"It is impossible to know the truth and not be held accountable for it". [Cicero - Roman Senator]

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Europe Tour 2006, Part 4 - Poland & Slovakia.

April 27, 2006 Thursday. - Entering Poland.

We pressed on toward Poland after lunch and crossed the border about 5PM at Cesky Tesin with no difficulty, just a passport check. Perhaps that too will go when they are more fully integrated into the European Union and start using the Euro in 2007. From the border major road works are underway building a new motorway that will probably go all the way to Krakow, and it is desperately needed judging by the condition of the older Polish roads. Here instead of pot holes in the road they have Pole holes in the road. Big enough for a pole or a Pole, and certainly to be avoided at all costs.

Our destination was Osweicim or Auschwitz as it is better known in the west from the holocaust propaganda. Here in this small Polish city we are told events took place during WW2, which, no matter what you believe of the conflicting accounts of what did or did not occur, are central to the history of the mid and later twentieth century, and are still a prime influencing factor in the politics of the modern world, the middle east, American super power policy, the Palestinian problem, the New World Order itself. If you think that what really did, or did not, happen here in Oswiecim is just old history, and of no concern to you, then either you are a fool, one of the blind sheeple of the world, or more likely you just haven't learnt enough of the real history of the world. By real history, I mean the true history that isn't taught in schools or universities, for what they teach is the sanitized "politically correct" version of history. To appreciate the full ramifications of this place, the stories told about it, and the truth of them, you need an active critical and inquiring mind, not a brain like a cerable sponge that simply soaks up the intellectual sludge that passes uncritically to most for history as taught by the establishment. That is why I am here, to see certain things first hand, so that I may judge better the claims of those who write about this place and what did, and what did not occur here. If you don't go, you won't know!

LPG is widely available in Poland.

April 28, 2006 Friday. Oswiecim, Poland. The campsite which is actually the carpark of a hotel where they have installed modern camp amenities block is really quite good. The water is clean and tastes fine. We are assured that it is potable, but that the hotel receptionist does not drink it, she doesn't like the taste. I can find nothing wrong with it, it has no taste and makes perfectly normal tea. In fact it tastes far better than Brisbane water back home in Australia, where many persons have also been conned into needlessly buying bottled water, such is the power of marketing and so profound is the ignorance of the masses. So if you come here, I say the water's fine. The site costs ZL44.00 per night for two, with electric if you want, but we can pay in Euros 12.40. Excellent hot showers included and within walking distance to the Auschwitz concentration camp museum. The country is due to convert to the Euro in 2007.

The Kaufland hypermarket in town is enormous and offers a range of goods only rivaled by a large Carrefour in France or Walmart supercenter in the USA. We have almost nothing like it in Australia, reflecting the poor state of competition we endure with only two major supermarket chains.

It being a nice sunny day we opt for the self guided tour of the Birkenau concentration camp site, the site where the greatest concentrations of mass homicidal gassings by the Nazis is alleged to have occurred, the most in a place called Crematorium 2, which is now a ruin, having been demolished almost completely by explosives near the end of WW2.

A pictorial tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. This web site has the best collection of recent colour photos of the two concentration camps that I know of on the web. The written commentary is mainly all the establishment conventional history of the camps, but if you can't actually have the privilege of going there to see things for yourself as I was fortunate enough to be able to do in 2006, these photos will give you an excellent appreciation of how it is all laid out and just how it looks now. I don't accept all the history as they state it on the web site, as you need to read widely, including some of the revisionist authors to be able to even begin to understand the controversy.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/auschwitzscrapbook/Tour/index.html.

I took a number of pictures myself of Auschwitz, and all of the pictures on the above linked web site are genuine photos of what they claim to be.

Birkenau is several kilometers from the main Auschwitz camp and museum, but it is the far larger of the two sites. A shuttle bus service runs between the two sites about once an hour. There is free parking outside the main gate of Birkenau for cars and campervans. The site ranges over several square kilometers and if you want to have time to look around properly you need to allow half a day at least and be prepared to walk a long way. There are free toilets located between Crema 3 and Crema 4.

