Budapest has been a sweet surprise for us.  Until recently, we were unaware that Budapest is the result of an historic amalgamation of the separate cities of Buda and Pest.  While here, we heard people referring to restaurants on the “Buda side” or “living in Pest”.   The first thing we did upon our arrival was stroll along the Pest-side of the Danube River in awe of its views up to Buda, the bridges and the massive Gothic-style Parliament Building.  It dominates the skyline and impresses from virtually every angle.  Overall,  Budapest has one of the most stunning city skylines of any city that we have visited so far.  The fabulous architecture lining the Buda and Pest sides of the Danube totally justifies the claim that it is one of Europe’s prettiest cities – and we agree!  The city has made so much progress in the past 25 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain; however, the large number of major construction and restoration projects is ever-present.  Known for its wonderful Hungarian paparika, we were surprised that the hearty Hungarian fare is extremely well-priced and the Hungarian wine is delicious.

We took a 2 1/2 hour walking tour of the city on Sunday to give us an overview of the main attractions.  We started out by walking by St. Stephen’s Basilica which is as grand a church as any you will find in Europe.  We then proceeded to cross the famous Chain Bridge which connects Pest, the newer part of the city, with historic Buda sitting high on a knoll.  Once over to the Buda side, we climbed up the many stairs to the famous Castle Hill area and the World Heritage site of Budapest’s Buda Castle District.  Both these historical areas are very “tourist-heavy” and left us kind of apathetic in terms of visiting every venue on the hill.   The panoramic views from the Fisherman’s Bastion (a neo-Gothic/Romanesque terrace) are picture-postcard perfect and quite dramatic.  Right next to the Fisherman’s Bastion, is the Matthias Church which dates back over 700 years.  It has one of the most magnificent church exteriors we have seen with a very intriguing roof made of Hungarian ceramic tiles.   The interior is simply gorgeous with very beautiful stenciling on the walls.  The church, when it was converted to a mosque, had its stencils walls covered to hide any faces on the walls.  Once reverted back into a church, these stencils were uncovered in perfect condition.

After lunch, we took a tour of The Hospital in the Rock, a hospital under the Buda Castle.  This small (60 beds) hospital was only used during the siege of Budapest and during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.  It had upwards of 600 patients within the facility during these conflicts.  The Soviets converted it to a nuclear bomb shelter during the Cold War.  It was interesting to see this underground medical facility; however, we felt it was rather cheesy to have vignettes in rooms and other areas displaying oversized wax figures of nurses and doctors performing their duties.  It was an old, underground facility looking for tourist $$.

Friday was our last day in Kraków.  It is such a delightful city; and it probably isn’t high on the list for most travelers’ itineraries;  it should be.   It was our day of wandering.  After days of sightseeing, sometimes we just need to meander around.  We strolled by one of the squares around 10 AM and were surprised to see a number of guys at bars downing beers.  As we wandered further, we began to see a few people in various costumes.  Down the street, we stopped to listen to a high school band, decked out in pajamas no less!  Interestingly, all the songs they were playing were U.S. songs.  Then, came more crazy costumes toward us.  There were masses of girls & guys in costumes, drinking beer and cheering everyone on.   We heard loud concert music nearby and there were hundreds of students dancing up a storm to the music of a young singer.  Apparently, it was an annual “holiday” for students.  We inquired about the holiday; but, we could only conclude that it was a day off to celebrate with no studies.   The occasional rain dampened the excitement but there was still lots of celebrating and singing going on.

 
Kraków has over 120,000 college students in the area.  Althought there is a real college-town vibe in Krakow, it is a totally charming town preserved in rich history.  In Krakow, we could walk almost anywhere; and, there is a great range of bars, restaurants and things to explore throughout the city.  We love it for that reason.   Now, we fly to Budapest on Saturday.

On Thursday, we began the day visiting the Nazi’s best known extermination camp, Auschwitz. Having visited last week Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp outside of Berlin, we thought we knew what to expect. Auschwitz is really three camps that housed over 150,000 inmates and killed over 1.3m people 70 years ago. This unimaginable number of over one million human beings is enough to knock you out. The treatment of these “prisoners” was horrendous and humanity’s worst atrocity. We spent 2 hours at Auschwitz touring the buildings and exhibits. It was so horrific, we will only give you an example of one exhibit; however, there were many other exhibits equally as appalling.

