Month: October 2026

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Where we see Kraków⁩, Schindler’s Factory, Slovakia, and Mr. Potato Head

Okay, we have a lot to cover here so I’m typing as fast as I can. To recap, the Fall of ’26 Road Trip I took with my son Luke started in Wroclaw, Poland, made a stop in Auschwitz, and then on to a couple of nights in Kraków⁩, where I’ve already been. I even booked a room in the same Holiday Inn near the Kraków⁩ Town Square I stayed at the last time because I was so impressed with it, and the location is perfect. It’s definitely not your usual rundown two-star American Holiday Inn.

Here’s the town square one more time (my last visit to Kraków⁩ was chronicled in this baldsasquatch entry.) Luke, being a refreshingly considerate companion, encouraged us to visit places I hadn’t seen the first time. So we only did a quick run-through of the town square, which is a lot like the one in Wroclaw, which, coincidentally, is a lot like the one in Kraków⁩.

The main difference between walking around Kraków⁩ with Luke and walking around with a woman, aside from the increase in facial hair, is that I learned there is a whole underground adult vibe going on I was oblivious to during the previous visit. While walking around the tourist area, we were approached regularly by mostly young women coquettishly asking if we’d like to go to their particular bar. After some light-hearted banter we discovered that the bars were generally topless venues, and with even more conversation, some of them offered up hints that things could get really spicy if we wanted. Needless to say, we declined all invitations, but it amazed me to find out just what kinds of things one might be oblivious to when visiting a foreign city, since previously I had no idea at all that was all going on there. None of those bars had storefronts we could see, so I suppose the system of keeping them hidden and underground and employing street promoters to bring in the business keeps the area looking a lot better than having a bunch of X-rated neon signs everywhere. Still, the whole thing felt very scammy, so I wouldn’t recommend being enticed by their sales pitch. That said, we never felt unsafe anywhere we walked in Kraków⁩, but perhaps mostly because we refused to walk down dark stairways into sketchy places.

One of the places I hadn’t seen the first time was the Kraków Ghetto wall. The wall was a barrier built by the Nazis in 1941 to enclose the Jewish Residential District in the Podgórze neighborhood. Its distinctive curved top was designed to resemble Jewish gravestones, because making people miserable and then killing them just because they were Jewish wasn’t enough, they had to mock them as well. The living conditions inside were appalling and desperate, until in 1942 the Kraków⁩ Ghetto was closed and all of its inhabitants were sent to concentration camps.

‎⁨The Ghetto Heroes Square⁩, as it’s now named, was located within the boundaries of the Kraków Ghetto between 1941 and 1943. It’s where they gathered the Jews prior to their deportation to concentration camps. In 2005, the bus station was demolished and rebuilt, and they turned the whole square into a monument, including a memorial bus station and 70 oversized chairs, which is a permanent art exhibit to commemorate the furniture that was carried out from the Jewish houses after they cleared out the ghetto.

Nearby is Schindler’s Factory, made famous in the movie The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminal cancer patients checking off their bucket list wishes before– oh wait, that’s the wrong movie. I’m pretty sure the film is called Schindler’s List. Somebody get me a new intern, stat!

I don’t mean to disparage the Schindler Museum in any way by saying the following, but while I found the museum to be interesting, polished and professional, the Schindler connection is really a marketing tool more than anything. While the museum does reside in part of the old Schindler factory, the thing could have been anywhere and had the exact same exhibits and few would think of it as The Schindler Museum. But the ties to the movie and the name recognition bring in the tourists by the droves, so hats off to them for clever marketing. In the end, I guess they didn’t need to retell the story as told in the movie, I just thought there’d be more Schindlering.

They had the usual World War II armaments, propaganda, and history on display. As I get older, looking down the barrel of a gun isn’t as scary as it used to be. Besides, it’s a pretty good metaphor for a lot of the crazy things going on in the world today. I guess that makes my noggin the planet.

Truthfully, it’s not as if they completely ignored the Schindler story; for instance, the collection of pots and pans above were an example of what the factory churned out during the war. I guess I just thought I’d meet Liam Neeson and get an autograph or selfie, so not having him there surprised me since it’s one of his best roles and I would think he’d love to bask in the glow of all his fans daily. Surprisingly, they refused to give me a refund when I complained about the Liamlessness.