There are two types of barracks, wooden sheds which were originally designed as stables for the German Army to accommodate 50 horses were adapted to house the inmates in three tier wooden bunks. Some of these are open for inspection, just to the right after entering through the main gate.

Many of the barrack buildings have been demolished leaving only foundations and chimneys standing. On the left of the main gate, to the south inside the compound are a large number of brick barracks and utility buildings in separate subdivided fenced off compounds that were used as a women's camp and to otherwise segregate some groups of prisoners in barracks apart from the larger northern compound sections. Those few I looked closely at were not open now, but I believe have been in the past.

The rail line continues westward about 900 meters and ends near the ruins of buildings referred to as Crematorium 2 and Crematorium 3. Crematorium 1 is at the smaller Auschwitz campsite where the main museum is located and contains the gas chamber most tourists see.

Crematorium 2 is alleged to have been the site of the greatest number of homicidal gassings of any of the claimed gas chambers, followed by Crematorium 3, with lesser numbers claimed for Crematoriums 4 and 5, the ruins of which are located about 600 meters to the north. The ruins of two other alleged gas chambers referred to as Bunker 1 and Bunker 2 and also known as the red house and white house, having been adapted from small farm houses, are located in a lightly forested swampy area about 900 meters walk along tracks to the north west of Crematoriums 2 and 3. All of these buildings are outside the inner camp compounds housing the various barracks blocks, but within the outer perimeter fence.

Near Cremas 4 & 5 is the only intact building which is said to have been a reception center for new prisoners which contained areas for searching belongings, disinfecting clothing in a mix of hot air chambers and steam autoclaves, and for inmates to shower. However in the "shower room" there is no plumbing or shower heads. The building also contains large numbers of photographs of persons alleged to have been prisoners of the camp, as a display of "evidence", but what is it actually evidence of? That the people depicted in the photos were prisoners at the camp maybe, but there seems to be no attempt to correlate the individuals with camp records or explain the origin of the photos, which are generally 'family album" type of pictures, not pictures of individuals in a prison camp setting. Presumably they are pictures taken from the belongings of persons who passed through the camp admission process. Like so much of the evidence at the camp it seems to be designed more to elicit an emotional response from the visitor than to provide any conclusive proof of any particular facts. Some micro biographical stories of a small number of the persons pictured are also displayed briefly describing where they came from and how they came to Birkenau, sometimes what became of them afterwards.

The most interesting single building must be the remains of the alleged gas chamber of Crematorium 2, for here the greatest number of victims are claimed to have perished. The buildings are said to have been demolished on January 26th, 1945 by the Nazis to hide their purpose, but the demolition is not complete, as considerable sections of the concrete roof of the gas chamber remain, damaged and collapsed, but still structurally clearly recognizable. I am unaware of the evidence that points to the claimed date of demolition. Also it seems that the only buildings at the camp to have been so demolished are the four crematoria numbers 2 to 5 and the two "bunkers" 1 and 2 also known as the red house and the white house. The considerable numbers of barracks of which now only foundations and chimneys remain were apparently demolished later in unrelated events.

Several holes can be seen in the demolished concrete slab roof, but they are obviously holes that have been crudely broken through the slab after it was built, and not properly cut out or made during the construction of the slab. The supporting concrete pillars have in several places penetrated the slab when it fell when the building was blown up, and they are clearly solid reinforced concrete pillars, not hollow. The same applies to crema 3. The holocaust mythology relates some eyewitness accounts that claim that gas pellets were thrown down through holes in the roof of the chambers into hollow columns, others simply refer to pellets thrown down through four holes in the roof. The holes to be seen are clearly not original holes made at the time of constriction. Reinforcing bars are protruding from the roughly hacked out holes that look like they have been crudely made with a pneumatic drill at some time after the building was constructed, or even after it was blown up. No original holes are there, and the columns are not hollow.

