John's Grand Tour of Europe

Here I am cataloging my adventures through europe. I plan on updating this every couple days while I'm on my trip. I know people want to see lots of pictures so here's where I'll share them. Currently planning on starting my grand tour June 29th!

[johnsgrandtour]

The Walls and Barbican, Krakow, Warsaw

At the entrance to Krakow's Old Town, is the wall and Barbican. It's a small extension from the walls towards a strongpoint surrounded by a mote.

These walls are pretty cool but a little shorter than Tallinn's I think, but this one gives a good view down the street and of St. Mary's Basilica.

There's not too much to say but the walls are pretty cool on the inside too! It's surprising just how cramp they can be.

Here's a couple more shots of the wall while on the wall!

As I look though my pictures there's a lot of Krakow to cover. I've got a castle, the underground, town hall tower, and the ominously named "Dragon Den" to cover.

[johnsgrandtour]

Old Town, Warsaw

This area of was completely destroyed during WW2 and the city meticulously rebuilt it to how it originally looked. It's weird to say it but it looks so "new" compared to the Old Towns in Tallinn or Krakow.

All of the wall is a similar color that hasn't been faded or washed out over the years and the steps in the buildings don't have those 500+ years of wear and tear on them making them uneven.

Well that'll wrap up Warsaw. I have a couple more posts for Krakow then I'll be caught back up!

[johnsgrandtour]

Pawiak Prison Museum, Warsaw, Poland

This is where the Gestapo kept their political prisoners during the occupation of Poland. The museum houses a lot of propaganda pieces from the time and artifacts recovered from the building after the Nazi's blew it up.

There's some awful stuff farther down in this post but it feels important to see it. It's strange to think there are people who deny it or downplay it when so much stuff of it just exists. It's frustrating at times.

Here are the cells, they look better than the KGB ones for what it's worth.

Here's your daily reminder that fascism is bad.

[johnsgrandtour]

Warsaw Uprising Museum & Monument, Warsaw, Poland

From August 1st to October 2nd, 1944, The civilians who had been living under Nazi rule for the last 5 years rose up and attacked the Nazi garrison.

If I had an armband it would look like this one. My Slovak and Polish heritage coming together is a beautiful way.

The plan was to rise up the same time the Soviet Army got to Warsaw's eastern boundary and get relived by the Red Army. However, the Soviets left them to die and didn't help them.

The Nazi's eventually extracted revenge by butchering every civilian they could find. The death tolls are awful, ~50,000 people were killed by August 8th and that's a conservative estimate. The total civilians killed is between 150,000-200,000 and 85% of the city was leveled.

The Warsaw Uprising is one of my favorite moments/battles in history. It has this horrible mix of optimism and tragedy that when I dive into this subject, it just fills me with so many mixed emotions.

One thing I didn't know was how the communist government, ruling Poland after 1945, tried to scrub this whole event from history. During the cold war the Soviets repainted the whole event to depict the people who rebelled as treacherous and the Soviet-back polish army as the real heroes.

Warsaw really prides itself off this event and it shows. There's monuments and statues everywhere. Up next it's the "Old Town", even though it had to be completely rebuilt after the war.

[johnsgrandtour]

Auschwitz, Oswiecim, Poland

We're breaking up chronology here. I have more stuff from Warsaw and Krakow to post but I'd rather get this post up first.

First off, it was a very rainy day and still very busy so a lot of my pictures are bad. There's just a mess of people with umbrellas so I'll be pretty selective with my pictures.

Here's the wall from inside the compound. There's a lot of barbed wire fences inside the compound too. Dividing up the buildings into their zones.

Moving inside the buildings now. Inside the buildings they'll have every photo the Nazi's took of the prisoners and have them on walls lining the halls with their name and number. It's as horrific as you can imagine.

And here's the gas chamber and crematorium. You could feel the dread that hung in the air as you walked through it.

It's worth it to visit it at least once, but I never want to go back. I'm headed to Katowice tomorrow so I'll try and get the rest of Warsaw up soon!

[johnsgrandtour]

Outdoor exhibition of the Polish Army Museum A bunch of rusted crap Warsaw, Poland

That's a little harsh but I spend a lot of time around ww2 period aircraft and to see so many planes just sitting out deteriorating hurts. The cool thing at least almost all of these planes are the first (and probably only) time I've gotten to see them up close.

Each picture has a caption so be sure to check them! Also, if this post seems boring to you hang in there, there's a cat at the end!

That's it for the planes and since I am an unbiased person, here's the other stuff.

And As promised, I present to you ICBM Kitty!

Who's a cute kitty? Such a cute kitty that looks like it's one missed meal away from launching a ballistic missile and starting a nuclear holocaust.

Anyway, that's this boneyard of a museum done and I still have a ton more to post about.

[johnsgrandtour]

National Museum of Warsaw

I'll start by saying, Art just isn't my thing. When there's a museum with thousands and thousands of art pieces, I end up speedrunning it. So here's a couple pictures of the cooler pieces I saw

Anyone up for 16th century Where's Waldo? because that's the vibe I get from this painting.

The good news is I got to see my favorite historical art piece in-person. The Stańczyk. My picture is a little bit blurry so I'm including a scan so you all can see it at it's best.

This painting covers so much I can't really do it justice without coming across as an art snob. So out of all thousands of art pieces there were, this one made it worth the hour walk to the museum.

Now, if only there were a boneyard of old soviet planes, tanks, field guns, ship turrets, and rocket artillery next door. Man, if only...

Wait, How'd this MiG get here?

