“Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever” - Isaac Singer.
After the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, on Hitler’s orders demolition teams, not artillery, levelled what once was a vibrant, international city of grand boulevards the equal of Paris. The camps exterminated remaining inhabitants. Now amidst hectares of graffitied Soviet concrete is every kind of architectural style, all built after 1955.
Kraków, capital of the Nazi General Government, was spared destruction. UNESCO approved the entire Old Town, and nearby Wieliczka Salt Mine, as World Heritage Sites. Ringed by gardens, Wawel Castle overlooking the Vistula, it is delightful.
Be prepared for obtuse and rude service providers in Poland. The attitude reminds me of Australian drivers when you overtake them …or Queensland cops in general. Or Parisian taxi drivers. I suspect a sheer bloody mindedness that life is meant to be hard and damned if we’ll let anyone get away with efficiency. But no country bares the scars that Poland does. It is the conscience of Europe in many ways and who would want that.
Driving from Warsaw to Krakow traverses beautiful countryside. The agricultural potential is enormous. Modern highways are under construction, albeit in a characteristically laborious Polish manner. Diversions are unnecessarily complicated, when they are necessary at all.
Apple Maps struggles to make sense. “Turn left …at the road” she offers hopefully.
Do not book Auschwitz museum tours other than through the museum. Other sites run a scam changing your timeslot after the free 24 hr cancellation. Complain and they’ll promise a refund but it never comes. Auschwitz scamming is not a good look.
In fact, if you have time on your side, just turn up as I did after the address on my online ticket was correct but opened in Apple Maps with guidance to a shabby residential block in Kraków’s suburbs.
Back to Warsaw, the dozen or so well-designed steel and glass office block towers point symbolically to where hope lies - not in inauthentic recreations of the past but in the new, the next generation unburdened by memory, in prosperity.
Where I slept: Anny 5 Apartamenty (Kraków): Basic but well positioned.
Where I ate: NUTA: Stunning food.