One of the brick barracks buildings, located in one of the smaller fenced compounds south of the railway line running into the camp from the main gate is of special interest. This is the delousing facility of the camp. Through a gate in the fence beside a brown wooden hut next to the rail line, about half way from the main gate to the end of the line, there is a road fenced on both sides between rows of brick barracks. The first building on the right, to the west of this side road, is of particular interest because it contains a gas chamber used for disinfection of clothing and other belongings of inmates. The building is T shaped, unlike most of the brick barracks blocks which are rectangular. On the external walls extensive intense blue staining of some of the bricks can be seen in randomly shaped patches. This is "iron blue" resulting from hydrogen cyanide reacting with Iron compounds in the mortar and bricks. The staining has permeated the bricks from the inside, where the delousing chambers used Zyclon B, and the pattern suggests that the porosity of the mortar and bricks varies somewhat accounting for the unevenness of the blue staining. It is unaffected by weathering after sixty years, and is a classic telltale indicator of the use of hydrogen cyanide (from Zyclon B, the same chemical alledged to have been used in the gas chambers to kill people. On one external wall, closest to the fence, are two rusted metal ventilation openings for the exhaust fans used to clear the chamber of toxic gas after each use. The building is not open in 2006, but has been in previous years, and has been photographed by others on the inside, where the walls of the gas chamber are heavily stained blue, as are the interiors, and external walls, of similar disinfestation chambers in other concentration camps where Zyclon B was used. As all of the delousing chambers in every concentration camp that used Zyclon B have similar blue staining, one would expect to find similar deposits of blue stains inside the execution "gas chambers" or on some of the concrete or bricks amongst the rubble of them, but there isn't.

I observed no visible blue staining on any of the ruins of any of the alleged homicidal gas chambers 2, 3, 4 and 5, or bunkers 1 and 2 at Birkenau. Observations made by others under the fallen concrete roof of crema 2 in the past also noted no blue staining, and samples of the concrete chemically analysed showed only minute traces compared to samples from disinfestation gas chambers. Nor is there any sign of Iron Blue staining in the gas chamber at Auschwitz at crematorium 1. the one shown to tourists on the tour of the Auschwits camp. In Crematorium 5 some small sections of the brick walls of the above ground homicidal gas chambers are still standing. The location of the several small gas chambers in the ruin is clearly indicated on the plan displayed next to the building. There is no visible blue staining of the standing brick walls, on the concrete floor, or on any of the fallen bricks visible in piles in the building.

I understand that the museum authorities attribute the lack of Iron Blue stains in the Auschwitz Crematorium 1 gas chamber to the affects of weathering over time, an explanation made untenable by the remaining blue stains on the external walls of the building I photographed after sixty years of full exposure to the elements. Iron blue is very stable chemically and weathering, inside gas chambers protected from the elements is not a credible explanation for its non existence. Other explanations that have been offered by the museum to explain the lack of blue stains and low levels of chemically detectable cyanide residues are that the amounts of cyanide used in homicidal gas chambers were low, or that their use was for a relatively short time each day. These explanations do not stand any scientific scrutiny and contradict claimed eyewitness accounts of rapid gassing and large numbers of victims, some claiming round the clock operation of gas chambers. The classic holocaust stories of homicidal gas chambers do not stand up to any rigorous critical inquiry.

While we were at Birkenau there were large numbers of young uniformed Israelis visiting who paraded around the grounds of the camp holding aloft large Israeli flags. At the international memorial site between crematoriums 2 and 3 there were several memorial ceremonies in progress simultaneously, one involving the young uniformed Israeli visitors, another a more elderly group of choristers engaged in singing songs. Clearly the memorialisation of the holocaust has for many people taken on a pseudo religious aspect. The holocaust has become a form of religion, and a religion can not be rebutted by factual evidence, because people simply believe what they choose to believe regardless of any contrary evidence. So as one of the revisionist historians has remarked, the holocaust legend will never be dispelled because it has adopted this religious overtone. The facts have become subservient to the dogma, as in any religion.

No forensic or genetic evidence, if such existed, could ever convince committed Christians that Jesus Christ was not the son of God, no matter how scientifically implausible that claim is, or was shown to be, by for instance DNA evidence that showed Chris's ancestry, if relics were to be analyzed using modern scientific technique. The Interesting distinction is that there is no media outcry or legal or personal reprisals against persons who investigate the Christ religion, as distinct from the sanctions of those who investigate the holocaust religion.

