Poland (Part II)

Right, where was I? Oh yeah: Poland.

An interesting thing we did in Krakow was vist this salt mine, in the town of Wieliczka.

It's a labrinth of passageways and cavernous chambers, and is at its deepest is 300m below the surface. The passageways stretch for some 300 km, but the tour is a mere 1% of that. We were led on the tour by one of the most wryly humourous elderly Polish ex-miners you are ever likely to meet.

To get down, you walk, on this creaky wooden staircase, spiraling down into the endless depths:

If you look long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. (Nietzsche)

It was a working salt mine until a few years ago, and was in operation since 1200 or so. Now it is a tourist attraction, and inclidesa range of sculptures, all carved from salt by miners, some brilliant, some naff.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted?

This is the the zentith (or perhaps nadir is more appropriate) of the tour: a true chapel, where everything from the flagstones and the chandeliers you can see behind us to bas-relief friezes depicting biblical scenes are all made of salt.

Surprisingly, because as we all know the medieval man was not a tall fellow, neither Andrew or I banged our heads once.

Feeling bizarrely refreshed as if returning from the seaside, (especially given we as far from the sea as we had ever been) we left Krakow and turned towards the main destination in South-West Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Poland (Part I)

Holy Iron Curtain Batman! Let's get our blog on again.

Welcome back comrades, it's Polska and Czesky. The idea of this trip was to meet up with our friend Andrew who is living in Brno (pronounced Bri-NO) Czech Republic, in Krakow, Poland and travel back via Prague and Pilsner to Brno.

So we flew out, leaving about the only warm weather London had all autumn, and landed in bitterly cold Krakow. Straight away we knew we weren't in Kansas any more, as we were confronted with slabs of grey concrete which function as dwellings in these parts. We soon saw horse-drawn carts filled with cabbages. It was the beginning of a recurring theme in Poland. As Alice said, Poland is very cabbagey.

We stayed at the Goodbye Lenin hostel, after the film of the same name. As you might have guessed this establishment had a kind of pop-art communist thing going on. Our room had a giant social-realist (look it up) mural painted in Andy Warhol day-glo colours. The bar downstairs looked like a cold-war bunker with emergency red lighting. I, being in my mis-spent youth something of a fan of the somehow simultaneously functional and propagandising socialist aesthetic, loved it. [That is possibly the best sentence I've ever written]. Nothing warms the heart like soviet furniture. Incidentally, the drink of choice in this most urbane of regions is vodka flavoured with,um, grass. A single blade of genuine bison grass from the vast plains of Poland sits in each bottle like a worm in a tequila bottle, only less chewy. Some say...that the yellow colouring of the vodka is actually bison piss on the grass. Tasty with apple juice.

Outside it was more concrete, unending roadworks, homicidal tram drivers and rain.

Second theme of eastern Europe – beautiful and ancient town squares. Krakow is no exception. They are brilliant – narrow medieval streets, cafés around the square, an old church or ten, and no cars.

We also went to the old Jewish suburb, and saw the wall built to keep them in. It wasn't built by the Nazis. The Jews were ostracised a lot longer than that. Coming from Golders Green, the biggest Jewish area in the UK, made it especially poignant. For Alice and I it was easy to picture what that Jewish district would have been like, as Golders Green, our little London suburb, is home to many orthodox Jews. We know them as friendly, honest, happy people with a fantastically strong community. In 1941, a ghetto was created outside of Krakow, and (according to Wikipedia) all but 15,000 of the 68,000 Jews were moved. Worse horrors, of course, were yet to come. The Jews never came back to the old district, and it is now occupied by the Polish.

A meditative note: the fallout of the war is still on-going. The government (in order to join the EU) is now having to grapple with the problem of compensation for all the land that was grabbed by the Germans and never given back to the former owners. A thorny issue we know all-too-well in NZ, but on a much larger and more complex scale.

As you might expect our trip was light-hearted, yet punctuated with reminders of a time which seemed to us for the first time recent. Geographical distance gives an illusion of distance of other kinds too.

Decadent capitalist imperial swine! A Big Mac combo with extra cabbage, please.