[johnsgrandtour]

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Warsaw, Poland

ᴬⁿᵈ ᵃ ᶜᵒᵘᵖˡᵉ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ˢᵗᵃᵗᵘᵉˢ

I've seen our Tomb of the Unknown in Arlington and I've gotta say, Poland did it better. They have two guards that get sun/rain cover and they don't have to march back and forth. The eternal flame is cool too.

I stumbled upon a lot of statues of people I wouldn't have expected too so I'll round out this post with pictures of those.

I have more pictures of statues but these are the most interesting. Still have plenty more to go.

[johnsgrandtour]

Warsaw, Poland

So I've wanted to visit Warsaw for years and I'm so excited to finally be here! My bus got in pretty late but the city was lit up with electronic billboards and tons of lights. It reminded me of NYC so much. There's a lot to cover so I'll start with pictures of the city and do all the monuments and museums in their own posts.

There are a lot of palaces that were rebuilt. It's surprising to see so many but they weren't very open to the public so I didn't try very hard to get in.

Except this one. This is the Palace of Culture and Science and it closes at 4pm apparently. I detoured my walk by like 30 mins to get here and when I walked up some guy was like "museum closed". It was 4:15pm like come on.

It's wild that a city can have both of these things just blocks away from each other. Just a left over concrete pillbox. There isn't even a sign with it. I saw a couple old bunkers on my bus into the city too. Just right next to the highway.

I'll end this post with these pictures of Europe's best Unibrow: Józef Piłsudski I got a lot of write posts on and my last train didn't have wifi so I couldn't make any posts on board. Look forward to a lot of cool but depressing history.

[johnsgrandtour]

Villinus, Lithuania

Here we are in Villinus and it feels like a city that wants to be a tourist destination, but it still has about 10 years of reconstruction efforts to effectively compete with Tallinn or Riga.

That said, it's still a really cool city to see that transformation happen block by block.

Here's Gediminas Castle Tower because no European city is complete without a centuries old pile of bricks looming over the city.

Anyway, no Russian embassy pictures this time. It was a long walk to it and I never got close by.

I got an afternoon bus to Warsaw tomorrow! I plan on a couple days in Warsaw then Krakow, then overnighting in Oswiecim to tour Auschwitz on the 1st.

[johnsgrandtour]

Riga, Latvia

Riga is closer to what I'd expect an ex-soviet city to look like compared to Tallinn. There are some soviet style buildings still standing if you find them but it's still a beautiful city.

I struck out on a walk around the city and I'll drop the best pictures here. Like any good city it has a river and big bridges spanning it. Here're two pictures pointed towards each other.

It was only about a 30min walk from each picture. If there's one thing I've learned it's that you can get pretty far on your own two feet, provided you don't make a wrong turn.

Here's the Town Square in Old Town. It was packed with tourists and there were like 6 different souvenir stores on the square. Tallinn at least had 8 different cafes there.

Anyway, That's it for Latvia. Tomorrow we're finishing the Baltic with Villinus in Lithuania. We'll do a couple days there then it's Poland!

[johnsgrandtour]

Russian Embassy, Riga, Latvia

I found a Russian Embassy again! I'm going to try and make it a point visit all of these that I can. This time the block it's on is clear of any protests and it's got two police cars parked on it's ends. But across the street is this banner and where I'm standing has all of the signs you'd expect.

I'll end this post with my favorite sign I've seen so far.

[johnsgrandtour]

Riga is pretty cool btw

[johnsgrandtour]

Valga, Estonia

Due to how the trains ran, I figured an overnight stay in this village was a better call than siting on the platform for 6 hours.

I'm currently on the border to Latvia and this is a nice little town. This lake featured a nice path to walk while I got some dinner for tonight.

Tomorrow, we're heading to Riga! Latvia is our second Baltic country and I can't wait see what's instore for me there!

[johnsgrandtour]

The Russian Embassy, Tallinn, Estonia

I stumbled upon this without even trying and it's really hard to miss. I'm just gonna leave these pictures here and I'll grab a couple more tomorrow and add them into this post.

[johnsgrandtour]

Here's another round at the Russian Embassy. I tried to get more pictures of the actual signs this time

[johnsgrandtour]

Wrapping up! Tallinn, Estonia

Here's the last post about Tallinn! Old town is such a great area and I'd highly recommend visiting here if you get the chance! I'm gonna drop a couple more pictures of other places.

Here's a couple pictures from the KGB prison cells from earlier.

Seeing these cells and reading the testimonials from the people that survived the torture going on in here gives a serious perspective on the USSR and totalitarian regimes.

The first thing they'd do when they grabbed someone was lock them in a cabinet for 2 days. They had no room the sit, completely dark, and only given teaspoons of water. Then they'd drag them out and START the interrogation. The person grabbed would have no idea why until then at best. Actually horific.

Up next, it's the Maritime museum. I'm not big on boats but the coolest thing about this museum is how it's built around an old sewer from the 14th century.

There's a lot of this around. The wall even ran into the bathroom stall in the museum!

When the city was expanding the docks, they dug up an old trading cog. It's not as impressive as the Vasa but it's over twice as old!

The excavator was hungry that day and took a bite out of the boat.

I'll round out the rest of this post with some other cool nautical stuff! I'll see you for a pit stop in Valga!

[johnsgrandtour]

Sweater Wall, Tallinn, Estonia

This wall from the 13th century runs along an edge of Old Town. It's such a cool looking sight to look over the town and turn around to look at the city and the skyscrapers towering above it.

Here's the view from both ends of the wall looking towards each other. It has staircases up the towers and this covered walkway running the entire length of wall that's left.

Nearby is the Patkuli viewing platform. It over looks Old Town and you can even see the ports on the Baltic!