History lessons in Poland

OK, that has been a very long period of silence. No, the sailing boat I went on did not get lost in some mysterious fog, I actually got sidetracked on my detour to Poland. I spent three weeks there, trying to educate myself most of the time, but then after heading back to Slovakia I had to interrupt my travels due to some health issues. And somehow I didn't find the time to write about those amazing three weeks in Poland... until now! Health wise it is looking good again and I am about to hit the road again.

Originally I had not even planed going into Poland on my trip. But when I learnt that my friends from back home were going there for a sailing trip I thought it would make a welcome change to living in hostels. Money wise it didn't cost much to go there from Slovakia anyway and renting a sailing boat - even one that sleeps 6-8 people - is pretty cheap in Poland, too. And so I was off to Poland's Masurian Lake District. I had been there sailing with my friends before a couple of times, but we still haven't got tired of the place because every time we go there the boat is a different one, we go on different lakes and we meet new but always friendly and hospitable people.

After a long drive into East-Poland it is BOARDING TIME!

Besides of being a beautiful and unspoilt area, one where you can camp wild and make fires all year round, the Masurian Lake area is also rich in history. The Wolf's Liar (Wolfsschanze) is there, once one of Adolf Hitler's headquarters and now a large open air museum that tells the story of Stauffenberg's attempted assassination on Hitler.

Thanks to a slight onshore breeze our fire lasted almost 20 hours!

When stopping at a private landing place our whole crew got invited for dinner by these friendly folks.

We had visited Wolf's Liar already during an earlier sailing trip in the Masurian Lakes, so we were ready to see something new this year. Our sailing map indicated an isolated bunker not too far from one of the landing places and so we stopped there early one afternoon, took our map, locked up the boat and went into the forest where the bunker was supposed to be. We didn't stay long. There were squillions of hungry mosquitoes waiting for us and we had no choice but to abort our little “Indiana Jones” adventure. World War 2 became a topic again at the end of the sailing trip when we went to Bialystok, the home town of our captain. We met up with one of his friends for the evening and this guy turned out to be an expert on war machinery. It was very interesting, and at the same time bizarre, to be taught by this young Polish surgeon about the deficiency of Germany's World War 2 tanks (they run on synthetic fuel which had high production costs and gave low mileage, and Russian diesel supplies could not be utilised and also the tank tracks were too narrow to manoeuvre safely on the often soft and soggy ground in the eastern terrains).

Stopping for the night

On the way back to Germany I asked my friends to drop me off in Warsaw. The “tank expert” had recommended to visit the Warsaw Rising museum there (not to be confused with the rising in the Jewish ghetto) and that is what I was going to do. After asking a few people I managed to find it and during the following four hours I learnt not only about the activities and crimes commited by Nazi-Germany there, but also the merciless and self-interested conduct of the Soviets to secure freed territories for themselves and establish a communist government in Poland. Before I started my trip I had no particular interest in history and so all the knowledge I did have was based on my East-German education, which of course had presented a very single-sided analysis of the Soviet role in the liberation of Europe from the Nazis.

When I arrived at my hostel that night I discovered the fabulous “Use-It” city guide to Warsaw, which did a great job in selling the city and gave good background information to the various sites. I also was still moved by the faith of the city during the war that I had just learnt about in the museum, and so I decided that Warsaw deserved more than just a couple of days and I booked a whole week at the hostel. The following days I walked up and down on Warsaw's streets, explored cemeteries, bazaars, communist style eateries and the few houses that were not destroyed during the war. Then came the weekend and I was invited to stay with the sister of the captain from my sailing trip, and her husband. And once more I was spoilt by Polish hospitality (thank you again for the fantastic time!). During conversations with my hosts it became apparent that I had managed to discover a few spots in Warsaw unknown to them, and they were also surprised that I had managed to enjoy Warsaw for a whole week. But that wasn't too much of a surprise because as it turned out, they both had not grown up in Warsaw but had moved there because of the good work opportunities, rather than being attracted by the city itself. The funny side of all this was that, whilst walking with them through the city, I realised how much I had missed out on because I don't speak Polish and I also didn't know half as much about Polish history as those two. And so the weekend was a true pleasure.

Shrines like this can be found in many courtyards of house that have survived World War 2. People erected them to help them endure the years of war and terror.

