Dear all,
Here finally the first blog. So many choices, kilometres and adventures further, it’s best now to share some of these. At first: see my map to have an idea of my travel route and stops to have better understanding of the story.
My travels through Poland proceed really troubleless. In general, most people are quite inquisitive when they see me. There is only one big difference between young and elderly in this country. As I explain later. The train journeys are just beautiful through nice scenery of hills snd forest. A couple of times I was lucky to see wild boar, birds of prey, red and roe deer.
It’s impossible to write about all of my adventures, so for now I need to make a choice in different topics for the story. Nature here is fabulous, but I will blog about this later after my visit to Białowieza National Park. For now history; since most people told me a lot of things about the past. In Poland many historical events happened; from the beginning of the Cold War to the end of communism in Eastern Europe. A time of many woes which mainly affected the nowadays elderly people. They are negative, gloomy and hopeless. The young people are not happy with this situation and they were open to me to discuss topic they had on their mind.
“After the Second World War the country was largely destroyed. And if people didn’t die in the war they faced the Germans (read Nazis) forcing them to move somewhere else, which later happened again by the Russians (read Communists)”,
as the mother of Michał tells me. She continues: “This is what the older generation rather made blunt”. Places like Warsaw and Birkenau – Auschwitz show what can happen. Also I found it terrible to see how Warsaw was completely destroyed as shown in in the Warsaw Rising Museum. The pictures were fairly shocking: babies completely swollen, since their bodies were thrown on the street after the razzias. Or just badly wounded civilians laying lifeless among the rubble; missing limbs or sometimes not even recognizable.