After acquiring some roubles and managing to escape Vitebsky station via St. Petersburg’s rather lovely metro system, I headed off to find my hostel, which was not far from Moskovsky station and the top of Nevsky Prospekt. My host for the next few days would be Natalia, and she wasted no time making me feel at home – I was whisked in, fed breakfast, provided with maps and helped with train times and instructions for the next stage of my journey. Natalia also agreed to register my Russian visa for me once I explained my Moscow and trans-Siberian plans to her. Once I’d settled all my stuff in my dorm, I had a very welcome shower, put some laundry on to wash and headed out to investigate the city.

My first mission was to buy tickets for Moscow. Natalia very helpfully wrote a short script for me to show at the ticket office, but when I finally reached the counter the lady indicated that there weren’t any places left on the train I wanted. There were a few other, more expensive, options so I indicated a train that arrived in Moscow at around 7am and paid up, rationalising that it was still pretty cheap for a bed on a sleeper train. Faffing around at the station took much longer than I expected and left little of the day for serious sight-seeing, and I was also pretty tired from my erratic night’s sleep on the train, so I grabbed a coffee and a bite to eat and decided to have a walk around some of the main sights, check opening times and get my bearings. Nevsky Prospekt is the main shopping street in St. Petersburg and I walked down it towards the Winter Palace, shop-spotting and window-shopping. On the way I glimpsed such notable landmarks as the Singer building and the Cathedral on Spilled Blood.

The tasty-looking Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

The Winter Palace is on the banks of the Neva river and looks like a very large mint-flavoured cream cake. It was almost closing time when I got there, but I managed to get into the atrium and check out the opening times and prices for the Hermitage and discovered that the English tours clashed neatly with an appointment I had for the following day. After I was shooed out of the palace by the information lady, I headed over to the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood (aka the Church of the Resurrection), which I’d spotted earlier and was very curious about. It was built on the site where Czar Alexander II was killed by the People’s Will terrorist group, despite introducing reforms. The cathedral itself is partially modelled on St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, and has a similarly fairy-tale appearance from the outside.

The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, modelled on St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.

Stupidly, I didn’t take advantage of the “White Nights” late opening, but instead wandered across the neighbouring Mikhaylovsky Gardens towards the Summer Gardens, which I thought would make a nice place for an evening stroll. To my dismay, however, they seemed to be closed for maintenance, so I headed back towards the Winter Palace through the Mars Field, then on towards the Russian Museum. After that, being knackered by this point, I headed back up Nevsky Prospekt to the hostel, checked my emails, sorted out my laundry and collapsed into bed.

Smolny convent, also closed on Wednesdays.

Kresty prison, by all accounts not a nice place to end up.

During my exploration I’d noted that many of the museums were closed on Wednesdays, which rather threw out my plan of doing a bit of tourist stuff before and after my vaccination appointment. I slept late despite being able to feel every spring in my bed, then made leisurely progress towards the clinic via a local supermarket and a hotel cafe. The appointment went ok, though it took me a little time to explain to the doctor that I hadn’t been bitten, but instead wanted the final part of my Rabies vaccination. Eventually he seemed to understand and disappeared to get the shot, which seemed to require two different vials to be mixed before injection. Very odd. I can only hope that I’m covered now, but I’m still going to be pretty cautious around strange dogs. After the vaccination, I walked some more around St. Petersburg and confirmed that pretty much everywhere of interest was closed, then grabbed something to eat and headed back to the hostel to call home.

The next day I was determined to be more efficient and actually see something before I had to catch a train to Moscow that evening, so I got up early and headed out, leaving my rucksack at the hostel for later collection. Luckily, I managed to get to the Hermitage just in time to join the English tour, which was well worth going on. The guide was a lady in her 80s who had worked at the Hermitage for 50 years, and she was delightfully enthusiastic about the building and its exhibits. We trotted around for a couple of hours viewing highlights and significant pieces, which helped me get a much-needed handle on the place – it’s huge and knowing where to start would be a nightmare otherwise. I also decided to have a look in at the Gold room, which can only be visited on a guided tour. It was quite interesting, especially the early exhibits that shifted in design according to age and the influence of different tribes and races, and the later exhibits were wondrously lush, but the tour seemed somewhat rushed and I would really have liked more opportunity to wander around and look at things myself, since there wasn’t time to look at highlighted items closely or examine something that wasn’t mentioned directly without missing what the lady was saying about something else. I couldn’t decide if it had been worth it or not, and went off to console myself with some Impressionists.