You know when a government is aiming to dominate and subjugate a population when they start attacking education. So in your country, if you ever see things like the defunding of education, the banning of books, calling a college education a “scam,” or hiring the former head of, just spitballin’ here, something stupid and fake like a professional wrestling organization to run your Department of Education, it means they really do not have the best interests of the majority of your country’s people in mind. Pay attention to history. Just sayin’.

I thought it was kind of a strange juxtaposition to have all these figurines on display featuring Hitler and people being arrested right next to one depicting Joseph and Mary along with little Jesus. I don’t know about y’all, but if I went to someone’s house on Christmas and saw all of this together, I’d probably end up getting arrested for saying things I shouldn’t.

Speaking of which, did you know the Nazis depicted Jesus as non-Jewish? They invented a pseudo-historical narrative that reimagined Jesus as an “Aryan” warrior who fought against the Jews.

The Torn Hearts Monument on the right, officially known as the Memorial to the Victims of Fascism in Kraków, is not far from the Schindler Museum. It occupies a prominent position on the historic grounds of the former Kraków-Płaszów Concentration Camp (which are largely barren) in the southern part of the city.

Also nearby stands the infamous “Red House,” where Camp Commandant Amon Göth became notorious for taking potshots at prisoners working below. This brutality was explicitly depicted in Schindler’s List, although the film took liberties with the location and actual lines of sight.

It has since been privately purchased and remodeled, and is a private residence, to the consternation of many.

There is also a house called the “Grey House.” Its basement contained solitary confinement cells, including so-called “standing bunkers,” which were tiny cells so cramped that prisoners could not even sit down. Survivors reported that few inmates who entered the Grey House ever emerged again.

Today, the Grey House is one of the few structures associated with the former concentration camp that remains standing. Remarkably, it has remained largely unaltered since the war. Plans are underway to eventually open the building to the public as a museum, preserving it as a reminder of the atrocities committed at Płaszów.

And so we departed Kraków with more Krakóvian sights added to my memory banks, as well as one of the best Chinese food dinners we’ve ever had added to our stomachs. Speaking of cramming calories down our gullets, while driving to our next destination in Slovakia, we stopped in for a quick roadside bite at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. Just look at the size of that cup overflowing with dipping sauce. I mean, American fast food is famously unhealthy already, but that’s a heart attack in a cup! I look at all that yellow goo and just picture it as sludge in your veins. Gross! Anyway, Luke and I each finished one off and it was pretty good, all the way down to scraping the bottom with my finger. Yum yum! It was so good I ordered another one and asked for a straw so I could drink it on the goo, er, go.

In southern Poland we passed by the Niedzica Castle (also known as Dunajec Castle in case you can’t pronounce Niedzica), built between the years 1320 and 1326. It is a beautiful area with a nice dam and a beautiful lake right near the border with Slovakia. But since we were headed to ⁨Košice⁩ in Slovakia, and wanted to get there before dark because that’s when all the vampires come out, we didn’t do much more than get out of the car and admire the views.

Along the way we just had to stop at this local potato festival, which became one more thing crossed off my bucket list. Who doesn’t want to go to a potato festival? They had bins of potatoes from individual farmers (I confess that I’d have a hard time tasting the difference between most potatoes, so I thought it was a little bit amusing), some good old-fashioned folk singin’ and dancin’ on stage, and Luke got to meet the real Mr. Potato Head, who I suspect wasn’t really a potato. We also checked out a drone, but they wouldn’t give us an answer to our question as to how much it would cost to add a grenade dropper attachment. After all, we were only 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the Ukrainian border, and would have loved to help them out against that monster Putin. Alas, the only weapons we might have been able to provide the Ukrainians were potatoes, which are really mostly a weapon of last resort.

About an hour away from Košice⁩ is a castle called Spiš Castle, (the Spiš is pronounced “speesh”) built at the beginning of the 12th century. Since I now know how that “š” is pronounced, I guess that makes “šit” is a bad word.

