Książ Castle - mad as a fish........
Why Poland? It is not a natural tourist destination, but is more renown for its place in history as a buffer state between east and west. Caught originally between The Holy Roman Empire and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the Prussian Empire and Russia, it subsequently became the battleground of Germany and Russia during both World Wars. Post war it found itself as the poor relation of the Warsaw Pact, still resentful of the more prosperous East Germany and frightened of its Stalinalist big-brother neighbour, the Soviet Union. Poland has only begun to blossom from true independence since 1989. More specifically you cannot think of Warsaw without wincing at the hopeless and tragic Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, brutally put down by the Germans after three weeks of fierce fighting. Worse still was the whole city revolt against German occupation in August 1944, aimed to prevent the Red Army from taking the city. It took two months for the Germans to put down that uprising, killing around 200,000 poles – this whilst the Russians waited at the gates for the purge to be complete. Notably it is estimated that around 4 million Poles (over half of which were Jews) were killed in the Second World War.
On a slightly more positive note, those of us who are middle aged cannot fail to forget Lech Walęsa, the leader of Solidarność (the Gdańsk shipyard trade union) who in 1980 obtained worldwide fame for his stand against communism and the right for some freedom of action. Unfortunately the wave of uprising was put down a year later and martial law enforced. The Poles would have to wait a further nine years before true freedom was granted.
These woes pale into insignificance if you make a cursory comparison between the Michelin guides of Germany and Poland. The Germany version is 622 pages long; the Polish 384. Germany – lots of pictures of mad castles, beautiful porcelain, outrageous Baroque churches and precipitous vineyards cascading to snaking blue rivers adorned with gleaming white hotel barges thronging with tourists of every nationality. Poland – mostly two-colour churches, lots of pictures in the ice and snow and not many people enjoying themselves; and some more churches. The DK Guide (laminated for those who, like me of a certain age, tend to dribble) is not much better; plenty of photos, but mostly of churches, forests and the odd wild boar. And a large number taken below freezing.
So why Poland? Well, because of its place in history, sandwiched between Europe and Asia. Because, whilst we’d been to Hungary which spreads just as far east, Poland looks like it’s closer to the Urals and has a more foreign feel about it. And, crossing the border from Germany and heading into southern Poland, or the old Silesia, it immediately felt more foreign. This was a country where the men are all squat and brutish, with moustaches and suspicious eyes. And the women are the same, but with breasts (this is actually not true – the younger Polish women were among the prettiest and best kempt I’d seen since leaving Bristol). The alphabet (which is Roman and has unnervingly nine more letters than ours) had a wonton regard for cedillas and accents, and uses vowels sparingly. The letter ‘l’ has a diagonal line cutting through it, making it appear like a Christian cross viewed from an oblique angle. And they love the letter ‘zed’; they use it all the time and sometimes twice, next door to each other in very short words. I’d come across Cyrillic many times before, but this took the biśćųizt. And translating the letters into words was a whole new language…….. And few speak English, and only slightly more German. We were going to have fun buying things without pointing.
Legnica monastry (and asylum), an interesting combination.
We travelled southeast on a motorway, one of only three and a half in Poland, none of which goes anyway near the capital. It would have been easy after an hour of driving to claim that Poland, square-shaped, and larger than the UK, but with just over half of the population, was a huge forest with some bare bits, criss-crossed by animal tracks which had been poorly tarmaced for human usage. Poorly tarmaced is an under exaggeration. The incoming motorway was concrete based, which was laterally cracked every metre or so, with the cracks over-filled with rubberised tarmac. The resultant clump-clump-clump restricted speed to around 30 mph. Between the lanes is a continuous crack about cycle tyre width (at its narrowest), which has not been filled apart from some tufty grass. It’s like driving on a disused airfield and not a pleasant experience. For relief, irregularly the concrete is replaced by old tarmac. In the inside lane this is rutted to the point that, once you’re in, it’s difficult to get out. Driving during these respites was fun and Scalectrix like; leave the steering wheel alone and the van tracks all the way to the Ukraine. Notably the motorway was pretty empty and we counted more lorries than cars – and I didn’t see a motorcycle for my first three days of driving and very few after that. I’m not surprised….