The Palace of culture and science, also known as Stalin's wedding cake, is an “offspring” of Moscow's “Seven daughters of Stalin” skyscraper and used to symbolise Russian domination.

Quality food for almost nothing at a communist style eatery: people cueing with their receipts at the food outlet.

Traditional Polish food: sour soup with egg and sausage and a fruity drink

Visiting one of the many parks...

The rooftop of the university library features a garden, inviting everyone to wander around and enjoy the view.

From Warsaw I went back to Slovakia with just one short stop in Krakov in order to visit Auschwitz from there. Some people that I have met since going to Auschwitz were quite clear that they don't want to go to such a horrible place; they said they know what happened there during World War 2 and hence there is no need to go there. My motivation for going there was driven by the question of how a place like this was able to exist and function. How could it get so far that the Nazis were able to kill millions of people in camps like Auschwitz, and what had happened to the people “working” in these camps to be actually able to commit these atrocities? Because, at some point, they all must have started out their lives as innocent children, right? Three days in a row I went to Auschwitz. One day alone I spent on the main exhibition where I read a lot of the original German language orders and decrees that were on display and another whole day was spent on the Dutch exhibition, one of the many “national exhibitions”, which told from the faith of the Dutch Jews during the war. Looking back at history, these national exhibitions made the strategy of the Nazis regarding the Jews transparent: identification, registration, marking of identification papers, night-time curfew, setting up of ghettos, confiscation of businesses and assets, occupational ban, requiring them to wear the yellow star and then arrest followed by deportation and extermination.


Visiting Auschwitz also was a very bizarre experience. For most people it seems to be just another stop on their sightseeing trip through Europe. They spend couple of hours rushing through the main exhibition, they peek through doors and windows and glance over posters, and amazingly many pose under the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” entrance gate to have their picture taken by friends, before they all are picked up again by their buses. And so many a time it felt like being at a tourist attraction rather than a memorial site. Despite of this, at the end of the three days at Auschwitz I had the feeling that I had found some answers to my questions and I was ready to go back to Slovakia and continue my trip.


New on board since those three weeks in Poland is an increased interest in European history and I am looking forward to pursue this interest further now that I am starting to travel again.

Seeing and learning more whilst spending less

I left Bratislava in mid May and spent the following few days in the Mala Fatra National Park, exercising my legs walking from mountain hut to mountain hut, enjoying great views and the fresh air on desolated trails (because it was still early in the season). The huts are perfect for long distance hiking; they offer very affordable accommodation starting at around 5Euro if you bring your own sleeping bag and serve up superb food.

...following a ridge trail through the Mala Fatras...

...and enjoying a delicious cabbage soup in a mountain hut at the end of the day. It has become my favourite soup so far and I sample it where ever I get a chance, though it has never been quite as tasty as in that Mala Fatra mountain hut.

Later I moved on to Zdiar, a small Slovak village in the Tatra mountains. I was attracted to the Tatras because they climb up to about 2600m and promised some alpine hiking experiences. When I arrived at the Ginger Monkey Hostel in Zdiar, I thought I'll stay for about one week and do a couple of hikes before heading south into Hungary. However, Jim, the owner of the hostel also had some plans... After some chatting with him I found myself with the offer to run the hostel for couple of days so that he could go off to pursue another project. I was sitting on the hostel's sun deck with a bottle of beer in my hand, thought about it for 15 minutes and then took up his offer. I thought that working at this hostel would leave me with plenty of spare time to finally get on with some reading that I had been meaning to do ever since I started traveling and also catch up with replying to emails. I moved from the dorm into a private room, did a nice hike that involved crossing through many steep snowfields and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and then started work on Monday. Towards the end of the next week I noticed that I had sort of developed a routine in cleaning the place, doing the laundry, showing guests around etc, so I decided to work for another week and use that newly developed efficiency to really get on with some reading. Besides, I also realised that hostel work was a good way to prolong and intensify my travel experiences. I had a free accommodation, free beer, a couple of days off per week to pursue my own interests and I was located right at the edge of the High Tatras with an awesome view of the still snow-clad mountain summits.

Contemplating about starting hostel work

Spending some quality time on the Ginger Monkey's sun deck...

...and enjoying the mountain view.