Spiš Castle is essentially a ruin now, but back in the day it was quite prominent. But along with all its hustle and bustle, it also had a brutal torture chamber, so you could describe the place either way as a little šitty.

It is one of the six largest castle šites in Slovakia, and not only features wonderful views, but has a lightning rod on top with a warning to beware of lightning, as well as another sign that basically says you’re taking your life into your hands if you wander around the castle. But we gladly risked our lives for the sake of ol’ baldsasquatch.com!

The last owners of the Spiš Castle, the Csáky family, abandoned the castle in the early 1700s because they considered it too uncomfortable to live in (as demonstrated by that plush and roomy stairway). In 1780, the castle was destroyed by a fire, but was partly reconstructed in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Like virtually all castles, its history of attacks, conquest, torture, and more are complex and interesting. That said, roughly 150,000 European castles have been built over the years, each of them with a story to tell, usually a long one. About 46,000 of these remain standing in various states of repair. I figured I only have about 45,902 to go before I see ’em all, but after I did the math I realized that if I have ten years left of traveling, I’d have to see about 13 of them a day to get them all in, and that’s with no days off. Shoot. Might not get to all of them then.

We spent the night in Košice, Slovakia. Košice is pronounced “KO-sheet-seh,” although that’s just the modern take. Historically, the city was also known as: Kaschau (in German), Kassa (in Hungarian), Kaşa (in Turkish), Cassovia (in Latin), Cassovie (in French), Cașovia (in Romanian), Кошице (in Russian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn), Koszyce (in Polish), Kashoy (in Yiddish), and more. Since they’re all hard to pronounce we just called it “Fred.”

With a population of about 230,000, Fred– er, Košice, is the largest city in eastern Slovakia and the second largest city in Slovakia, after the capital Bratislava, which makes that the first biggest city in Slovakia if my math is correct.

Košice has a large and vibrant historical center, which we enjoyed walking through with the limited time we had. We were also able to score a very nice, filling meal (but sadly, without the gallon ‘o dipping cheese) served by a friendly waitress who spoke great English, as did most of the people we encountered. Which is good, because my Košician is pretty rusty.

A colorful fountain in the square provides a beautiful addition to the area.

Since its founding, Košice has belonged to at least six distinct sovereign countries and principalities, including the Kingdom of Hungary starting in 1000, Eastern Hungarian Kingdom & Transylvanian Suzerainty (whatever that is), the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the First Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Hungary again during world War II (later occupied by Nazi Germany), the Second Czechoslovakia, and now in present day Slovakia, which I suppose doesn’t get to be called the First Slovakia until there is a second one.

Following the Nazi takeover of Hungary, the entire Jewish community of Košice—numbering roughly 12,000 people—along with 2,000 individuals from the adjacent regions, was systematically rounded up, packed into cattle cars, and sent to Nazi death camps where they were murdered. During this tragic period, a local internment camp operated within the city under the brutal command of Hungarian official László Csatáry (1915–2013).

With Košice under our belts. we woke up the next morning, looked at our maps, and decided to roll the dice and cross the border into Ukraine. In the next post you’ll find out whether or not we made it out alive.

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)

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Road Trippin’ Behind the Iron Curtain

When my son Luke floated the idea of taking a road trip together, I said yes immediately. Being able to host even just one of my kids over here was a big part of the equation for moving to Europe in the first place. Besides, Luke’s unbridled enthusiasm for traveling and seeing new things is a delight to witness, so I looked forward to the adventure. Especially since prior to 1991, most of the countries we visited were behind the iron curtain, so this kind of trip likely wouldn’t have even been possible back then.

Of course, it seems like only yesterday I was changing his diapers, rubbing Desitin all over his rashy butt, and chasing him around the house with a spatula for smearing peanut butter all over the dog. Now we’re two adults driving around in all sorts of European countries with only a loose plan for our exact destinations.

Freed from travel constraints by having a rental car and a credit card, the main idea eventually ended up being to set foot in as many cities and countries as possible, which clearly doesn’t do each destination full justice. Accordingly, this and the upcoming entries will suck as a travel blog. Because I think it’s a bit like a single man going into a high class brothel, paying the $1,000 cover charge, walking down the line of gorgeous hookers and just kissing them each on the cheek, and then leaving. Not that I would know anything about any of that, including that the cutest one was named Lola, who might’ve been a man.