At first we couldn’t quite understand what we were seeing; as, we turned the corner into the darkened room in the barracks. Then it hit us like a bulldozer. Hair. We peered into the massive, room-length display cabinet at the biggest most macabre, most soul-destroying example of human memorabilia we have ever seen. . . . piles and piles of hair-untouched for the better part of 70 years. As the cliche goes, it felt like time stood still. Lesley almost got physically sickened by this viewing. The tour continued much the same way for us. Nothing can prepare you for Auschwitz but everyone should experience it; as, it is literally a life-changing experience.

We spent another hour at Birkenau- the sister death camp 5 times larger than Auschwitz. At the entrance to Birkenau, the infamous watchtower and ominous railway tracks greeted us. It was a grim shlep walking along the railroad tracks. This hell-on-earth place looked never-ending. Auschwitz told the holocaust story in great detail and Birkenau with its size, told the breadth of the atrocities. The living conditions at Birkenau were too bad for animals – let alone humans. One of the hardest hitting thing for us was seeing photos of the “selection process” (only 15% of the victims were selected to “live” (their death only delayed as they labored as slaves) with a thumbs up hand gesture by the Nazi physician) and photos of women and children stripping down getting unknowingly ready to enter the gas chambers. We then saw the exact same location today as where the photos were taken. This was a chilling, haunting experience for us that will be cemented in our memories forever.

On the 1+ hour drive to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, we started reflecting on what we had just seen at Auschwitz and Birkenau. That is when the emotions kicked in and the numbness from the shocking visit wore off. We remained silent for the entire ride to the salt mine.

Wieliczka Salt Mine dates back to the 1300’s and was only closed to mining in 1996 due to low salt prices and mine flooding. It has many interesting features once you descend the 400 wooden steps down a fairly narrow shaft. (Lesley’s claustrophobia did not kick in, thank goodness). During its mining period, the religious miners built 41 chapels within the salt mine – 26 still exist, the others have been destroyed over time by nature. Ignoring the very cheesy dummy miners demonstrating various aspects of the mining operation, the tour was quite interesting. The most fascinating and absolutely spectacular Chapel of St. Kinga within the mine is an active place of worship today. There are weddings and concerts that often take place in this underground cathedral due to its sheer size and audacity. The cathedral can accommodate over 400 individuals. The church took 7 years to build. It was built by 3 miners in their spare time in the 1800’s, an extraordinary feat. The large cavern has extensive carvings of Bible stories on its walls and numerous statues. Even the enormous chandeliers in the cathedral are made of salt! The salt in this mine is as hard as marble but much more fragile which makes the feat that was accomplished even more extraordinary.

It seemed like we walked at least a couple of miles within the mine; but, only one percent of the mine is open to visitors. The therapeutic properties of the salt air within the mine apparently slows down the aging process. We were glad that we finished the day within the salt mine after visiting Auschwitz.

On Tuesday, we arrived in Krakow by train and found our boutique hotel within the confines of Krakow’s Old Town. Krakow appears to be a very young city. The oldest university in Poland and one of the oldest in the world, The Jagiellonian University, is only a few blocks from the main square. There are lots of students and travelers here coursing through the city. Once again, we didn’t see many Americans wandering around the crowded streets.
The Old Town area of Krakow is incredibly beautiful, culturally rich and very well preserved. Krakow was not destroyed by the Nazi’s (as was Warsaw) because the Germans saw it as a “German” city that they wanted to enhance. After the German occupation, many Germans did move to Krakow. The city also suffered less damage than other cities as the Polish army left the city as the Germans invaded. The Russians, at the same time, had invaded Poland from the east. Poland was in quite disarray.
Old Town consists of nine squares with many shops, restaurants, a few hotels, churches and museums. Krakow is also known as the city of churches because of the large number of them. In one small square, we counted 4 churches. The main square in the heart of Old Town Krakow is a whopping 10-acres square! It is officially Europe’s largest market square and is surrounded by impeccable pastel buildings. It is truly the most picturesque square we have ever seen. The magnificent St. Mary’s Cathedral, located in the main square (a.k.a. Rynek Glowny), is Krakow’s most famous and most spectacular landmark. It has two very large brick turrets visible from all over the city. Every hour a trumpeter plays a short piece out of the tower windows. If he acknowledges your waving to him after he plays, it is supposed to be good luck (the trumpeters are local firemen). There is a large sculpture of a head in the main square. It was the same artist who did all of the sculptures we saw in Pompeii. (The Polish artist died 3 years ago and had always wanted some of his works on display in Pompeii which is reason for that temporary exhibition.) Krakow is also the home to Pope John Paul II.
We toured The Museum of Wartime-Krakow, which is commonly referred to as the Otto Shindler Museum. The museum lies on the outskirts of downtown Krakow in the Jewish Quarter. It used to be the factory of Otto Schindler who saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust by employing them in his enamel factory. While the museum disappointingly doesn’t really depict too much about Otto Shindler’s life, it does show the fate of the Jewish workforce. The sorrows of everyday living and family life in the Nazi occupied city after the Nazi invasion in 1939 where pictured with detailed comments throughout the museum. We saw an excellent short documentary interviewing some of Otto’s employees. It was another emotional 2 hours spent learning more details about this incredible tragedy that occurred so recently in history.
Wawel Castle is a gorgeous landmark which abuts Old Town. It majestically sits high on a hill next to the Vistula River; and, it is visible from almost anywhere in the city. It looks like a fairy tale castle and is the place from which the kings ruled ancient Krakow (back then it was called “Cracovia”). The Leonardo da Vinci “Lady with an Ermine” painting is on exhibit here and it is truly a magnificent masterpiece painted in 1490. The room we entered only contained this one mesmeric painting; and, the painting has been hailed has one of Leonardo’s most consummate achievements. It is truly a fabulous piece when you view it in-person.
We bought tickets to view the fabled “Dragon’s Den” at the castle. You enter at the castle grounds and then descend through a cave down the hill. We entered a long, very narrow, steep spiral stairs. As we kept going down and down the dizzying flights, suddenly Lesley went into a claustrophobia attack. Fortunately, nobody was behind us as she ran back up a number of flights to exit. David continued down the 135 steps. It was a tourist trap. Once down, the underground route is only 260 feet long. The rest of the cave, including the five underground ponds and narrow passages are too dangerous and off limit to visitors. A life-size sculpture (pictured below) of the “Krakow Dragon” is by the exit and spurts fire on demand.