Why is it so? What kind of truth is it that has to rely on legal sanctions to persecute anyone who speaks out against it?

April 29, 2006 Saturday Oswiecim Poland. Today we visited the Aushwitz Sate Museum, the site most visited by tourists.

Many of the two story brick barracks buildings are open and and contain exhibits dealing with the history of the concentration camp and aspects of the war. Some contain the offices and archives of the museum and are not open to the public but are accessible by arrangement for historical research.

The first we came to, and which proved to be of particular interest, was the barracks housing the Polish - German - Russian conflict section of the museum, dealing with the invasion of Poland in 1939 by first Germany and then a few days later by Russia, under the terms of the notorious Molitov-Ribbenthrop Pact, and the subsequent occupation. I was unaware that this exhibit existed at Auschwitz, because all of the literature and propaganda about the place deals almost exclusively with its role in the mass extermination of Jews. I say that it proved particularly interesting, not because of its subject matter, but because the presentation of evidence regarding that subject matter is strikingly distinguished from the other displays about the claimed mass exterminations in gas chambers. The Polish campaign exhibit presents numerous pictures and copies of documents, Nazi posters and proclamations of the time, and newspaper pages, which place the claims on a more historically sound footing by providing identifiable and verifiable sources.

The Katyn massacre of perhaps as many as 12,000 Polish officers is well covered, showing with no doubt that it was clear in 1943 that the Russians were responsible, not the Germans, and that there were comprehensive reports of the findings of mass graves in Polish language papers, verified by the Polish Red Cross, and supported by exhumation of documents from the bodies of copses. Letters written by Red Cross officials to relatives of the dead giving details of personal property found on the bodies are displayed. Yet despite all this, the Germans were accused of this atrocity in documentary "evidence" submitted by the Russians at the 1946 Nuremberg trials. Although the judges made no findings in the judgments on the matter, reflecting the doubts about the Russian documentary "evidence" presented, the accusations were allowed to stand, and were published in the official proceedings of the IMT, in a way that clearly implied through the lack of any reference to evidence in rebuttal that the Germans were guilty. Only in 1989 was the truth officially admitted in the west when Michael Gorbachov officially admitted Russian responsibility. Here is a proven example of falsification of charges and evidence against the Germans at the Nurnberg International Military Tribunal, the proceedings and findings of which are held out as important elements of the evidence proving the mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers.

Here in the Auschwitz State Museum is evident a clear distinction between the verifiable and the non verifiable charges of German war crimes, the Polish campaign display is credible, because it has a balance of sources of corroborating evidence about the German atrocities. It is of course totally biased to the Polish side, and fails to mention both pre war provocation against German civilians by Poles, and the equally hideous atrocities vengefully metered out to the German side after the war, but it is at least superficially convincing, by multi source corroborative forms of evidence, that what the Poles claim to have suffered they did indeed suffer. Were the Germans ever permitted the luxury of a similar display they too could probably make a similar case for the barbarity of the enemy. Such matters are covered in James Barques "Other Losses", a book about the German suffering inflicted by the allies after the end of the war.

The histographic proof offered in relation to the Polish campaigns of the war is unlike the rest of the holocaust museum dealing primarily with the alleged mass extermination of mainly, but not exclusively, Jews in homicidal gas chambers, which places reliance heavily on emotional images and statements and accusations unsupported by corroborative forensic, documentary or archeological evidence. Numerous photos of camp inmates, "mug shots" in camp prisoner uniform, particularly of the many executed by the SS firing squads for various offenses against the occupation or for resistance activities within the concentration camp are displayed in one of the Auschwitz barracks. In another barracks there are piles of shoes and piles of brushes, piles of artificial legs, piles of old suitcases, many with names painted on them, and piles of eye glasses, are presented without comment other than they are claimed to be confiscated belongings of persons passing through the camp, but what do they prove, nothing. For they have no historical provenance, they are just piles of inanimate objects. The "evidence" of mass homicidal gassings lacks an adequately diverse historical provenance, such as documentary support, forensic or archaeological evidence, and is totally dependent on contradictory eyewitness evidence, many disproven or containing technically impossible observations, and confessions under torture of dubious reliability.