We decided to start everything from Wroclaw, Poland. We booked a hotel there as well as a couple of nights in Krakow, plus the last night in Prague because we knew we needed to be there for our return flight. Everyplace else, we’d just figure out the night before.

Since it was the tail end of tourist season, I assumed we’d be able to find accommodations fairly easily; and that assumption turned out to be correct; in fact we got some great deals.

We also toyed with the idea of making a stop inside Ukraine. Neither of us had ever been in a foreign country while it’s at war (the U.S. always seems to be one, just not on its shores), so that sounded like a fun time, but we left that as a game-time decision.

But as to the beginning, we flew into Wroclaw, which we had been pronouncing “Row-Claw,” as one does. However, the Polish apparently have this odd notion that their language should be pronounced the way they want it to, so it’s pronounced, “ˈvrɔtswaf,” where the “ɔ” is pronounced, y’know, like it usually does, like an upside-down “c” of course.

The way I would write it phonetically is: “Vlrawts wahf,” because the “V” has to get kinda rolled a little bit.

Since my short term memory is about as reliable as a two dollar hooker (I’ll keep running with the hooker metaphor until it peters out), I like to use mnemonics of ideas or phrases that come to mind easily to help me remember words. So I was able to remember how to say Wroclaw by thinking, “Rotten wife.” I only had to add the “v” sound in front and drop the “ten” from “Rotten,” and voila! Vrots-wahf rolled off my tongue like a two doll –um, anyway, it rolled. Now I could ask for directions to the town we were already in using my very best Polish.

We weren’t nervous at all flying with an airline called “Buzz,” because bees hardly ever crash into things and plummet to the ground in fiery blazes. Plus Buzz Aldrin went all the way to the moon using that name, Buzz definitely wasn’t one of the names of the hookers at that brothel I never went to, and, well, Buzz is just one of the most professional and classy names I could ever imagine for an airline, so we immediately felt warm and fuzzy flying with ol’ Buzzy. Anyway, we made it most the way across Europe with barely any crashing and screaming and stuff.

We chose Wroclaw (remember, “Rotten Wife” = Vlrawts wahf”) to fly into because Luke wanted to see Auschwitz (AU shwitz) and I’ve already been to there and Krakow (KRAH-koof), so we picked a city I’ve never been to and unknowingly could not pronounce (prə-NOWNS).

The Rotten Wife’s official population is approaching 700,000, making it Poland’s third largest city. The population of the Wroclaw metropolitan area is around 1.25 million, which is about the size of Salt Lake City, which has a lot more salt, a half a million more Mormons, and almost always the proper pronunciation of its name.

Like in Krakow, the town square dominates both the city and the tourism. Town squares are unfailingly cool, I don’t know why so few U.S. cities have anything like it. They’re just good old fashioned fun for casual strolls, or better yet, running through flocks of pigeons scaring the literal shit out of them, picking up hookers, dancing naked in the fountains, and pickpocketing unsuspecting tourists. It’s like Disneyland for people who shouldn’t ever be allowed in Disneyland.

I got a kick out of the name of the restaurant on the right, “Pierogarnia.” That told me they were specialists in Pierogi, pretty much the national food of Poland. But the thing with pierogi is that the dumplings themselves have very little flavor; it’s the fillings they put in them that turn them into an enjoyable meal. So it seems to me that place like that should call themselves a “Fillingarnia” because that’s what I want them to be an expert at.

By the way, Pierogi has some extensive vocabulary related to it:

  • Pieróg is the singular Polish word for one single filled dumpling, while pierogi is the plural form
  • Pierożek: a diminutive form meaning a small pieróg. (Might be an effective Polish insult.)
  • Pierogomat: an automated vending machine that dispenses pierogi. (We never got to see one of those.)
  • Pierogowy: an adjective relating to pierogi. (Her bottom was very Pierogowy-like.)
  • Pierogarnie is the plural of Pierogarnia. (So there’s more than one of those restaurants!)
  • PierSmak: Seafood that tastes like licking a pier. (I just made that word up, but smak means flavor in Polish– so it’s perfect!)
  • McPieróg is still not a thing at McDonald’s for some reason.

