Poland

Poland

Our blog posts have been erratic to say the least so we must apologise. We have found that finding time to devote to its publication virtually impossible. Since leaving Sth America we have found public access wifi really hard to find and we don't have the language skills to buy a data card for each new country we pass through.
The lack of public wifi access and our preference for wild camping, above camping grounds or hotels, which we have done every night but for seven out of eighty three nights since arriving in Europe means fewer posts.

Poland, from all appearances, is doing well. Not what we expected to see.

New housing projects abound. We don't know how they make their money, but the new homes, mostly in small villages, are all double storey and BIG.

The economy is the eighth largest in Europe and the biggest in the former Eastern Bloc.
Growing stuff must be good for the economy!
Jobs and Growth. Where have we heard that before?

Bialowiewa National Park the last primeval forest in Europe.

Our friend from Yandoit, Ric Higgins, suggested we head over to this old growth forest near the Belarus border and I'm glad we did. It's a very special and increasingly rare part of the world and threatened by logging just like our precious old growth forests in Tasmania. Can you believe such short sighted stupidity.  Over 500 European Bison are roaming free here as well as wolves and Linx.

The European Bison have lighter coloured fur, smaller neck hump and longer tail than the American Bison.

The forest was left intact because the Russian Tsar had his hunting lodge here, This is the only building left of the lodge complex.

Lovely old wooden Polish country house. 

Many cemeteries had beautiful chapels in the grounds.

A sacred spring used in 1710 by a priest to bath in resulting in his cholera being cured. Well you guessed it, now it's a site for pilgrims to visit by the thousands. A church built on the hill beside it is doing a roaring trade selling crosses and rosaries which are planted all over the hill. 

Holy hill of Gradarka.

Just a very small sample of the Grabarka hill of crosses.

Driving the back roads we were surprised to find this small hand operated ferry.

And this is the way it worked, moving these grippers along the cable we were pulled across the river. 

We visited the old part of Krakow which had some very ornately decorated churches.

This cathedral was in the Castle Wawel walled grounds in Krakow.

Part of the old walled section of Krakow.

We camped in the carpark at Auschitz Birkenau concentration camp at Oswiecim. A very bleak spot made even more so after a series of huge thunder storms had us hurrying back to the camper after walking around this massive site.

Inside one of the prisoners barracks. Most were demolished by the Nazis as well as the Gas Chambers and Crematoriums which they blew up as they left.

Nearly 200 hectares of horror hard to comprehend how humans can be so depraved.

Auschwitz 1, the original, mostly two story brick buildings, this is where the monster doctor Mengler did his evil experiments on the innocent.  They outgrew this location and expanded to Birkenau Auschwitz 11 only one kilometer away, that's when the Nazis really got serious murdering millions. It was heartening to see so many young visitors to this place. With what looks like the fracturing of the EU, hopefully these young people, after witnessing first hand these horrors, can be a voice of reason in the future.