Independent forensic or archaeological investigation of the sites is not allowed, and what has been done by revisionist historians has resulted in vicious personal attacks and legal persecution of the individuals responsible, while their scientific claims stand virtually unchallenged by any cogent technical rebuttal in support of the mass gassing claims, which are central to classical holocaust mythology. The results of the only archaeological ground drilling of claimed mass burial sites at Auschwitz, undertaken by a contractor for the Auschwitz State Museum, have never been published. At Belzak in the late 1990's forensic ground drilling results contradicted eyewitness statements regarding mass exterminations. At Treblinka investigations of claimed mass burial sites with ground penetrating radar did not support the claims.

I found the Auschwitz swimming pool, now described on the nearby notice as a "fire brigade reservoir constructed in the form of a swimming pool". The museum now also acknowledges the existence of a camp orchestra, with the explanation that the sole reason for its existence was to play as inmates marched out the main gate to go to work so that they could keep in step and so be easier to count.

We saw the chimney constructed by the Poles after the war next to the Auschwitz crematorium, but which has no connection to the crematorium ovens, it is just a brick chimney standing alone separated from the building by a gap of about a meter. We saw the famous Crematorium 1 with its gas chamber, with the flimsy wooden door with a 1/3 glass panel in the top, it's still there, an object seemingly incompatible with this room being a homicidal gas chamber, but no one seems to notice the inconsistency. There is no visible sign of Iron Blue staining on the interior walls of the alleged gas chamber.

The Poles (director of the Auschwitz State Museum Dr. Franicic Piper in an interview video made by the young Jewish intellectual David Cole in the 1990's) admited that they "reconstructed" this building as a gas chamber after WW2, to be what they claimed it to be (a gas chamber) before the Germans made it into an air raid shelter in the latter stages of the war, and transferred the alleged mass executions to Birkenau. Despite this being the truth of the matter, according to the museum director, historian David Irving was fined in Germany for saying just that during a lecture there some years ago. When it comes to the holocaust, truth is no defense, truth does not matter, truth is irrelevant, you must not question, you must only believe, or else! Truly the masses are sheeple.

Having been to see Auschwitz and Birkenau I find generally the observations made by historical revisionists which I have read over the years to be accurate in relation to every physical aspect of the sites that I observed, and saw nothing new that supports the conventional view of the holocaust.

The road from Osweicim to Krakow is even worse than anything so far seen in Czech. Pot holes, Pole holes, and patches, in many places there isn't any of the original road left, it's all patches and holes, and it is narrow. You do have to be extremely careful driving to avoid the minority of really big holes and broken edges. I'm not irrationally afraid of bad roads, but I'm glad we don't intend driving any further into Poland than Krakow, driving just isn't a pleasure here.

We were delayed starting off after lunch as our Dconex CF3700 Compact Flash GPS unit suddenly ceased to operate and I spent some time trying to fix the problem, reinstalling software and drivers and finally gave up. We were able to use our portable Garmin Etrex GPS plugged into the laptop's serial port to use our mapping system to navigate. The Problem with the Etrex is it has no external antenna connection and because our van has a bed over the cabin which overhangs the windscreen, the GPS can't see all of the sky and one loosed fix periodically. However it worked well enough to find the Carrefour. After arrival I tried again to fix it, reinstalled software six times, changed com ports, ran several GPS programs and windows Telnet to check for output, but it seems that the GPS unit itself has developed a fault all of a sudden. The computer detects it and can connect but there is no NMEA output signal and the indicator LED lamp glows only faintly instead of brightly as usual. I disassembled the unit as much as possible and unplugged everything and sprayed the connection pins and sockets with moisture displacing penetrating oil, as this often helps electrical connections, but to no avail. I can only conclude that our GPS suffered a mysterious sudden death. I'll buy another one as having the external antenna is such an advantage over the Etrex in this application.

We were aware of a campsite on the southern approaches to Krakow, but we found a large Carrefour hypermarket and decided to park there for the night where no one bothered us. Except for some unseen construction site which was using jack hammers all night and was near enough to be occasionally disturbing.