After about five weeks of staying at the Ginger Monkey it felt like I had been stationary for long enough and it was time to start traveling again. I did more in the area than any regular guest, including a superb hike along the Tatra border ridge between Poland and Slovakia, some canoeing and I soaked in hot water for a whole day in a nearby water spa centre. However, I didn't manage to finish either of my books and that despite the fact that there was probably only 3-5h of work on an average day. The problem is that the work is distributed quite randomly over the day, like checking people in and out, getting the laundry in when it starts raining, helping guests with planing their day activities... so unless there are two people to share the work between, you are kind of always on call which is less than ideal when it comes to reading something. Another interesting experience was that you have to learn to relax when working at a hostel. An example: You clean the kitchen, do the dishes, dry everything up and put it away, sweep the floor and all that and then, five minutes later, someone decides to bake a cake for everyone to share. Yummy, I love cake - and the kitchen is back in a mess in no time. Most people do make an effort and clean up after themselves, but there is always something that gets left behind, and that will encourage other guests to be that little bit more sloppy as well. So you can try to talk to your guests about it but depending on your verbal skills that might create an atmosphere where people think they are being watched all the time, you can keep cleaning, every minute of every hour, because if you look hard enough you will always find something that needs cleaning, or you set yourself some priorities that result in a reasonable level of cleanliness and still have some energy left to enjoy that piece of cake that someone just made for you. Being a perfectionist that was a tough one to get to terms with!

Even in the summer season there is still a lot of snow to conquer in the mountains

Skywalk on Lomnicky Stit at about 2600m. It was bloody freezing up there - always bring a spare jumper when visiting the High Tatras!

Entertaining our guest with BBQ's

The most valuable “thing” I am taking with me from my six weeks stay at the Ginger Monkey hostel are a few conversations with some of the guests. I met so many people there that you don't have a choice but keep conversations to a superficial but friendly level with most people. And that is OK, it happens automatically and is probably some kind of self-protection mechanism. But then, every once in a while you meet someone very charismatic, or well-traveled or just someone who you get on with extremely well and you make a connection. I will not forget Chuck's analysis of why Germans, of all people, picked up the Stanford Prison Experiment that he participated in, and made a movie about it (Das Experiment) exploring how a system makes generally good people turn into bad people. Another highly interesting encounter was that with Matt and Jai who have travelled extensively. Well, to be fair, they actually live for it. They have had so many adventures, and many of them were the result of giving away control, like what you do when you hitch hike and allow chance creep into your daily routine and at the same time you get so much closer to the locals of a country. Ever since meeting them I wonder how I want to continue my trip...

One of the many communal meals at the hostel - nice group effort, guys!

Exchanging experiences and ideas and planning the next move...

Well, for now I am looking forward to do some sailing. I left the Ginger Monkey and the Tatras on June 24 to meet up with some friends to go to the Great Masurian Lake District in North-east Poland and spend a week there living on a small sailing boat. After that week I will continue with my backpacking trip.

Planing the next stop - Slovakia part 2

Towards the end of my stay in Bratislava I felt the need to see some countryside for a change. A friend had recommended to visit the Mala Fatra National Park and I also always wanted to see the Tatra mountains in the Eastern part of Slovakia. Some planing became necessary and so I spent the best part of my last day in Bratislava on the internet, checking out bus and train schedules, availability of mountain huts, onward connections from the Mala Fatra area to the Tatra mountains and accommodation options in the Tatras. It is the sort of planing I have to do every time I move to a new location. That, together with the fact that every time I move I have to check that I have packed everything, get up early with the help of my alarm to catch an early bus, make sure I find my connecting buses on time, make those periods of traveling quite stressful. So far that has resulted I in a travel pattern where I make just a few stops per country but stay more than just a couple of days in each place, unlike most other travellers – and that seems a pretty nice balance of quantity and quality so far.

Some impressions from moving through Slovakia...

Making the most from the space: rolling timetables

People inside a train station, waiting for the platform to be announced. For some strange reason they are announced only couple of minutes before the train arrives.

Learning from the locals – Slovakia part 1

From Olomouc I moved on to Slovakia, and there my first stop was Bratislava. With no further plans for the evening of my day of arrival, I strolled through the city centre when I noticed this flyer for a concert – and decided to check it out.