I’d like to say the roads improved. And they did. Other bits of motorway are not dangerously bouncy, and you don’t enter and exit them on cobbled slipways. The main roads are hit and miss (literally in some cases), but quite often teeth are dislodged and bits fall off the inside the van which weren’t designed to. But the scenery is, well: rustically attractive. It is fair to say that the northern 90% of Poland is a flat plain ending in the Baltic Sea. The southern 10% is uplands, with the lowish Karkonosze Mountains in the west, leading to the much more rugged Alp-like Carpathians in the east. To begin with we saw a lot of the southern bit of the plain and it was, well, a bit German, but placed about fifty years earlier. The farmsteads are huge, with big square buildings with tall pyramidal roofs and many outbuildings. Much of the plaster is missing off of most of the buildings, but you get that in France and it’s charming. Interestingly we saw few farm animals, but they eat a lot of meat; so I’m not sure how that works.
The villages are undernourished, but they all have little schools and everyone keeps their gardens beautifully. The major towns are centred around a prison (no, really – with manned towers and barbed wire fences) and most small towns can be identified before you arrive because of their tall, slim red-brick tower, the bottom of which is some labour-intensive industry involving substantial heat. Of note most towns have a new cathedral – the noun is inadvisable, I know, but best describes the size and grandeur of these buildings. Communism may have sent the Catholic Church underground, but they clearly took their money with them. And they love to shop. French-style hypermarkets (from France – Auchan, Carrefour etc) have sprung up on the outside of towns and, not wanting to buck the trend, we were able to shop in them late on a Sunday afternoon as people were still arriving to browse. But, on the other hand, look at the cemeteries and all (that is all) of the graves are adorned with flowers. A wonderful splash of colour in a pretty monochrome country.
My big fat gypsy campsite
Our first night was a campsite just south of Legnica, which was a square field surrounded by a line of trees and occupied by a couple of Dutch vans. We congratulated ourselves on making our first night without major incident and sat with a beer listening to the fervent ‘combining’ whilst a thunderstorm approached. Later we visited the village’s noteworthy Benedictine church (yellow curved fronted and beautifully baroque inside) whose attached monastery housed the local mad folk, and then snuggled up for a carefree night.
Big mistake. At just gone midnight C was up like a shot as we seemed to be being circled with cars and headlights, out of which jumped lots of shouting Slavs accompanied by revving of engines and a general melee. I was tempted to get out of the van stark-naked and give them a piece of my mind, but remembering how ridiculous I look fully clothed, let alone unmasked, I thought better of it. In the morning it transpired that we had been joined by a bunch of gypsies intent on making this site their holiday destination of choice. Vans, cars, fat men in string vests, old women with warts on their noses and flowing apron-like dresses, the odd kitchen sink and chickens were all present. And they were lovely. But we left anyway (with, thankfully, all of our possessions).
We did the foothills of the Karkonosze Mountains in the rain and that spoilt it for us. We couldn’t see the tops of the hills, and the towns were dour and uninteresting. Our campsite was next to a river – which, with the incessant rain, became a brown torrent – which made for an interesting day and we watched it rise interminably. But then it subsided and we headed for Krakow.
It’s little things that make holidays. After the foothills as we headed back down onto the plain we were expecting a pretty dull drive to Krakow, but by chance we came upon two sites which really cheered us up. Szczawno Zdrŏj is a pretty little spar town with an unpronounceable name. It has a beautiful park and glamorous spa-like buildings that would sit comfortably on any German hillside.
Much more exciting was Książ Castle. This huge palace is placed proudly on top of a deciduous outcrop with fabulous views over the northern plains. Owned by the richest barons of Silesia (one of whom married a Welsh lass called Daisy who was purportedly the best looking girl on the European circuit – surprised? I was), this multi-staged castle is a delight. It’s very Neuschwanstein (aka Chitty-Chitty Bag Bang), but bigger with extra bits added on of every style. Entered through an imposing set of twin towers, leading to grand gardens built precipitously on the spur leading to the main outcrop, the whole edifice is underpinned with rock ramparts and huge arched footings. The main castle, which has expanded in girth throughout the centuries as subsequent owners literally built outwards leaving the previous castle enclosed and intact, is multi-textured with brick, rock and coloured render. It stands five-stories high and is finished off with brick and green copper turrets and double apexed copper-plated roofs. Inside (where most of the castle is open to the public) it is sparsely furnished and has a lived-in feel, but is better for it. It’s intriguing; a little mad, but somehow purposeful. In my view it is as good as Neuschwanstein which only beats it because of the latter’s backdrop of the snowy Alps. This place is not to be missed, but noting that we only saw the signposts by complete chance, it is likely that you will.
Next was Auschwitz and Krakow and we sincerely hoped things were on the up. But that’s another story ………
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