Poland and Germany

Aug 2, 2024

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Germany, Krakow, Poland, Zagan, Zgorzelec

Well, it was time to go to Poland, and this trip was a lot less planned than Japan was, but I did get to do most of what I wanted to do.

29th July – Flying to Poland

First off, the flight and the Schengen zone. This was my first trip to Europe by myself to be honest and it was quite a fun one and flying to Krakow John Paul II International Airport was quite a nice easy trip with Lufthansa.

First hop was from Manchester to Frankfurt starting at 6:05 in the morning and landing at 8:50, where I have a 3-hour layover to deal with. During the 3 hours, I entered the Schengen zone and left the airport in search of breakfast, before coming back to catch my 11:50 flight to Krakow.

I finally landed in Poland at about 13:20 and had a fun drive ahead of me, (especially with the car being left hand drive and me being used to right hand drive) as I wasn’t staying in Krakow, I was driving to the border with Germany to a place called Zgorzelec. Why there you might ask, well one it is a border town when you can cross into Germany on foot (more on that later), but it is also about 1 hour away from Żagań.

30th July – Rest Day

To be honest, after all the traveling the day before to Poland and then driving to the border, it was time to have a rest day.

31st July – Zagan and Gorlitz

Żagań is the town where Stalag Luft III was and for anyone who doesn’t know what it was, it was a POW camp during WW2 that was made famous by the Great Escape. I went to the museum there, which is also where Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson went to, when they did there Eurocrash Grand Tour special. The museum was informative, has a replica of one of the old watchtowers and a replica of the mine cart, track and pulley system they used in the tunnel that they built.

Originally there were 3 tunnels, called Tom, Dick and Harry, but the first two were discovered by the Germans and destroyed. The completed Harry tunnel was about 100 meters in length, was about 9 meters deep and out of the 76 brave POWs that managed to escape, only 3 managed to make it to freedom.

I decided that same evening that I would cross into Germany to Gorlitz (the town opposite the river from Zgorzelec) as I wanted to check out the Germany side of the town as well. Because it is all part of the Schengen zone, it surprised me with how easy it was to walk over a bridge from the Polish side to the German side, though I could compare it to going from England to Scotland. While I was over on the German side, I stopped by a pub and got some proper schnitzel, and it was delicious.

One thing to also note, is that because Germany and Poland and both part of the Schengen Zone, it is very easy to pop between the two with no border checks and stuff, just like in the video below. It was definitely a foreign concept to me, living in the UK, but I supposed thinking about it, it is just like going from England to Scotland or Wales like I do every now and then.

1st August – Driving Back to Krakow

The day after I drove back from the Traditional hotel I was staying at back to Krakow, but like in any country, there had been an accident, and I got stuck on the Expressway.