polandtrip - february 06. it's not cold as it could be, but cold enough.

we visited krakow, made a one day trip to oswiecim and a short-visit to warszawa. and, after that, i made a small bicycle-tour 'behind' the border, closed to my hometown, including the 'towns' seniawka and bogatynia.

but. lets begin at the beginnig. i really had fun on the 'empty' advertising-panels ... at the beginng. during the tour i'd got to recognize, that 'this'* is 'usual' 'here'. 

krakow is an old and dirty but nice town. most of the dirt comes from the steel-industry, surrounding the town. (and maybe it was from the 'cold month', with its 'cold light', that everything seemed so bluegrey.) anyway. we jumped through some 'main-quarters' as the inner city, or kazimierz - the jewish quarter, and we found a real nice hostel near the center (http://www.travellersinn.pl/).

when we've been to krakow, we'd 'like' to see 'it' ... this horrible 'sign' of 'fanatism'. part one - auschwitz I is more small than i thought. 33 blocks. fourteen includes exhibitions. five 'about' and nine from different countries, with different themes. for instance 'germany' made an - in my eyes - good exhibition about the pursuit of roma. the netherlands showed, how 'they took part' - with more than fiveteenthousand names, written on a wall ... . unfortunately all of that is too much for one day. auschwitz II birkenenau is nearly one kilometer off the town. on the one hand, you could say, "the's nothing". on the other hand, you see "dead land" - and you can nearly imagine, what happend there. and: its a real big.

in warszawa we found some nice places with lots of streetartwork - you can see some of them on the 'picture-site'. warszawa itself is 'just a normal big city' - and a bit more ... 'usual "socialistic" building-style' and 'rebuildet history' mixed with '"modern" kapitalism'. visitors do not have to fear as more as in roma or barcelona ... but they dont know it - and the most people think on their cars, when they hear anything about poland (Q: do you know polish triatlon?? A: driving bicycle, swimming a bit, driving home by car -- a 'joke' that i heard somewhere...). 

and because krakow and warszawa seemed so 'normal' to me (and because some other reasons brought my way to my hometown) i decided to make a small bicycle-tour trough the region 'behind the border' (the east-borderline from my hometown is also border to poland) - to loose the 'normal'-feeling. and it worked. this region is 'the arse' from poland. there's a big brown-coal mine, and thats it. the towns - or the inhabitants there - are living that place. there are some ruins of socialistic culture-propaganda (dom kulturny), some shops, some children and lot of dirt - 'cos the mine is closed to an power plant. there are a lots of sings from 'leaving'.

i dont have any idea, what 'poland' want to do with this part, it seems that they 'supportet' them in 'the old system', and 'now' they simply 'forgot' them ...

thnx a lot to my travelmate
mfg#tt

*) leaving the advertizing-panels empty