A mosaic in the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood.

Once I felt that I’d seen as much of the Hermitage as I could reasonably appreciate in one go, I headed back to the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. I’d found the outside very attractive and had learned that the inside was covered in elaborate mosaics, which is pretty much a guaranteed draw for me, and indeed it was so. Fantastic mosaic images of saints and religious figures covered every available surface, and the effect was breath-taking.

The door of the iconostasis in the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood.

It was the first time I’d been in a Russian Orthodox church and I was interested to note differences between its general layout compared with the Anglican and Catholic churches I was more familiar with. Icons and relics seemed to play a much more important part and there was a large screen (the iconostasis) that separated the holy altar from the main body of the church. I didn’t initially appreciate it until it was pointed out to me elsewhere, but Orthodox churches do not typically contain any statues or three-dimensional representations of religious figures – something to do with avoiding similarities with pagan religions, apparently.

After a good wander round, I made my way slowly back to the hostel via a rather expensive supper on Nevsky Prospekt and took Natalia’s advice to have a shower and relax before catching my train, which wasn’t due to depart until around 11pm.

I had a little while to wait in Vilnius station, so I used the time to grab a snack and a drink for the journey, using up most of the last few litas that were burning a hole in my pocket in the process. Then I sat in the waiting room, alternately reading and watching the departures board. While I did so, a lady with a clipboard approached me – she didn’t seem to speak a word of English, but I grasped that she was doing some kind of tourism survey and would I mind answering some questions? I indicated that I didn’t mind and she dug out an English version of the form for me. Some of the questions were more straightforward than others – my age category was easy enough, a rough break-down of my expenditures on various activities less so. I really wasn’t sure what to say for the question asking about my source of information on Vilnius, either. I regret to say that I did no research into Vilnius because I hadn’t expected to spend any time at all there until I realised that the train from Warsaw got in about 15 minutes after the St. Petersburg train was due to leave. In the end I poked a finger at “Internet” – after all, I’d looked up the hostel online. My nationality was apparently confusing too – I’d put British, but the lady looked baffled until I said ‘England’, feeling my Welsh ancestors scowling at me disapprovingly from beyond the grave as I did so…

Finally, my train was announced and arrived at the platform, and everyone queued up to board it. One particularly unkempt and apparently drunk chap seemed most put out by the wait, and I found myself hoping that he’d be in a different part of the carriage to me. Finally we started to board, each showing tickets and passports to the Provodnitsa (train steward) before getting on. My fears were not allayed when I handed her my rather battered passport and she examined it as if she’d never seen one before. However, I was allowed to board, though my passport got subjected to a second-opinion analysis by another woman and I was asked if I was American. ‘British … English’, I replied, and thankfully they seemed to accept that. My opposite neighbour was an older Lithuanian lady who seemed determined to put me at ease even though we lacked a common language, and I was grateful to see a friendly face. Thankfully the drunk chap from the platform was nowhere to be seen. I found that efficiently spending the last of my litas before boarding had been a mistake because it meant I had no change to buy hot drinks from the Provodnitsa, but at least I’d brought some supplies of my own, so I made do.

My memory of the journey is a bit of a blur. My friendly neighbour and I were joined by another woman and a youngish chap, and they chattered to each other while I practiced the Cyrillic alphabet and looked out of the window. I was on tenterhooks because I knew that passport checks and border shenanigans loomed ahead, but I had no idea when or how things would progress. The Provodnitsa had handed out migration cards and we all filled them in diligently. There was a bit of a fuss at this point and to my surprise, it didn’t involve me – the second woman seemed to have some question mark hanging over her passport or visa, and spent a lot of time fretting and discussing it with the other two in what seemed to be alternately anxious and defensive tones. Finally it got too dark to read any more, my friend had already tucked herself in her bunk and I could hear loud snores from the next compartment, so I decided to settle myself down too. It worked like a charm, because no sooner had I got myself comfortable than the first round of passport examinations occurred. Things got a bit hazy at this point because it was well after midnight, but the pattern was set – just as soon as I let myself relax, someone else would come and check passports or luggage or bring another form to fill in. I remember the lady collecting the passports seeming quite pleased to have the variety of a British citizen to deal with, and the luggage chap asking me something in Russian, then pulling out a list of controlled or banned items for me to check. I read it and shook my head like a loon, quite spaced out by this point. He pointed out a couple in particular – drugs and antiques. ‘No, no,’ I said as emphatically as I could. It seemed to work, and he moved on. At last it was all over – even the woman with the passport worries seemed to get through ok – and I drifted into an uneasy doze until just before we reached St. Petersburg, where we were disgorged into the gorgeous but disorienting Vitebsky station and I set about hunting down some roubles and figuring out my way to my hostel.