Unfortunately, the hostel staff were not familiar with with the concert venue, “Garage under Pristavnym bridge”, but they got me on a bus heading the right direction. When I got off the bus I was lucky enough to run into Mattie, a local, who also wanted to go to this concert. But even though he was a local lad, it was not until an hour and several phone calls to his friend later before we found the place. And it all made sense then: there was this big garage complex where people lock up their cars, and one of these garages was used to host a Czech and a local punk band that night. The whole event felt as much underground as it can get and I understood why the girls from the hostel reception had not heard about that place before – and I also understood that night what the word “garage band” is all about!


Later that night, after everything had been cleaned up, Mattie and I met up with some of his friends at a bar downtown. With all of them being locals I was interested in their views on the separation of Czechoslovakia and their experiences with the Euro currency that was introduced in Slovakia this year. And whilst listening to their stories I felt happy that I had spotted that concert flyer. It is difficult to get into this kind of intimate contact with locals (ok, I still have not used couchsurfing.com yet, but I am on it) and at hostels you usually only find travelers from other countries than the one you are visiting. So, in future, I will keep looking out for these flyers...

Some impressions from Bratislava...

Primate's palace - The Habsburgs made peace with Napoleon here (Peace of Pressburg)

The Watcher, one of many odd sculptures in the city centre

Changing of guard at the Presidential Palace

Headquarter of a construction company

View over the city from the castle

3+1 alternative ways to travel

Leaving Prague I stopped in Cesky Krumlov for a couple of nights and then moved on to the university town Olomouc. Both towns had great hostels with a cosy interior and a much more personal atmosphere than the big city hostel in Prague. Some of the people I met at these two hostels have interesting approaches to traveling. There is Ian & Wendy for example, a couple from New Zealand, who wanted to travel around the world after they retired. They have their boat anchored in Turkey for six months and are now touring through Eastern Europe with just two small backpacks holding a couple of changes. Their next big lag will be crossing the Atlantic ocean in a couple of months. Starting from New Zealand with their boat, it took them about five years to make it to Europe, so I reckon it will take them another five to complete their round trip. It was interesting to hear from them that they are not the only crew doing this kind of long-term sea and land traveling. They reckon there are about 100 crews out there doing the same thing, and every now and then they meet one of the other crews again.

Relaxing evening at Hostel 99 in Cesky Krumlov: at the table are Croatia, England, Canada, South Korea and Germany

Other folks, with less budget, who are also keen to spend longer periods in a place, work for a couple of months or years at a hostel and travel the vicinity during their time off, before eventually moving on to another hostel in another country.

Some folks make a career out of traveling. They roam around, find a nice spot and open up their own hostel. Every now and then they will look for someone to take over runing the hostel to buy themselves some travel time.

And then there are people like me, taking some time off to travel on a fixed budget. Actually, I found the alternatives that I have come across so far quite inspiring – perhaps I will help out in a hostel along the way to get some idea what running a hostel is like.

Some impressions from Cesky Krumlov and Olomouc...

Castle garden at Cesky Krumlov Castle

Double-spiral staircase in St Moritz church, Olomouc

Townhall with astronomical clock, Olomouc

Main square with Holy Trinity Column, Olomouc

Language problems - Prague (part 3)

In order to keep expenses low during my trip I intend to wash my cloths by hand. The sinks at my hostel have no plugs however, so I need to get out and buy one. The first shop I try looks like they might just have what I am after. The guy behind the counter speaks little English, too little. I try drawing something on paper, but thanks to my poor drawing skills he still doesnt understand what I need. Shop number two, same story. In the third shop one of the young assistants speaks English. He gives me directions to the right kind of shop and also tells me the Czech word for plug. So at shop number four I finally get my plug, only to find out later that it is too big. Ah well, I shall keep it for later.

Like that English speaking guy at the shop, most people that do speak English (and that is not many) are fairly young and many of them are overseas students who are not familiar with local life and history and cannot help with questions like why are there two house numbers for every house and what is the difference between the 100 and 150 Kroner daily tickets for public transport. Realising that I decide it is time to fill in my couchsurfing profile so that I have a chance of meeting up with some local folks that can explain things to me during my next city stop.



Businesses seem to have grown much faster than language skills since the wall came down in 1989. I see all the big store chains in Prague that I am familiar with from living in the UK, Netherlands and Germany. It seems however that some of their products they sell here are adapted to the local taste. Without being able to understand Czech and judging by the photo on the can, I expected to have spaghetti bolognese for dinner, but instead I find some think tomato soup when I open the can. It did fill my stomach, though!