The Polish demonstrate their fun approach to life by taking farm animals and dumping them alive into hot cauldrons of molten bronze in order to create these charming and heartwarming scenes in alleys. In the next photo, you can see many Polish people apparently believe customers are always wrong, which is heresy for Americans, but actually refreshing for someone like me who ran multiple computer retail stores for a long time and can attest to the fact that when it comes to technology, customers are in fact often wrong, and the wronger they are, the louder they get (just like in politics). I did consider going inside that bar and loudly proclaiming, “I am wrong!” …and since I have to be wrong according to them, that would mean I’m actually right, but I can’t be right because I’m always wrong, but–– ach! Now that’s how you make a Polish head explode.

Dwarfs (it can be spelled “dwarves” too… just in case one of you was winding up to show off your grammar Nazism) are commonly spotted around the Wroclaw streets, as you can can see here as one crouches next to a very small dwarf statue. As to the statues, there are roughly 1,000 small bronze Wroclaw Dwarfs scattered across Wroclaw. They evolved from a 1980s anti-communist peaceful protest movement into a well-loved (except for those who keep tripping over them) civic symbol. But I think they’re only well-loved because it reminds most people to have some gratitude that they weren’t born a dwarf. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; dwarfs are pretty adept at killing dragons and orcs and growing amazing beards after all. Anyway, Luke kept asking me if I wanted to take more pictures of him with them every time he saw one, but I said, “I think everyone gets the idea. No one spends $100 per year on a baldsasquatch.com subscription to see 1,000 pictures of little dwarfs.” He started responding with what sounded like a question as to who the hell would ever spend– but I cut him off by saying I just saw a store.

One restaurant we ate at featured a Georgian green lemonade drink that was recommended in a review, as in “Don’t pass up their amazing green lemonade drink!” I’m always intrigued by things I’ve never tasted (food and drink, mostly), so I ordered a bottle. After tasting it and then looking at the ingredients, I can tell you that all it is is sugar water with some licorice flavoring. Supposedly it’s all the rage in the country of Georgia. Luke is very simple-minded sometimes; he just kept staring at the “green juice” being unable to fathom how there could be green lemonade, and I could only calm him down by buying him a beer.

Their meat-and-potato heavy cuisine also features the occasional alien fetus. At least that’s what I told Luke it was because I liked that better than what I ordered and he immediately offered to switch after hearing that. He’s apparently on an alien-free diet.

Wroclaw used to be called Breslau (BRESL-ow) when it was a part of Germany. The Unification of Germany in 1871 made Breslau the sixth-largest city in the German Empire, which they’d eventually come to regret.

In 1944, Adolf Hitler declared Breslau to be a fortress to be held at all costs. An attempted evacuation of the city took place in January 1945, with 18,000 people freezing to death in icy snowstorms of −20 °C (−4 °F) (−f**king cold) weather. Soon the city became part of the front lines and was the site of the brutal Siege of Breslau, which by coincidence was the same name as the city itself. By the end of the three-month siege, half the city had been destroyed, with about 80,000 civilian deaths. Breslau was the last major city in Germany to surrender, capitulating only two days before the end of the war in Europe.

At the Yalta Conference in February of 1945 it was decreed that the city would become again a part of Poland in exchange for Poland’s loss of the city of Lwów (like, lwow man) along with the massive territory of Kresy in the east, which had been annexed by the Soviet Union. The Polish name of Wroclaw was declared official, even though no one could pronounce it except for ex-husbands.

The Old Town of Wroclaw is listed in the Registry of Objects of Cultural Heritage, on Poland’s list of National Monuments, and in Baby’s First Book of Cool Old Buildings. Its historic buildings include examples of Brick Gothic and Baroque architecture. Examples of Neoclassicism, Gründerzeit and Historicism can also be found in the city centre. If any of the pictures we took illustrate any of those things, it was completely on purpose.

Luke rarely walked past a souvenir shop without stopping, as he looked for the latest in refrigerator magnet technology, shot glass design, hoodies, and touristy gifts for his wife and son. He returned to the US with an extra piece of luggage just to carry everything he bought. The bad news is once he got all the refrigerator magnets in place and opened the door for the first time, the weight of all those magnets tore the door right off its hinges.