 

Warsaw, the capital of Poland is a “jumble” of architecture with lots of ugly communist concrete, restored Gothic and modern glass and steel.  Like Berlin, the city has had a very tumultuous past.  Warsaw has suffered the worst history could throw at it, including 90% of the city’s destruction during World War II.  On Monday morning, we took a walking tour of the most popular part of Warsaw, Old Town.  Old Town is “sort of” Warsaw’s historic center as it has been totally rebuilt after WW II.    While quite charming with lots of restaurants and cafes, Old Town almost has a “Disneyesque” feel to it. Everything seems too perfect on all of the outside facades of the building.  There even were simulated fragments of broken plaster with bricks showing through on some of the buildings!

When standing at Castle Square (the main square) in Old Town, you have a perfect view of the national stadium which was opened in 2012 for the World Cup qualifying matches.  The roof of the stadium can be open or closed so that games can be played in all weather.  During the qualifier game between Poland & England, it began to rain…then downpours!  The field became so flooded that the game was postponed. The sponsors later explained that they “forgot” to close the roof.  Now the stadium is referred to locally as Warsaw’s “Swimming Pool”!

Frederic Chopin is without a doubt the most famous composer from Warsaw.  The “Chopin Trail” in Warsaw consists of many places and memorial plaques.  We found it interesting that 14 multimedia benches that play Chopin’s music are placed around the city in specific locations that were meaningful to the composer.  By pressing a key on each of these black stone benches, you can hear Chopin’s music.  An interesting fact about Chopin is that upon his death bed in Paris, he requested that his heart be buried in his native country –  Poland. (He knew that his body would stay in Paris.)  His heart was secretly smuggled by his  sister back in a jar of liquor and buried in Warsaw.

We took a late afternoon tour of the Jewish Ghetto, that really doesn’t exist as it was bulldozed by the Nazi’s and the Russians (after the end of WW II) saw the area as a place where they could quickly add housing (some apartment buildings were built in as short as 2 weeks).  In 1939, over 370,000 Jews lived in Warsaw comprising almost 1/3 of its population.  Other than NYC, Warsaw had the largest concentration of Jews in the world.  As the Nazi’s progressed on their anti-Semitic campaign, they moved all of the Jews from Warsaw and many surrounding towns (including towns in Germany) to one area – Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto.  The daily calorie requirement for Poles was 2000; but it was only 300 calories a day for the Jews!   In a few short years, over 100,000 Jews died in the ghetto from malnutrition, disease and other issues.  Eventually, another 400,000+ died when they were transported to the extermination camps. After the war, only 1000 Jews were left in Warsaw.  Today, there are around 4-5,000 in the metropolitan area of over 3,000,000 people.  It was a very heartwrenching tour for us.