The mighty Trabant. Proving to The West the superiority of socialist design and engineering. Or possibly not.

The medieval tower in Krakow square. Note the authentic socialist weather.

A Polish wedding care curtesy of Toyota.

This Cafe is in my top 5 world-wide. Dark, dingy, and crumbling. They do a mean stewed cabbage

um...WTF?

More advanced sosialist engineering.

Honest, hard-working proletariat rain, two decadent capitalists, and a portcullis.

Best pub in Krakov. Not much of a view though.

Our new drinking buddy.

They sure know how to make a meal sound appertising.

The goldfish had some very interesting views concerning post-cold war East-West relations.

Shrewsbury, Ironbridge and North Wales, UK

This blog should be about our fantastic 5 day trip to Paris.

But... Home Office rung Richard one sunny afternoon to say they couldn't find his passport and would contact him when they did (very very weird phone call), when Richard rung back a week later they told him to call the complaints department because he'd been calling a lot (like any person who desperately wanted their passport back after 3 months of being told every week that he'd have it back in 5 working days), then after trying to ring the complaints department three times he gave up because he kept on getting a pre-recorded message that his phone call would not be answered because the lines were over loaded with callers.

So we hired a car, took our tent, and ended up going to North-West England and North Wales (trying not to think too much about our non-refundable or exchangeable Eurostar tickets).

We spent our first evening in Shrewsbury, a pretty medieval town with lots of old Tudor buildings on crazy leans and over hanging the roads with the river Severn winds it's way around the town creating a natural moat for the city. Shrewsbury is also the birthplace of Charles Darwin.

Shrewsbury's Tudor buildings

The river Severn and one of two entrances to the old city centre (I believe this one is the Welsh Bridge - the other being the English Bridge)

Prior to heading to Wales we went to visit Ironbridge and it's Ironbridge. The first Ironbridge in the world and the birthplace of the industrial revolution and in turn Britian's domination of the world (so in a round about kind of way this bridge lead to the British colonisation of NZ). But all of this was possible due to COKE! The coke derived from coal - not Coca-Cola.

Ironbridge, Ironbridge, UK

After Ironbridge we headed through to Wales, It's not hard to know when you're in Wales - the road spells it out for you:

ARAF, ARAF, ARAF

Welsh Flag

Our campsite in North Wales, there are fantastic hills in North Wales unfortunately the weather wasn't so fantastic and this is one of the better shots we got

Lucky opposite our remote campsite there was a pub that kept Alice warm, dry and occupied:

2 sips later...

Richard hiding in the morning (the result of a little more than 2 sips at the pub?)

Richard sparing you the sight of his morning hair

After packing up camp we went off to Caernarfon, a fanstatic town built inside and around the old castle walls on the North West shores of Wales.

Caernarfon Harbour

Caernarfon Castle

Richard checking out Caernarfon from the castle walls

We followed a ring of ruined castles, originally built or restored by one of the King Edwards, back to England. All and all a pretty good weekend.

Criccieth Castle (well what's left of it)

Harlech Castle

Farnborough Airshow, UK

We went to the Farnborough airshow a couple of months ago. We watched 4 1/2 hours of amazing aircraft displays, including the world famous Red Arrows, an reenactment of a WWI air battle, and the new air bus - whose maneuverability was being showed off and it looked like a giant elegant winged beast, it was amazing that it even got in the air!

Luckily we went with Rob and Rebecca so Richard had someone to enjoy all the plane displays with!

Red Arrows - during their formations they are only 2 metres apart!

Red Arrows

The Red Baron going down!

New Airbus A380

This aircraft was really cool - it has rotors that can rotate mid flight, so from helicopter to plane, back to helicopter - it's designed for rescue and aid missions

Leeds Castle, Kent, UK

After weeks (nearly months) of rational discussing (married bliss) - we decided that I had better up date the blog.

Leeds Castle is nowhere near Leeds. It's in Kent. About 5 hours drive from Leeds. It's quite a famous castle, thought to be one of England's most beautiful.

There isn't much to castle itself. The amazing thing about Leeds is the moat.