April 30 2006 Sunday. Krakow Poland. After a not entirely quiet but otherwise undisturbed night, we set off to drive into Krakow as being a Sunday traffic was fairly light, and after several circuits in search were able to find a place to park west of the old town on Pilsudskiego. Cars park on the wide footpath and we did the same only 900 meters from the center of the old town. Krakow has a very large central square which is undergoing extensive renovation in 2006. In the center is the Cloth Hall, which now sells mainly tourist trinkets. There are a number of interesting buildings, although overall the city does not have quite the architectural splendor of Prague. Today the square and the area around the castle and cathedral, the Wawel area was very crowded, mainly with locals on a day out for the long weekend, tomorrow being the May Day holiday. If international tourists also discover Krakow in large numbers it would become altogether far too crowded.

The square is ringed with tourist restaurants, too many, that intrude into the square, and we couldn't help notice the ubiquitous salad and chips being served, and yes the prices were too high, but down a side street running off the square we noticed lots of locals queuing up buying Kebabs from a hole in the wall for ZL5.99 (about €1.60) and decided to try. Really nice food, and the usual rule held good, buy food where you see a lot of locals (truck drivers at truck stops etc.) buying and you can't go wrong. You will get good quality and quantity. If you go to places patronized almost exclusively by tourists you will often (the problem is unpredictability) get always expensive and often undersized portions of dog food, with a salad usually limited to a limp lettuce leaf and a couple of slices of tomato, and chips.

By "expensive" I refer to the price standards of the country in question. Prices might not seem too high if you compare them to "back home" but that isn't the point. When I go to another country I expect to be able to buy things at the same rates that locals do, not pay London or New York prices just because I am a tourist, as so many ordinary tourists do.

Krakow has a circle of parkland around the old city center which is on the site of the old city moat. Not much survives of the city walls, but one short piece and gate has been restored. Extensive roadworks are going on all over the town as the city catches up with the backlog of badly needed improvements after the long years of Communist neglect. With improvements to the roads and other restorations Krakow will be an attractive spot to visit in a few years on a campervan tour of eastern Europe.

May 01, 2006 Monday. Krakow Poland. We returned to the Carrefour carpark and this time all was quiet during the night, no road construction noises. The road south from Krakow to Nowy Targ and on to the Slovakian border is generally very good, and is undergoing substantial improvement and duplication in some sections in 2006. We actually found a roadside parking place beside road 7 where you could park for the night. Nearing the border it all becomes a local tourist area, with roadside stalls selling sheep skins and tourist trinkets. Being a public holiday thousands of people were heading for the Tatra Mountains for a day's outing and there were traffic jambs near the border. Border formalities again were only a passport check, no customs or vehicle hassles. The road into Slovakia towards Zdair was in fairly good order, better than most minor roads in Czech or Poland, so far! The Tatras are a small range of mountains comprising part of the Carpathian Mountain chain. Not quite the Alps in size or spectacle, but they are very popular with local tourists and skiers.

As the weather is cold and raining we decided not to linger in the Tatra Mountains, as apart from this they are a modest attraction of mainly local appeal, and not of great interest to the international tourist as are the Alps or Pyrenees. We pressed on to Levoca a small picturesque and well preserved town, worth a visit if you are in the area. With the Eastern European countries still using their own currencies there is the hassle of exchange, at the border crossing the exchange office did not want to take Czech money in exchange for Slovakian tender. Being a holiday the banks and exchange offices are closed. So we have yet no Slovakian funny money, and in Lavoca they wanted SC100 (about €2.50) to park at 4.30PM but it's fee after 5PM, so we went back out of town to a SONP we had seen on the way in. We will return tomorrow to see the town.

The roads in Slovakia are so far generally better than minor roads in Czech or Poland, but you still have to watch for big potholes. The lack of sufficient rest areas, roadside parking or viewing points is still chronic and detracts from the enjoyment of motoring here. The countryside is more interesting and picturesque than much we had passed through in Czech.

