The JaYmes Escape

Bratislava is certainly very different from Prague. There are only a few tourists here and the historic city on the banks of the Danube is surrounded by communist architecture that gives it a strange space-age feel. Austria is only a couple of miles away and if you look closely at some of the photos you should be able to see the actual rails that the iron curtain used to run on.

New year should be very interesting here, a big fireworks display over the Danube is planned with a massive street party. The last few Prague photos are also now online.

In the last six weeks I’ve visited nine cities in seven countries and tried to speak seven languages. Now it’s Christmas eve and I’m in one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Prague. The Czechs celebrate Christmas today so things have been fairly quiet, but I did get a tram into the city to join the hordes of tourists this afternoon. Unlike London, public transport runs every day over christmas here, and many restaurants and bars are open.

My last few days in Krakow were very interesting; I sampled some real fat-and-grease Polish food, they even serve bread with lard. I felt ill the next day. I visited the Wawel cathedral and castle, and I spent last Monday in Oswiceim (Auschwitz), probably the biggest and certainly the most sombre museum in Poland. The most striking thing about Auscwitz is the sheer scale of the place. The second camp (”Birkenau”) occupies over 2 square km and at the entrance it literally stretches as far as the eye can see in three directions (forward, left and right). Pictures are in the gallery if you can stomach them. For something more uplifting there are some more pictures of Krakow too.

Anyway, greetings of the season to one and all from Prague. There’s no snow here as yet; here’s hoping for tomorrow.

It’s almost Christmas and yesterday I arrived at my last stop in Poland, the historic city of Krakow. It’s fair to say that Krakow is everything that Warsaw isn’t – historic, plenty to see, reasonably sized and bustling with toursim and local culture.

It’s snowing here tonight; for me this is the first time in three weeks. My last snow fall was back in Tallinn – 3 weeks, 3 countries and 5 cities ago. I have three days left here so plenty of photos to come; my stay here will also include a trip to the nearby town of Oswiecim – better known to the rest of the world by it’s German name, Auschwitz. I found the KGB museum in Vilnius incredibly moving but people here say that this place is in a totally different league.

Pictures from Warsaw, Krakow and Auschwitz are now in the gallery

Warsaw (pronounced locally as vah-she-vah) is the capital of Poland and has a population of about 2 million. At the end of the 2nd world war the city was almost totally destroyed by the retreating German army – Warsaw was perhaps the biggest casualty of Hitler’s ’scorched earth’ policy, but I also clearly saw the effects in Pushkin (The Catherine Palace) and Riga (The House of Blackheads and the Town Hall). As with the others, much of Warsaw has been faithfully recreated; and although this looks really good it somehow lacks soul.

The palace of culture, Stalin’s ‘gift’ to the Polish people is, for better or worse, the most distinctive building in town. During the Warsaw uprising at the end of 1943, when the Poles tried to liberate their own capital from the third reich, the red army provided a few token air-drops of food and munitions whilst they watched from the other side of the river. It seems that Stalin was happy to let the Poles and the Germans fight it out to the last man so they could enter and ‘liberate’ the city with little resistance from either.

Anyway, Warsaw is perhaps a little disappointing in terms of things to see and do; I expected a bustling city like London or St Petersburg, but this place was mostly built post-war and is more spread out. Somehow this takes away some of the big-city buzz.

I must thank Valdemar who runs the hostel in Gdansk; I’ve never met a more accomodating and generous host – and the sofa-packed common room (with views of the river) and nightly vodka shots are all part of the package.

Gdansk is definitely quiet at this time of year, but a couple of days here has given me the opportunity to do some important sightseeing. Not only is Gdansk very elegant architecturally, it is a pivotal place in 20th century history; Hitler effectively started world war two by landing at Gdansk to invade Poland in 1939.

Perhaps even more significantly, Gdansk was the epicentre of Polish unrest during the Communist era. Following several protests and strikes throughout the postwar period, a Gdansk shipyard worker named Lech Walesa climbed a wall in 1980 to address and rally his striking colleagues and form what became known as the ‘Solidarity’ movement. Inflation was crippling, the shops were empty and the strikers demanded more pay and better living conditions. On August 31st 1980, Walesa signed an agreement in Gdansk that is now considered to be a major catalyst for reform across Poland, Eastern Europe and the collapse of the USSR. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1983 and later became the first democratically elected president of Poland.

My pictures of Gdansk are now in the gallery and include the monument to the fallen shipyard workers. This was constructed in 1980 as a condition of the agreement and subsequently became a symbol of the fight against communism. There is a section of the wall Walesa forst spoke from, and the desk where he signed the 1980 agreement, which is in a hall that now houses a museum called ‘Roads to Freedom’.

Also in the gallery are some amazing pictures of Vilnius – my last day there on Sunday was perfect for taking photographs and, amongst other things I visited the remains of the 1991 barricade outside the Lithuanian parliament which has been turned into a monument remembering those who died there. There is also a plaque telling visitors that Russia is still waging a war of genocide against the Chechen people. The stand-off in Vilnius paved the way for the full independence of all three Baltic states, and there is little doubt that the actions of Lech Walesa and Solidarity in 1980 were a significant catalyst for the chain of events that led to the fight in Vilnius, the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.