You can’t travel to modern Germany without acknowledging the past. The reminder of the past atrocities are “in your face” so to speak all the time.  It is astonishing to think that less than a few generations ago the extermination camps were in full swing orchestrating Hitler’s “final solution” and the Nazi war machine was grinding its way through Europe.

We walked almost 2 miles across the city today in order to visit the East Side Gallery.  From August 1961-November 1989, the Berlin Wall enclosed West Berlin cutting through the city.  The East Side Gallery is the longest continuous segment of the Berlin Wall still remaining at about 0.8 of a mile long and covered back and front with interesting murals.  It is the largest open-air gallery in the world. This part of the wall is located in the neighborhood of Friedrichshain at the border of the River Spree. Unfortunately, the entire side of the wall facing the River Spree has been defaced with graffiti making it not very enjoyable to view.  On the street side of the wall, only about half of the artwork has been marked up with graffitii which really looks awful.  Part of the street-side of the gallery has an ugly chain link fence in front of the murals to prevent graffiti.  As we walked further down the wall, it appears that many of the graffiti-ruined murals were being redone.  Apparently, some artists see the graffiti as kind of a dialogue, other artist don’t like graffiti on their own work.  (We totally agree with the later; as the graffiti is ugly and contributes nothing to the artwork other than appearing destructive.)

We read that the artist started their work in the spring 1990.  The old regime had barely collapsed and a democratic government prepared the unification with the West.  This was an international project with 118 artists from 21 countries painted murals reflecting political changes in Germany and the world.

After our East Side Gallery visit, we walked over the Oberbaumbrucke Bridge which is very near the Gallery and headed into West Berlin.  The part of West Berlin we walked through was very Bohemian filled with tacky shops and ethnic restaurants.  There was lots of graffiti on all the old buildings which was really ashame.  The East Side of the city is clearly much newer and nicer due to all the redevelopment that occurred after the reunification.

Our next stop, after a solid hour walk back into East Berlin was the Topography of Terror close to Checkpoint Charlie.  It is an extremely comprehensive, clearly organized, outdoor museum chronicling the rise of the Third Reich, the Holocaust and the aftermath of the war through photos and stories.  It is actually located on the former site of the headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo.  The original building was largely destroyed during air raids but one small piece of the cellar where political prisoners were tortured and executed remains as part of the outdoor exhibit.  The stories beneath some of the photos (in German & English) were so heart-wrenching with many of the images absolutely appalling.  Our visit was a chilling experience for us.

One of the most moving and memorable parts of our “Around the World” trip so far has been a visit to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp outside of Berlin.  Evidence of the war and its outcome, a divided Berlin, is everywhere.  Wanting to better understand the events in Berlin during this time and pay our respects to those who suffered and lost their lives during the holocaust, we decided to visit the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Concentration Camp.

The Sachsenhausen Camp is located on the outskirts of Oranienburg, a small town about 50 minutes from Berlin.  This camp was primarily a labor camp and political prison from 1935-1945.  Our guide told us that this was the “model” concentration camp – the standard from which other camps would be built.  We were told that Sachsenhausen was intended to illicit feeling of complete Nazi dominance on those interned within it’s walls.

Sachsenhausen was used as an example concentration camp for journalist tours and the Nazi propaganda machine.  Our guide mentioned that many reports early on depicted the camp as quite pleasant; however, once fully immersed in the holocaust, the Nazi Party didn’t feel it necessary to keep up the image.  The prisoners at the camp worked long days in the nearby manufacturing plants including a brickworks factory noted for its high mortality rates.  Interestingly, this concentration camp is known to be home for the largest counterfeiting operation ever which produced fake American and British currency as part of a plan to undermine these economies.  This plan was never completed.

Even though there are only two barracks still standing in addition to a guard tower, it’s pretty easy to to get an understanding of the camp’s layout.  Our guide mentioned that the barracks often housed upwards of 250 prisoners with only 8 toilets and two washing troughs with cold water.  As a result, frostbite, disease and infection were prevalent throughout the camp.

Survivor accounts have painted a gruesome depiction of both the horrific conditions within the camp and the prevalence of prisoner abuse.  Abuse from the guards was a part of the daily life in the camp which included brutal beatings, torture and murder.   We were surprised to learn that infighting amongst prisoners was also regular due to a hierarchy that developed based on alleged “crimes”.

The collective misery of thousands can easily be dismissed, yet the lives of the people we have read about when visiting various holocaust sites in Berlin and a visit to this actual site of such an atrocity makes for a surreal and confronting experience.  Visiting a mass grave like the one present at Sachsenhausen removes any hint of doubt from our minds that we are reading a fictional story and puts the reality of the situation into a very non-fiction context.