However Eastern Europe is clearly failing to hold our attention. You can see the sights of a town, but apart from "campgrounds" miles from nowhere, and often too expensive, the lack of campervan tourist facilities is a very great drawback. It is clear that we will complete our intended circuit of eastern Europe, in much less time than we have available, and will spent most of our time in the more campervan friendly western European countries.

The fact that we will complete it al all is more the result of a now or never decision, we are here now and as long as the wheels don't fall off from too many potholes, we have resolved to do the majority of the circuit we planned, although we have already cut out much of the planned meandering in Czech Republic. There are some interesting sights, but having already toured in western Europe extensively we find there so many pleasant places,often free or minimal cost, such as the FREE French Aires de Services provided by many villages, that this area of Europe with its FEE mentality just can't compete for our time or money. The camp grounds are more expensive, but of lower quality, and even the tourist offices want to charge for every useful piece of information. I'm afraid they have to learn the lesson, we are voting with our wheels, a quick look around at whatever we can see free of charge, then westward ho we go.

The decision to do a tour of eastern Europe was one made after extensive campervan touring of western Europe in 2000 (five months covering most of western Europe), 2004 a three month tour (Benelux, Germany and France) and 2005 three month tour of France Spain & Portugal, and to any person contemplating campervan touring here for the first time, I would recommend that you include in your first tour France, Spain, Portugal, Italy (as far south as Rome) Austria, Germany and perhaps Benelux or Denmark. That circuit alone can easily occupy four to six months, which is more than enough for most people. Our experience also includes three campervan tours of the UK in 1994, 1997 with a rented VW transporter campervan and three months touring in with our present van in 2004 and a five month campervan tour of the United States of America in 2002, also with our own fully owned campervan, so judge for yourself what our opinions are worth,

SONP on an old road loop beside the highway near Lavoca Slovakia. This is a one X SONP, about the only kind you find in Eastern Europe, and for this area this is good, so you will know what to expect.

The Eastern European countries may be a more attractive campervan touring proposition in a few years (post 2006), when they have further improved their roads, and hopefully learned to provide rest areas, campervan service points, water and sewerage dumpsites and centrally located attractive parking areas for vans in towns, either free or for one or two Euro a night, like the French are doing now. Until then, I find myself reluctantly unable to recommend a campervan tour of Eastern Europe, and that explains why we see so relatively few camper vans on the road here.

I must stress that the existence of conventional "campsites" is not a satisfactory amenity for the campervan tourist. Campervans do not require all the facilities of a full campsite, we have our own showers and toilets and only need a water tap and a waste dumpsite and parking close to town centers. We bring business to towns and villages if they in return provide the basic facilities we want at low cost, or as so many French villages do free. The French are doing it right, everyone else has to learn from them.

May 02, 2006 Tuesday. Levoca Slovakia. Traffic was busier during the night than we expected, apparently the May day holiday had reduced the amount considerably yesterday. We drove into Levoca, (parking SC20/hour or SC60/day) and exchanged Czech money for Slovakian. Levoca is a well preserved interesting small town that is undergoing renovation, and is worth a short visit if you are touring the district.

Next we came to Spiske Podhadre and its Hrad or castle, being the largest (ruined) castle in Slovakia. Parking SC40, then a 1Km walk up the hill on a muddy track to the Hrad, where admission was a further SC100, so we didn't bother, as it is just a ruined castle and we have become a bit blasé about them. You need to be selective on what you pay to see, and we were contented with the views from outside. Best views of the castle are from a distance.

Travelling on toward Kosice we passed through an area inhabited by Gipsies. The squalor and filth of their hideous tiny ramshackle hovels was a shock to behold, and the people themselves almost all appeared dirty, unwashed and unkempt. Dark skinned and black haired, they are a striking contrast to the majority of fair skinned Slovakians. Dirty dusty children sat by the roadside, and youths roamed along the road, as apparently the children do not regularly attend school. That people could exist like this in Europe was really a revelation to us, such scenes are truly only to be expected in the poorest third world backwaters. Peasants are one thing, peasants are usually clean and hard working people, farmers and simple honest folk, for these people were far far below the class of peasants and seemed to have made for themselves a hell on earth.