24. April - Prague (part2)

Today I spent a day on the tram to explore the city a bit more but also to go out to the city perimeter. One thing I noticed is that people make good use of the many rubbish bins that are everywhere and so the city centre is pretty clean. As soon as you leave the immediate centre however, you start seeing graffitis, even on those beautiful houses.



Moving towards the perimeter, the graffiti density increases but on the ground it is still very clean everywhere.


At the end of tram line 17 I enter one of these concrete tower housing estates. Getting of the tram I heard some music coming from around the corner and I thought I should watch so I dont end up in the arms of a youth gang. But far from it. The music turned out to come from a small beer garden where the locals hang out to enjoy beer and snacks. Also, the whole area looked pretty grim when approaching it with the tram, because all you see nothing but concrete blocks with small windows, and there are thousands of it. But if you make the effort to take a closer look you will notice plenty of space between the tower blocks, filled with hedges, trees and playgrounds. So in the end it didnt seem such a bad place after all - in fact I found it a very peaceful place with a relaxing atmosphere thanks to the lack of tourists - and the people living out here (obviously not the richest ones) just enjoy what they have.

Prague (part 1)

My accommodation in Prague happens to be a little bit away from the town centre because I picked some place quite cheap. The nice thing about being based away from the centre is – and I realise this only now – that you get a chance to see what the city is like away from the touristic centre. So on my way downtown I discover this 10-storey concrete building that is full with administration offices, offering a nice and free of charge view of the city from one of the upper floors. It is from there that I spot the unbelievable: a public footpath crossing all tracks of Prague´s central train station. Without barriers or lights warning of approaching trains – use it at your own risk!


Downtown Prague, you can explore the city on everything you can imagine, like horse-drawn carriages, vintage cars, self-balancing electric 2-wheelers or this bike – if you want to call it that – which sits seven people all facing each other. Being a bicycle fanatic, I wanted to have a go on it but with the only other people showing interest being Italians, the owner only runs sightseeing tours in Italian language.













Exploring the city by foot, I came to a place where once a giant Stalin sculpture watched over the city. It has been gone for a long time and the place acts now as a hangout for Prague´s skating kids and graffiti artists.

19. April - Rocking East

During the last two weeks I was able to tie up all loose ends of my travel preparations. I have a backup credit card, I have travel health insurance and I had amazon sent the lonely planet “Eastern Europe” edition to my friends house. Now it sits in my rucksack and I am feeling ready to go East, and so is my friend. He is starting on a tour with his rock band today and his first two gigs are in Nuremberg and Prague, which is like the perfect direction for me to start my tour through Eastern Europe. So I follow his invitation to join his band as band support for 2 days...



Life as band support proves very intensive, but fun. Lots of good and loud music, lots of carrying heavy amplifiers and speakers, and very short nights because concerts always run till late in the night and in the morning you have to head to next location. The second night I am so tired, I fall asleep when the headliner plays, and they were not the quiet kind of guys!

On Tuesday morning I say goodbye to my friend and his band. They are moving on to Germany and I will stay in Prague for another week, my first stop in Eastern Europe.

14. April - Trier

I have moved on to my other friends near Trier now and we are roaming through the city. Someone mentioned that the Porta Nigra, an ancient city gate in Trier back from the roman days, is the oldest building in Germany. I pick up a few tourist guide books and booklets at a bookstore but I cannot find any reference with regard to this.

The Liebfrauenkirche, a huge Gothic church, is impressive. It is so massive, you can get an 1h guided tour and you probably will still know only half of it. What I find much more fascinating though is the Konstantinbasilika. It is just one really big hall of simple geometry and with little decoration, which makes being in there quite a different experience compared to other churches.

Easter – The best of both worlds

Having lived the last three years in the Netherlands, my friends invited me on a 3-day trip into the “Berchtesgadener Alpen” to see some real mountains. Watzmann, Untersberg und Hoher Göll offer a great scenery and it is a particularly nice time now to be in this area. There is still enough snow for some snowshoeing or downhill action and down in the valleys you can sit in a beer garden or cafe, licking away on your ice cream and marvel at all the blooming apple and almond trees.