20th century history

23.11.06

Isco has headed off to Auschwitz today but I decided to give it a miss. Have seen enough bad stuff and had nasty dreams where the Nazis/Soviets were coming to get me a few times (not fun)... plus I saw a concentration camp last time I came to Europe, I know what went down. And yes, I feel bad about it as a fellow human being.

Phew, so that's justified.

Instead I'm going to visit the Leonardo Da Vinci picture in town - the museum it's in is free today though so not sure if it'll be mobbed or not. I should get there pretty early so fingers crossed. So far we've found the crowds pretty good - mostly due to travelling at thia time of year. Every place the guidebook warns to book in advance or is packed we've found fine - even Wawel Castle, which only sells limited tickets per day, was a breeze yesterday. We didn't even have to line up - so stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Russia!

Krakow is pretty cool. It's yet ANOTHER old town but I'm not sick of them, they're all different in little ways. I wasn't so sure about Warsaw's though - it was pretty much utterly destroyed in WW2 and they rebuilt it almost brick for brick. I understand it was a way of saying they weren't beaten by occupation/sovietisation etc. but it still felt a bit odd to be looking at this 'old' stuff that was actually built only 30 years ago - somehow a bit like you were being fooled. I think I would have appreciated it more if they'd rebuilt it in a way to honour what was, but also acknowledge what happened and maybe look to the future - get local artists to interpret their take on the war or something. As Isco suggested, it felt a bit like if they just rebuilt the twin towers in New York exactly as they were... I mean you can't ever go back can you? It will never be the same.

Anyway, that's my two cents' worth for this morning!

We'll be in Budapest by the weekend. Planning to rent a flat and stay there a week to chill out, and looking forward to resting up a bit.