The Happy Wanderer continues East to Poland and Beyond

As I stated at the end of the previous article my next stop would be the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s head quarters in Poland. It is difficult to describe, it is a 2.5sq km area in the Gierloz Forest near Ketrzyn this area used to be called Eastern Prussia. The site is situated amongst trees and very much overgrown in places also in complete ruins, but what ruins! The bunkers or what is left of them were immense, twice or three times the size of St Georges with walls eight to ten feet thick, seven of the largest bunkers had walls 6 to 8 metres thick and a 10 metre thick roof. Each of his generals / marshals etc seemed to have their own, for themselves and their staff. Just looking at all this was amazing, I could not imagine the enormity of the bunkers if I had not seen them with my own eyes.

One of the large bunkers

The building started in 1940 using slave labour and continued up to 44 when these huge structures were blown apart by the Nazis as they retreated, this was done to stop the advancing Russian army using them. They also left the whole place very heavily booby trapped, it was the job of the Polish Sappers to clear the 54,000 mines of different types, it took them ten years between 1945 and 1955. There is a monument to the many Sappers, where so many were killed and injured while doing the job.

Polish Sappers Memorial

It was also here that Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg made an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life and as we know he and many other co- conspirators also paid for the failure with their lives. There is also a commemorative memorial to him on the site of the attempted assassination, it was unveiled at a ceremony in 1992 attended by his three sons, I am sure they must have been very proud of their Father having stood up against the Nazi dictator. The German ambassador also attended the ceremony.

Then it was onward going east to cross the Polish border into Lithuania, passing over between the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and the Russian border, just after the Polish town of Suwalki, then turning North West to get back to the Baltic coast and on over the border into Latvia. We intended to see more of Lithuania on our return journey. Following the coast road we arrived at the town of Venspils, they seemed to have a fixation with cows here, or models of them, they were everywhere! On the breakwater and jetties one being 4metres high and seven metres long also in the town, made into seats “different” I suppose. It was a nice little town with a well looked after park full of flower sculptures and the streets were very clean, it was here that I managed to get myself locked in the loos on the camp site and after about ten minutes of calling with no response I had to use a bit of force to open the door, I did report it at reception.

I am not the one in the middle

Leaving the cows behind it was on to Riga the Capital of Latvia, it got its name from the river Riga which runs into the Daugava estuary and was first recorded in 1198, once again a lovely clean city with parks and many old buildings as well as the new. The squares were large, surrounded with restaurants and shops with friendly people, the old part of the town with its narrow cobbled streets are what I always find interesting, I really did enjoy visiting the capitals of the Baltic States. But as I did not know that I was going to be inveigled into writing these articles at the time so did not make notes, so I have to rely on photos and memory, “that’s getting dodgy these days”. Going over the bridge into Riga there is a large glass case with a model of a man carrying a child over the river which tells the story of how the building of Riga came about, but I have forgotten some of it, so I will not attempt to put it down on paper, someone would be bound to correct me if I got it wrong. Many of Riga’s old buildings like the House of Moors originally built in 1334 were levelled during the last war and had to be rebuilt in the 1990’s.

Buildings in Riga, "House of Moors"

Most the towns that we visited in the Baltic States had major road building taking place, all seemed to be having them done with pavers and all paid for by the EU, so that’s where our tax rebate is going.
Leaving Riga we followed the Baltic coast road, although we were within a few hundred feet of the sea all the way we saw very little of it due to trees in between the road and sea up to the border and over into Estonia stopping at Parnu in Parnu Bay for two nights on a small campsite. On the first evening we asked the site owner, if there was a good place to eat nearby, he replied “just down the road through the woods about one and a half kilometres” so off we went, an hour later and feeling very peckish by then we asked a cyclist how much further? Only to be told about two kilometres, on arriving we reckoned the distance had been about four miles, of course we then had to walk back. But as it turned out it was well worth the walk as the meal was very good but the sunset over Parnu Bay was fantastic. Worth an eight mile walk of anybody’s money.

Next it was on to Tallinn the capital of Estonia, and there lies a tale, but you will have to wait for the next instalment for that.

Christine Culley