Walking towards the old part of Warsaw.

Unfortunately I didn’t have very much time in Warsaw at all; I arrived at about 4.30pm and was due to be leaving again at 7.25am the next morning. My first priority on arrival was to navigate through Warsaw central station to the International Ticket office to buy my ticket to Vilnius, a simple enough transaction but one I knew I wouldn’t want to be doing just before having to catch the train in question! The ticket was valid for a month, so I just had to make sure I turned up on time the next morning. A quick visit to a Tourist Info booth netted me a map of the town centre and directions to my hostel. It wasn’t far away so I walked there, picking my way cautiously around the major road works that seemed to be going on throughout the area. I couldn’t tell if all this activity was because of or in spite of Poland’s hosting of the 2012 UEFA Euro cup, but it definitely made route-finding a bit more of a challenge. I dropped off my rucksack at the hostel, a nice enough place with a distinct Hollywood theme, and headed out to have a squint at the old part of town while it was still daylight, dodging yet more construction work on the way. When I did manage to find the main street leading towards Warsaw’s old centre, however, it was lovely – plenty of old buildings and churches to ogle at, and at one point I heard some chirpy, bouncy, folky sort of music. Curious, I wandered over to find a small stage with a band and a group of people all dancing enthusiastically. I couldn’t tell if it was a competition or just entertainment, but they all looked like they were having huge amounts of fun.

The lady in the red skirt was awesome.

Heading on, I walked past more lovely buildings and through an old square with a fountain and some very decorated houses, and wound up eating dinner at a nice little restaurant that seemed to have a Jewish slant on Polish food. I have no idea what I had, but if it hadn’t claimed to be a Jewish dish then I would describe it as hashed pork filled with raisins and mushrooms. As it was I had no idea what the meat was, but it was quite tasty nonetheless. Then, given that I’d been silly enough to think that the blue sky and sun meant I’d be warm enough without a jumper, I hurried back to the hostel before the warming effect of dinner and a beer wore off. The folk dancers were still hard at it, bless them. I bet they weren’t feeling the chill…

I didn’t sleep well in Warsaw – the bed seemed to ripple and bounce alarmingly every time I turned over, making it hard to settle and making me feel somewhat seasick, so I was weary even before my alarm went off at 6am. I dragged myself out of bed, threw on some clothes and downed a fairly awful cuppa that I threw together in the hostel’s kitchen, then thrust my key at the staff member who’d just shown up to set out breakfast and scurried off to the station. It wasn’t far, but I’ve found that it pays to over- rather than underestimate how long it will take to get anywhere while travelling. Even so, I barely had time to charge into a coffee shop and grab a bottle of water, some breakfast and some lunch (the trains between Warsaw and Vilnius have no buffet car or food trolley service) and gallop to the platform to catch the train. It was a pretty laid-back journey, though I did spend part of it worried that I’d somehow got on the wrong train (one of my pet fears is getting on the wrong train and ending up somewhere utterly random – remind me why I’m taking a train trip across the world again?). For most of the trip the trains (you have to change twice to get to Vilnius – at Sestokai and Kaunas) puttered through the farmland of Poland and Lithuania, and I noted with interest that, in the absence of any serious fencing, cattle were tethered to graze, usually by a rope looped around their horns and attached to a stake in the ground.

Vilnius station is a confusing maze, and it took me a little while to find my way out of it and orient myself. Unfortunately the Tourist Info had already closed, but I found a money exchange and got hold of some litas to tide me over, then picked up a bottle of water from the station supermarket so that I’d have change for the bus to the hostel (and also something to drink – I was quite thirsty). The hostel was through the centre of town and out the other side, and I’m quite sure my rucksack and I didn’t make any friends on the rapidly filling bus. However, I got there in one piece, if rather tired. The hostel seemed to be more of a hotel in reality, but I didn’t mind that at all, and was thrilled to find that I had a private bathroom. There was a potential point of awkwardness, however; the confirmation email I’d received had given the price in Euros, so I’d assumed that they’d take Euros in cash. However, the receptionist brightly informed me that they accepted only litas or credit cards. I didn’t really want to use a plastic card, and I’d got 100 litas on the basis that that would be plenty for food and some sight-seeing the following day if I paid for the room in Euros. I pondered, then handed over 71 litas for the room, which left me just enough to nip to the “China and Pizza” restaurant next door for a bite to eat. Then I headed back, had the most wonderful shower and went to bed with the intention of having a really nice lie-in. Annoyingly, my internal clock had other ideas and woke me up at 6.30am. I resisted until 7, then gave up and sat in bed finishing off some work until it was time to get dressed and check out.

