Hi, all our travelling friends,

Well, before the year ends and new interesting travelling plans come up, I would like to share with you a remarkable trip. Our tour of Poland by motor home in May this year.

Polish stealing gangs operate widely in Europe and the common belief is, that all Polish are thieves and criminals. Besides this, Poland has been a communist country for decades and hence the country must be poor and shabby. However, the Poland we visited was an eye-opener to us. We saw friendly and well-dressed people, beautifully restored and clean cities, even the farming villages in the countryside have well maintained houses and gardens.

The Cities of Krakow, Warsaw and Danzig are really lovely. Looking fresh and neat, they are in fact better than some other West-European cities with the exemption of Stettin which is situated at the East German boarder. After WW2, the ownership was long disputed between Poland and the former DDR, hence nobody dumped any money in this city.

The places worth visiting are the huge salt mine Wielicza near Krakow and the Masuren, a vast green area scattered with lakes, rivers and canals in the North-Eastern part of Poland. Before WW2, known as German East Prussia, it was a holiday paradise and it still is today for the Polish. The main activities are all sorts of water sports and lately cyclists also discover the place. Another attraction is a set of cable cars, driven by water wheels, which carry ships up and down the slopes. In 1938, my parents used the same feature in their small kayaks.

The sad part is the legacy of the former NAZI regime.  There is the Ghetto of Warsaw and the Concentration Camps. We visited Auschwitz and nearby are even bigger camps are still around. Millions of Jewish, Sitis and “unwanted people” have been gassed, shot, hanged or worked to death. In the Masuren was Hitler’s “Wolfsschanze”, gigantic bunker areas used as war headquarter. It was here that Graf von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler unsuccessfully in 1944 and his plans to end the NAZI regime failed.

We expected the worst among in Poland, but it was otherwise. It is a shame that this country is not among the popular travel destinations.

Dirk & Jenny