This is a giant chair in front of our hotel. If you have to ask why, you simply don’t get it.

I don’t get it.

Maybe we shoulda just shared a camera. But then again, I was able to select the best giant chair shot from both libraries so maybe having two shots of everything wasn’t a horrible idea.

Once we had conquered Wroclaw’s many tourist shops, we made the drive down to Auschwitz, which, as all my most ardent followers know, I had visited before, detailing everything in this blog entry.

Since the above quote is still maddeningly accurate, especially in light of current world events where we’re seeing the far right popping up again in Germany, Russia doing everything it can to prove it’s still the world’s worst neighbor, and the US shooting itself in the foot so many times internationally that it may well pave the way for the country going metric since it won’t have any feet left, we’ll offer up a few new photos as reminders of one of the most horrific places in human history. And, sadly for me because it’s such a struggle to write that way, for the rest of this entry I have to tamp down the humor. What? Yes there was humor up there, I’m sure you at least snickered at some point. If not, sometimes you just have to read slower. Oh wait, I do have one more joke I have to sneak in before we get all serious:

Y’ know, Hitler wasn’t all bad. After all, he did kill Adolph Hitler.

Okay, so now with my serious hat sitting firmly on my head:

For me, Auschwitz, if we use it to represent the German desire to exterminate all Jews, is an example of something that just maybe should remind us of the following: You are absolutely not smart enough to have unshakable opinions on any political or economic matter, ever.

Auschwitz teaches us that. Why? Because Auschwitz reminds us that the modern, first-world human brain can be so unfailingly stupid and impressionable that a good percentage of them actually believed that a “race” of any kind was responsible for their misery, including their loss in WWI, so maybe extermination wasn’t such a bad thing. The country and its citizens believed that so much so that the country created tens of thousands of labor camps, transit camps, and ghettos during the war, so it’s not like it was hidden. It’s not just Auschwitz and a handful of other famous camps. It’s tens of thousands. When you truly process that, the only real conclusion possible is that we should always remember that we’re just too damn stupid to be certain of anything, so allow for the possibility you could be wrong, always.

That’s just my take and opinion. Which could be wrong! But I think an accurate truism is that it’s usually the most ignorant people who have the most certainty that their opinions are right.

So don’t be dumb. Reserve the right to be wrong.

These were all real people, with lives, and loves, and families, and all they were ever trying to do is just live a happy, peaceful life. The idea that they should be exterminated is so completely ridiculous it absolutely has to call into question how our brains work.

Insecticide became the method of choice for industrial-level mass extermination. Which is ironic because the perpetrators of this madness were only using insect-sized portions of their brain.

At Auschwitz itself, victims can be broken down into the following groups with these estimated number of deaths:

Jews: 1,000,000 deaths
Poles: 70,000 deaths
Roma and Sinti: 21,000 deaths
Soviet prisoners of war: 15,000 deaths
Other nationalities and groups: 12,000 deaths

Auschwitz was the largest and deadliest of the six Nazi extermination camps—a place where over a million innocent people were systematically tortured, dehumanized, and murdered during World War II and the Holocaust as part of Hitler’s genocidal campaign.

Auschwitz was not a single camp, but a massive complex consisting of three main camps and nearly 50 sub-camps, The three primary camps each served distinct, horrific roles within the Nazi regime:

  • Auschwitz I (The Stammlager / Main Camp): Established in 1940 in Oświęcim, this was the original camp and served as the administrative center for the entire complex. It primarily held Polish political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, and other targeted groups under brutal conditions.
  • Auschwitz II-Birkenau (The Extermination Camp): Opened in 1941, this vast site was located about two miles from the main camp. It was designed primarily for the systematic mass murder of European Jews. It contained the infamous railway tracks leading directly into the camp, massive wooden barracks, and the primary gas chambers and crematoria.
  • Auschwitz III-Monowitz (Buna): Established in 1942, this was a massive forced-labor camp built to provide enslaved workers for a synthetic rubber and fuel plant operated by the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben.

(Scroll down to see previous entries.)