Leeds castle and moat

Leeds castle gate house and moat

You learn a lot about castle building once you've been to a few. There a few different types. All castles have a keep, which is the last resort, a castle-within-a-castle you can defend if the invading hordes inconvieniently knock a hole in your garden wall. The Normans built 'Mott and Bailey' castles, which are long, with the keep on top of a hill (the mott), and the rest (the bailey), down below.

Leeds is different because the keep is not up a hill, but in the middle of a lake. I don't know about the relative defensive capabilities, but the results are certainly more scenic, in a story-book kind of way, which explains why it was bought by an American heiress, who like many wealthy commoners before her, went and got herself a title by marrying an impoverished posh type. In this case, 1st Baron of Queensborough, no less. Easy to imagine a spoilt girl living her childhood princess-in-pretty-castle-in idyllic-countryside dreams.

The castle has had some more interesting owners: it was bought by Edward I (Longshanks from Braveheart). Henry VIII, who seems to have made his mark on every place in Britain, kept Catherine of Aragon here, and his daughter Elizabeth was imprisoned here for a while as well.

Inside there isn't much to see - it's interior is all 1920s American kitch.

But there aren't many nicer places for a picnic than on the edge of the moat, complete with swans.

Alice and I under the portcullis

The Tower, London, UK

So this is it. London's most important site. Built by William the Conqueror to show his power to the natives, and used as a fortress,palace, treasure house and prison for seven or eight hundered years.


This is the view as you approach the tower. In front is the moat, which was joined to the river. Unfortunatley, seeing as one of the Thames's many uses was as a sewer (as well as drinking water supply), the moat became an enormous cesspit. According to our guide, that is why the grass is so green. They got the Dutch in to fix it - they know all about controlling water, of course.

This is Traitor's Gate,

the main entrance to the tower from the water. Here was where traitors were brought in. Thomas More came in here, sent by by Henry VIII Elizabeth came though those gates, sent by her half-sister Mary I. Elizabth's mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed here, as was her aunt, Catherine Howard.

The Rack

Guy Fawkes was tortured on a rack like this, here in The Tower.

A Beefeater

He was our guide, and he was terrific. An old army bloke complete with Sargeant-Major voice and Sargeant-Major moustache.

The White Tower,

the original tower that gives the fortress its name, and the central keep in the middle of the complex. This is the most recognisable part. Inside now is some of the Royal Armoury.

This is the Bloody Tower,
where 'Those bastards in the Tower' were kept, giving Shakespeare's Richard III sleepless nights. They were his nephews, and a threat to his position. 'Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead.' Murdured here? Probably, I reckon. Walter Raleigh also lived here, in considerable comfort. His wife and kids lived with him. Of course one needs one's domestic staff. He grew tabacco (our guide has still not forgiven him for introducing to this to Britain along with potatoes)in the garden.

The Crown Jewels are in this building on the left. You aren't allowed to take photos. So here are some from the net:

The Imperial State Crown with Cullinan II

The Queen's Mum's Crown with Kohinoor.

The Sovereign's Sceptre with Cullinan I.

We weren't as impressed as we thought be would be. Sure there's a hell of a lot of diamonds and what-not - 2,868 diamonds on the Imperial crown alone, and gold and stuff of course. Oh and the Star of Africa (Cullinan I), largest gem quality diamond in the world, and Koh-i-Noor, another big one, been famous for 400 years or so. But you get wizzed past on travelators, so you look at things for 30 seconds, then away. Just a bunch of pretty silly looking shiny stuff, really. After reading up bit it's more interesting, but the time we didn't know anything about the jewels. Did you know that when the Cullinan Diamond was brought to Africa, a fake was put on a ship with armed Police etc, and the real one was sent by post.

Poignant monument
on the spot where poor old Anne Boleyn (and others) died.

Inside the White Tower: The Armouries

Here's some amazing armour of Henry VIII and horse.

Henry's Melee armour
Note extraordinary cod-piece arangement.

So that was the Tower of London, for me, the most essential thing to see in London.

Oh, and here's Alice: