear two guys come in about two-ish.
Thursday I feel revived enough to tackle a little walking tour. Walk to the Brandenburg Gate, then right down to the end of Unter Den Linden, probably Berlin's most famous thoroughfare,
chokka's with cafes and souvenir shops. Coming back I take a street parallel but a couple of streets over from Unter Den Linden (Doratheenstrasse), incidently passing an STA (Student Travel Australia) office in a back street, and end up near the Reichstag. Have to queue up about half an hour to get in, and once you go up in a lift to the roof, you can then walk up on a spiralling walkway to the top, within the vast new glass dome, and you come back down via another spiralling walkway. Rising to the centre of the dome is a pillar covered in small mirrors. From the Reichstag you get an above-treetop level view of the Tiergarten, reputedly the largest urban park in the world, and I am soon wandering its paths. It is the sort of city park that I like most, a number of dissecting paths, but little development, except for the odd statue, so that there is lots of natural verdant 'bush'. It is bisected by '17 Juni Strasse' (named in honour of East Berlin workers who staged a strike against the GDR government in 1953), and is very popular with joggers and cyclists.
Walking back along '17 Juni' towards the Brandenburg Gate you come to the Soviet War Memorial. A largish stone memorial, it is flanked by 2 Soviet tanks, reputed to be the first two tanks to enter Berlin in April 1945. Apparently the whole memorial was constructed in a few months with marble rubble salvaged from the ruins of one of Hitler's more grandiose architectural schemes, and an inargural allied ceremony was held there on 11/11/1945.
The Holocaust Memorial nearby in Erbenstrasse is thought-provoking, a maze of hundreds of stone blocks of varying heights, which can be entered and exited from at any point on the periphery.
Ended up at the Hauptbahnhof, which I hadn't really noticed very much on my arrival. Apparently work went on 24/7 to complete it for the 2006 World Cup, and it is certainly the most impressive railway station I've seen, with a most comprehensive selection of American and British brand-name shops on several levels.
Friday (12 September), I first make an internet booking for a hostel in Krakow, and then check at the Hauptbahnhof regarding trains to there. It is a more than a 10 hour journey, and costs 52 euro. Then in the afternoon I decide on a trip to the Sachenhausen concentration camp, at Orienburg, about 20 minutes by train from central Berlin. It is an hourly service, and I had a half-hours wait, and then missed the train, because the platform was so long that the train only took up half of it - the other end to where I was sitting. Incomprehensibly, the camp is only 2 kilometres from the railway station at Orienburg, at the end of a suburban street. The camp was wrecked by the S.S. only hours ahead of the advancing Russians, and large parts of it demolished or filled in by the Russians immediately after WW2. But in the 50's the GDR Government decided it should be maintained as an anti-Fascist memorial, and it was more or less rebuilt to original specifications. As well as the actual camp itself there are many displays, photographs and details about camp life, atrocities, etc, and many, many individual stories about prisoners interned there, communists, homosexuals, Jewish. You can have read much about these things, but to actually be there, in the actual buildings, to see the gas chambers, ovens, 'pathology' laboratories etc, I personally found extremely harrowing, and couldn't bring myself to take as much as one photo, although many people there, tour groups etc, snapped away, albeit in a sombre atmosphere.
Back in central Berlin, I felt a change of pace was called for, and dropped in at the megaplex at the Sony Centre, and saw 'Momma Mia' (in English - not so much as a dubbed word or a subtitle). I saw the stage version in Melbourne, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and would certainly like to watch it again on DVD.
Saturday I get a late start, and start with a stroll around the streets to the south of the Tiergarten, where a lot of the foreign embassies are. Ring to home after lunch, and then walk to Marlene Dietrich Platz, (many more cafes, multiplex etc), and on through some back streets to Checkpoint Charlie. Very tourist-oriented, and I notice a lot of English-speaking tourists hanging about there. Then navigate through some more back streets to Bebel Platz and the site of the first 'burning of the books' circa 10th May 1933. It is just off Unter Den Linden, opposite Humbolt University.
Yesterday, appropriately enough, it suddenly turned a tad cold when I arrived at Sachenhausen
camp, and the cold spell has continued today, so much so that I now welcome (at 7.30pm) the chance to sit in the warm and have a look at 'der blog'.
I received a comment from David Kataque, a retired chemist with the F.D.A., of Sacramento in Northern California, who said he was enjoying the photos of my 'Grand Tour'. David has a philosophy that the time that you most live is when you touch the lives of others. That 'home' is not a physical place, but is in the heart - which I thought was a rather nice idea.
I also received another comment from Anonymous of Fleetwood Crescent, South Frankston. It is a comment on the photo that I posted of a 'Cash Converters' store in Dunkerque, where the store owner became concerned when he saw me photographing his store. Anonymous says, inter alia 'the shopkeeper obviously thought you were completely undesirable, and likely a potential thief. Why would he not keep a close eye on on a geriatric street-person who looked like he'd just spent the night in the local cemetery?' For anybody who is interested, Anonymous's house is by the second tree on the right-hand nature strip - the tree with the pile of stones under it.
The next two days I feel very lethargic, and fall into a routine of resting up, and most importantly, resting up the still-tender portions of my anatomy ; going to the 'Corroboree' Australian cafe in the Sony Centre and having latte's and things like 'Death by Chocolate' ; and hanging out at an internet cafe I stumbled on only a half a kilometre from the hostel, which only charges1€ an hour, and about 20 cents a minute to call Oz.
For Tuesday night my room is already booked, so I have to move to another 2-bed room without toilet, but this costs €29-50. When I mention that I would have thought it would be cheaper, the girl on the desk says that is the right price, and that I should have been charged €35 for the room I had the night before, which shuts me up. She says that a man from China is also booked into my room tonight, but I never see him. I hear him come home and get into the bunk above me at about 2-ish, but when I awake at 8.30 he is gone. I am left alone in the room in solitary splendour for the next two nights, dropping off about one-ish when it quietens down outside. Strangely enough, there is a guy on the desk on morning three, who only charges me €24-50, and a girl on the desk on morning four, and I get charged €29-50 again. Then on morning five (for Friday night) I am put in a 4-bed room for €24-50. One man is fast asleep and snoring when I get into bed at elevenish. Schoolies week seems to have left, and am soon asleep, but I hear two guys come in about two-ish.
Thursday I feel revived enough to tackle a little walking tour. Walk to the Brandenburg Gate, then right down to the end of Unter Den Linden, probably Berlin's most famous thoroughfare,
chokka's with cafes and souvenir shops. Coming back I take a street parallel but a couple of streets over from Unter Den Linden (Doratheenstrasse), incidently passing an STA (Student Travel Australia) office in a back street, and end up near the Reichstag. Have to queue up about half an hour to get in, and once you go up in a lift to the roof, you can then walk up on a spiralling walkway to the top, within the vast new glass dome, and you come back down via another spiralling walkway. Rising to the centre of the dome is a pillar covered in small mirrors. From the Reichstag you get an above-treetop level view of the Tiergarten, reputedly the largest urban park in the world, and I am soon wandering its paths. It is the sort of city park that I like most, a number of dissecting paths, but little development, except for the odd statue, so that there is lots of natural verdant 'bush'. It is bisected by '17 Juni Strasse' (named in honour of East Berlin workers who staged a strike against the GDR government in 1953), and is very popular with joggers and cyclists.
Walking back along '17 Juni' towards the Brandenburg Gate you come to the Soviet War Memorial. A largish stone memorial, it is flanked by 2 Soviet tanks, reputed to be the first two tanks to enter Berlin in April 1945. Apparently the whole memorial was constructed in a few months with marble rubble salvaged from the ruins of one of Hitler's more grandiose architectural schemes, and an inargural allied ceremony was held there on 11/11/1945.
The Holocaust Memorial nearby in Erbenstrasse is thought-provoking, a maze of hundreds of stone blocks of varying heights, which can be entered and exited from at any point on the periphery.
Ended up at the Hauptbahnhof, which I hadn't really noticed very much on my arrival. Apparently work went on 24/7 to complete it for the 2006 World Cup, and it is certainly the most impressive railway station I've seen, with a most comprehensive selection of American and British brand-name shops on several levels.
Friday (12 September), I first make an internet booking for a hostel in Krakow, and then check at the Hauptbahnhof regarding trains to there. It is a more than a 10 hour journey, and costs 52 euro. Then in the afternoon I decide on a trip to the Sachenhausen concentration camp, at Orienburg, about 20 minutes by train from central Berlin. It is an hourly service, and I had a half-hours wait, and then missed the train, because the platform was so long that the train only took up half of it - the other end to where I was sitting. Incomprehensibly, the camp is only 2 kilometres from the railway station at Orienburg, at the end of a suburban street. The camp was wrecked by the S.S. only hours ahead of the advancing Russians, and large parts of it demolished or filled in by the Russians immediately after WW2. But in the 50's the GDR Government decided it should be maintained as an anti-Fascist memorial, and it was more or less rebuilt to original specifications. As well as the actual camp itself there are many displays, photographs and details about camp life, atrocities, etc, and many, many individual stories about prisoners interned there, communists, homosexuals, Jewish. You can have read much about these things, but to actually be there, in the actual buildings, to see the gas chambers, ovens, 'pathology' laboratories etc, I personally found extremely harrowing, and couldn't bring myself to take as much as one photo, although many people there, tour groups etc, snapped away, albeit in a sombre atmosphere.
Back in central Berlin, I felt a change of pace was called for, and dropped in at the megaplex at the Sony Centre, and saw 'Momma Mia' (in English - not so much as a dubbed word or a subtitle). I saw the stage version in Melbourne, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and would certainly like to watch it again on DVD.
Saturday I get a late start, and start with a stroll around the streets to the south of the Tiergarten, where a lot of the foreign embassies are. Ring to home after lunch, and then walk to Marlene Dietrich Platz, (many more cafes, multiplex etc), and on through some back streets to Checkpoint Charlie. Very tourist-oriented, and I notice a lot of English-speaking tourists hanging about there. Then navigate through some more back streets to Bebel Platz and the site of the first 'burning of the books' circa 10th May 1933. It is just off Unter Den Linden, opposite Humbolt University.
Yesterday, appropriately enough, it suddenly turned a tad cold when I arrived at Sachenhausen
camp, and the cold spell has continued today, so much so that I now welcome (at 7.30pm) the chance to sit in the warm and have a look at 'der blog'.
I received a comment from David Kataque, a retired chemist with the F.D.A., of Sacramento in Northern California, who said he was enjoying the photos of my 'Grand Tour'. David has a philosophy that the time that you most live is when you touch the lives of others. That 'home' is not a physical place, but is in the heart - which I thought was a rather nice idea.
I also received another comment from Anonymous of Fleetwood Crescent, South Frankston. It is a comment on the photo that I posted of a 'Cash Converters' store in Dunkerque, where the store owner became concerned when he saw me photographing his store. Anonymous says, inter alia 'the shopkeeper obviously thought you were completely undesirable, and likely a potential thief. Why would he not keep a close eye on on a geriatric street-person who looked like he'd just spent the night in the local cemetery?' For anybody who is interested, Anonymous's house is by the second tree on the right-hand nature strip - the tree with the pile of stones under it.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
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