Week 22: Exploring the former Eastern Bloc

Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic

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Sunday morning we headed from Vienna to Slovakia. Only a 50 minute drive, we were both extremely jet lagged from our long haul flight back to Europe. I was concerned about getting back into the Schengen zone even though we have 1 year visas. Immigration in Vienna didn’t look twice at us. What we have noticed is the increased stress and paranoia around the Corona virus. In a single week the stepping up of measures was noticeable; some people were donning masks in public, hand sanitiser and toilet paper were sold out pretty much everywhere and as we cross the border into Slovakia, we were pulled over to a manned station for ‘information and questioning’ by a local policeman donning a building mask with his nose exposed. Interestingly as we drove down toward the bay of officials bedecked head to toe in personal protective equipment. As one of the officials approached our window, keeping a couple of metres distance he first spoke in German, then asked, ‘You speak English?’ To which we replied yes, then looking exasperated and glancing back at the team behind him, he waved us on our way. Interestingly useless measures.

Onward to Bratislava we went, parking up at a beautiful spot on the river overlooking the UFO bridge, castle and adjacent old town. Incredibly tired and trying win in the battle against jet lag, we rugged up and headed across to have a look around and get some lunch. We are now carrying hand sanitiser and wipes with us anytime we leave the van and are obsessively washing our hands. No one here seems to care about the virus and we haven’t seen the masks and supermarket hoarding that we saw in Budapest. We are still being super cautious and nagging each other incessantly about touching our face. After a delightful lunch in a very trendy cafe, we wandered up to the castle and were delighted to find out that as it was the first Sunday of the month, entry was free. After a good thorough explore of the eclectic castle museum, we were truly exhausted and headed back to the van. Pat was determined not to fall asleep early but we both dosed off. I woke up an hour or so later and decided to listen to a podcast while Pat, a little sick and still very jet lagged, slept. About 8 pm As I turned on my bedside light to start reading, I could hear someone trying the handles and locks on our side door so, leaping out of bed I pulled the blind down to see a hooded man trying to jimmy the door open and break into our van!

Filled with adrenaline I banged on the double glazed window that partitioned the foot between his face and mine and yelled at the top of my lungs. Startle, he jumped back, pulling his hood further over his face and walking briskly into the dark wooded area across the street from our park. My yells obviously woke Pat who was complete out of it during this whole encounter. We felt that moving the van at this late hour was as risky as staying put. At least now that the thieves were aware someone was in the van. Jet lag combined with dreaded anxiety about being broken into makes for a very very restless night.

The next morning, exhausted, we drove across town to a 24 hour paid park with a security attended who was happy to let us stay the night. Bratislava felt a bit tainted after that. On top of our growing anxiety about Coronavirus, we now felt particularly at risk of theft. A shame because the city is small and beautiful and we had a glorious sunny day to walk around and explore. We just couldn’t shake the uneasiness.

From Bratislava we drove north to the small university town of Olomouc in the centre of the Czech Republic. No border control on this drive, we cruised into the town, parked up in a quiet car park in town and went into a specialty coffee shop. Happily caffeinated we wandered around all of the beautiful Central European cobblestoned streets and impressive building facades. As we got back to the van in the early evening, the previously peaceful park was now a swarm activity in the form of cars, police and crowds on foot. Taken aback and a little concerned, we quickly realised from the crowds attire that there was a local Ice Hockey game on at the stadium adjacent. Checking online to make sure Coronavirus hadn’t spread in the Czech Republic we grabbed tickets, rugged up and headed over to the dilapidated Ice Hockey Stadium for a night of violet ice sports mixed with VERY drunken local Czechs. Thankfully the local team won in a nail biting game (although we still have literally zero idea of the rules, why do they all come off and go on so often??!!) and we were back tucked away in our van home and asleep in silence by 1130.

Poland was our next stop and we headed straight to Oswiecim for our visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. All we can really say about this is it’s as horrible as you think possibly even more so, and we felt it was an important thing to see.

I’d like pause our update to take a moment to call out all of the horrific, disrespectful and tone deaf shit we saw during our visit. People taking smiling selfies, taking pictures of the horrifying rooms of human hair or children’s shoes after being explicitly told not to. People talking loudly, laughing and joking in areas which are clearly signed as ’SILENCE: IN RESPECT FOR THE DEAD’ and was constantly reiterated by the guides. We saw people smoking on the premises and putting the butts out at the entrance to the courtyard where prisoners were executed by firing squad. Multiple people filming in the gas chambers when repeatedly told not to and climbing on the timber beds in Birkenau. There were many moments on our tour that I was in tears and was on the verge of tears the rest but it seemed that the enormous weight of the history of this place did not weigh on these selfish, ignorant and disgraceful people. If you are going to behave like that, don’t go to a place like this, why go to a place like this? We met a lovely Australian woman in our group who was equally disgusted with this behaviour. What are people doing with those images and how can they not see how disrespectful it is?

Ugh.

Back to the week. We headed to Krakow for which was cold but not unbearable. We got a couple of sunny days to explore and were taken aback with the extreme amount of tourists in town this early in the season and with all of the virus stuff going on. People are probably (stupidly) taking advantage of the cheap flights and Poland only has 10 cases at this point so perhaps it is seen as a ‘safe location’ for now. We are anxiously keeping an eye on the DFAT (Australian foreign affairs) advice and are thinking about heading to South America earlier than initially planned to escape this crazy virus. Fingers crossed it doesn’t spread much further, Italy is getting slammed and the whole country is in lockdown.

Back to Krakow: the city is great and everyone should go here. It was incredibly beautiful and we wish we could have given it more time. Alas our 10 day vignette for Czech republic meant we needed to get back so we could enjoy Prague before heading to Germany.

Our week finished up with a big big drive from Krakow to Prague in treacherous torrential torrents of rain and very high winds. We arrived into Prague late in the evening in a beautiful camping site on one of the islands in the middle of the Vltava river. We were very glad to be parked somewhere secure, still a little rattled after our attempted break in earlier in the week.

Questions or comments? post ‘em below!

Week 22

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