The old part of Vilnius, from the top of the castle tower.

The hostel receptionist had helpfully provided me with a map and indicated a route to the centre, which wasn’t actually as far as it had seemed on the bus the previous evening, so I strapped on my rucksack and set off to examine the sights of Vilnius. It’s an odd place, is Vilnius. It seems to lack the serious bustle of most capital cities, and the overwhelming impression is of a place that’s been a little bit passed by, even by its own people. However, the centre was nice enough and I managed to get some more cash and find some breakfast. I even popped into the local branch of Marks & Spencer in a fit of curiosity; alas, it didn’t have an M&S food hall… My train to St. Petersburg wasn’t until 6.18pm, so I had plenty of time to have a look around, but I couldn’t shake the edgy feeling I had. Partly it was the knowledge that I had a deadline later in the day, but on closer analysis I realised that most of it was nerves about Russia. Until this point, my noodling around friendly eastern Europe could be passed off as a somewhat eccentric holiday, and if I’d needed to flee home for any reason then it would be simple enough (though I’d have felt like a total wuss for doing so). Russia, and the famous Russian bureaucracy that I was about to go head-to-head with, was another matter entirely. It would be the real start of my travels and the first test of my visas, and I was nervous. Realising this didn’t make the feeling go away but did make it a bit easier to rationalise, and so I spent a quiet afternoon looking around the remains of Vilnius’ castle, photographing various churches and having a decent lunch before I headed to the station to wait for the train to St. Petersburg.

My trip to Auschwitz had spanned the middle of the day and taken a good five or six hours, including getting there and back, but it hadn’t really involved lunch. I should have been starving, but the heat had sapped my appetite. I needed something, however, so I headed off to a restaurant that promised Polish food and beer. I settled in and ordered soup and a beef pancake with mushroom sauce, and a Tyskie beer to wash it all down. ‘Large or small beer?’ the waiter asked. ‘Ooo, large please,’ I replied, thinking cosily of the “large” half-litre beers in Germany. Then I looked at the menu and realised I’d accidentally ordered a litre of beer. Oh well, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in Germany, it’s how to behave in the presence of a lot of beer. The pancake turned out to be similarly vast, occupying half of a plate that looked to be about 10 inches in diameter. The other half was occupied by twin peaks of shredded red cabbage and what I assumed was shredded white cabbage. Meep. I girded my loins and got stuck in, managing to deal with the pancake and create a reasonable mole-hill out of the red cabbage mountain. The beer presented a challenge, but I got there in the end, though I probably looked like a dreadful alkie sitting there drinking my huge beer by myself.

The entrance to the Wieliczka salt mines.

The next day was ear-marked for the Wieliczka salt mines, a massive complex of chambers and tunnels created during the lifetime of the mines, from the 13th century to 2007. Only a relatively small section is open to the public, and you have to join a guided tour to see it. The guide for the tour I joined had the most amazingly booming, almost operatic, delivery and a lugubrious sense of humour. Unfortunately, his accent was also quite pronounced, which made it difficult to follow everything he said.

Carving of a miner in the salt mine. Pockets of methane gas had to be burnt with torches like the one this chap is holding.

However, I do like a trot through some tunnels, and the salt mines were worth a visit. A lot of the tunnels and chambers are shored up with wood to keep them from collapsing, and in many places the action of the salt has almost turned the wood to stone. In other places, salt crystals had slowly grown to completely cover the wood. Salt was mined mainly as salt “barrels”, which were shaped from slabs of mined salt-rock and then hoicked to the surface by man- or horse-power for processing. There were displays of different mining techniques, and a number of sculptures carved from rock salt to commemorate miners, legends and various notable people.

The rather grand chapel of St. Kinga. The chandeliers are made of salt crystals, and the walls are carved with many images from the Bible.

