Preface Another year with COVID-19, another year with a powerful need to spread the wings and go. Anywhere! All but essential foreign travel is discouraged. That has been the mantra here in Norway for the last 18 months. Seems like forever. It has been a [...]
See the bridge here? It is one of several bridges in Park Musakowski/Muskauer Park, crossing the River Neisse. Perhaps that name sounds familiar? You may remember the Oder/Neisse line from history lessons in school: at the Potsdam Conference after World War II, on Stalin's insistence, [...]
Notaries Public in Poland. There’s something I wouldn’t have thought I’d ever google. But I have – and this is what I’ve learned: According to one of Poland’s many notaries, A notary acts as a person of public trust, they safeguard the security of legal [...]
On my daughter's school visit to the concentration camps and the Stasi prison in Berlin, the organisers wisely added lighter activities to the agenda, including a swimming stop at a tropical island inside a Nazi hangar - and a tour of Wieliczka Salt Mine. Leonardo, in [...]
If you happen to be floating down the tranquil river Wisla, head off at the little branch called the Nogat, and you’ll come to a Gothic fairytale fortress and some intriguing Malbork Castle history, murder included! Disembark on the opposite bank, and this imposing 13th [...]
Welcome back to Poland. I've written about Gdansk and Warsaw earlier. Today, we're heading south, to Krakow. Like Warsaw, Krakow's Historic Centre is a World Heritage site, to be specially preserved for future generations. Here's UNESCO's take: The historic centre of Cracow, the [...]
An Auschwitz-Birkenau tour is a bit like being guided through an industrial site. And in a sense, it was. Mass murder on an industrial scale. What's unfathomable is how many believed this was right.