One of the most impressive chambers was the St. Kinga chapel, big enough to hold a concert in and wonderfully decorated, largely with salt carvings. Lower down we saw the machinery used to pump water away from the tunnels. After we’d trekked through the main sight-seeing passages and reached the lift to the surface, our guide mentioned an “optional” extra tour of the mine’s museum. It sounded interesting and seemed to be included in the entrance fee, so I went for it. Our guide took us deeper into the mines and had more extensive displays of mining equipment, from miners’ lamps to some of the biggest winching machinery in the mines. It also had information on the geology of the mines, something I always find fascinating. Most importantly, I felt like I’d got better value from the experience.

The rest of my time in Krakow was spent doing a few chores before I headed off to Warsaw. I went through my rucksack and parcelled up assorted extraneous items that I’d decided I didn’t really need after all and tootled down to the main post office to send them home. Then I went shopping for a few minor essentials, taking advantage of still being somewhere with a familiar, if heavily accented, alphabet and brands I recognised. My last morning in Krakow was a little tedious, and I only had myself to blame – I got myself down to the station and managed to buy a ticket to Warsaw, but unfortunately it was only valid for Inter-Regional trains, and there wouldn’t be another one of those for a couple of hours. If I’d been a bit quicker off the mark (or figured out where to buy a different variety of ticket), I could have caught an earlier train. Sighing at myself, I found a coffee shop in the Galleria and did some writing and work to pass the time. The journey to Warsaw itself was uneventful. The weather did what it had been threatening to do and rained, but I was tucked up in my train carriage so I didn’t care a jot, and it cleared up (or we’d travelled out from underneath it) by the time we reached Warsaw.

The infamous sign over the gates of Auschwitz read 'Work gives freedom'. This is a replacement - the original was stolen a couple of years ago and although it was recovered it was too badly damaged to be put back up.

Today I visited Auschwitz. It was extremely incongruous to see such a place on a sunny summer’s day, and the sheer scale of the events that occurred there are overwhelming. I’m not sure I can easily describe the experience – the data is available for anyone to look up, but seeing where such things happened is a different matter. Even after seeing Auschwitz and Birkenau in person, it’s hard to grasp the extent of what happened there.

The suitcases of people sent to the gas chambers. To maintain the illusion of safety, victims were told to write their details on their luggage so that they could find it again afterwards. However, there was no afterwards...

Huge mounds of clothing, shoes, and other personal effects from murdered victims make for very sobering viewing, and my mind recoiled in horror at the sheer numbers involved. Particularly tragic were the shoes and clothes of children sent to the gas chambers, and the mounds of hair collected from women after their deaths. Also staggering are the lengths to which the Nazis went to conceal the truth of what they were doing, both from the victims and from the world at large. Auschwitz is as a terrifying monument to just how appalling humans can be to one another.

Canisters of Zyklon B used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Birkenau.

A map of Europe and surrounding countries, showing just how centrally Auschwitz was located and how far some prisoners were transported to get there.

The huts of Auschwitz.

The only remaining intact gas chamber, at Auschwitz I. It was only used a few times to test the process. Trees were grown over one end to hide it from the prisoners in the camp.

The train sidings where new prisoners arrived in Auschwitz Birkenau. The lines stop at the trees. Prisoners were sorted on arrival into two groups - those who would be kept to work and those who were to be sent to the gas chambers.

Toilets in Auschwitz. Prisoners were only allowed two toilet breaks a day, once before and once after work.

Beds in the men's camp in Auschwitz Birkenau. They're set at an angle so that another bed could be fitted in.

The wooden sheds of the men's camp at Birkenau. The original sheds were burnt down by the Nazis when they fled before the liberation of the camps.

Some people come to Krakow for the history, others for the party scene. Me? I come for the dentistry. A nagging pain had started up in one of my teeth in the last 48 or so hours and, having alarmed myself with visions of dental abscesses and root canals in Mongolia, I resolved to deal with it first thing in the morning. Thus, after some much-needed sleep, I tootled off to the Tourist Info to ask them about dentists and vaccinations. Well, I do try to be original. The lady recommended a dentist just around the corner, while the chap did a quick Google and gave me the address of a clinic that supposedly did travel vaccinations. I decided to do the tooth thing first to get it out of the way. Continue reading →

How does one begin an epic train journey? I wasn’t sure, but I was fairly confident that it shouldn’t begin on an aeroplane. Consequently, May the 7th found me on a Eurostar train from London to Paris, an experience that mostly went smoothly. I spent most of the journey quietly working and trying not to accidentally kick the feet of the guy sitting opposite me. The Eurostar deposited me in a balmy Paris, with plenty of time to stroll from Gare du Nord to Gare de l’Est and grab a bite of supper before boarding my next train, a CNL sleeper to Berlin. Continue reading →