That they make their own hell, that they do it to themselves, is the fundamental truth that bleeding heart armchair do-gooders fail to grasp. These Gipsy people remind me of the Aborigines in Australia, who also create their own similar hell on earth, and arm chair do-gooders want to blame all their continuing problems on white mans oppression.

The roads of Slovakia continue to be good, except for the occasional Pole Holes, which I take to be illegal immigrants, that have somehow slipped in across the border.

Kosice is an unappealing industrial city with blocks of gray "communist" flats, an architectural lack of style that is a monument to the lack of aesthetic concerns of the communist regimes of eastern Europe, for you see the same drab and unimaginative structures all over Czech, Poland, Slovakia and East Germany. Decay and neglect, a basic level of grim functionality devoid of beauty and artistic merit, stagnation, brutality and oppression that is the communist legacy to Eastern Europe. The artistic sterility of the communist era stands in stark contrast to the architectural grandeur which is Europe's legacy from almost every era back to Roman times. Now they have to restore everything, and it's happening slowly.

That such a political system, communism, was brought into being as a means of imposing a Jewish capitalist takeover of Russia, as a step to world domination, is largely unknown real history. Lenin and his 300 core thugs were trained and financed by Jewish bankers in New York, sent into Europe through Switzerland and transported through wartime Germany in 1917 in a sealed train, to foment the revolution in Russia. On the way their ship the SS Christina was arrested in Canada, but they were released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after diplomatic pressure from the USA and Great Britain. Sounds too strange to be true? Truth is stranger than fiction. You don't believe it? Then you don't know real history my friend, you have only heard the popularized propaganda, but the truth is out there on the Internet. That arrogant bid for global political power plunged not only Russia after 1917, but all of Eastern Europe after 1945 into fifty years of political hell and economic stagnation. So if you ever wondered why Hitler had such a problem with Jews, here is a starting point to begin to understand the real history of the two world wars. History that has been mostly carefully hidden, but is now being told on the Internet with references to official records, books and newspaper reports of the times in question, that are now never referred to in the mass media, but which prove the reality of these hidden truths beyond any doubt. The fact that you find this hard to believe is due to you having been fed a distorted, fabricated and incomplete view of history. What you have been taught as truth is in reality a fabric of lies. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Communism was plan A, which failed under the weight of its own oppressions. Globalization is plan B.

May 03, 2006 Wednesday. Zadiel Slovakia. After leaving Kosice and heading towards Rosnava, on a generally good road, we came to the village of Zadiel where we knew there to be a modest canyon which is part of a small national park. Here we found the best SONP we have come across since leaving France. This is a XXX grade stopping place, so far unique in Eastern Europe. Tables bins and a small clear fast flowing stream are found beside the small paved parking area at the entrance of the gorge. It is about a kilometer off the highway through the small village of Zadiel, west of Kosice.

Zadiel Canyon NP parking area. For Eastern Europe such a place to park overnight is a rare occurrence indeed. Be aware that thieves frequent this carpark.

There is a nice walk of several kilometers up through the 300 meter deep gorge and a number of tracks at the top to various villages. We took about four hours over the walk. A number of cars from Poland and other countries parked beside us during the day. When we returned to our van we found the alarm system had been activated although it didn't appear that the van had been broken into. Sharon noticed two men acting suspiciously and soon after another vehicle alarm went off and the offenders fled into the forest. Soon after some people from the village drove up obviously attracted by the alarm.

They spoke no English or German but they indicated they had called the police and we were able, through sign language, to indicate to them that there had been two men, what colours they wore and the direction they had fled. Some time later a policeman arrived, looked around and talked to the villagers, but it was too late to catch the offenders.

This illustrates the risk of leaving a campervan at any place where tourists, particularly forefingers, regularly leave vehicles unattended for a predictably long period of time. We were put off our guard because Zadiel is such a small village and only half a dozen or so foreign cars had been here when we arrived, but it was enough to attract thieves. Fortunately the two thieves must have been complete amateurs because of the suspicious way they acted, and by activating the alarms through rocking the vehicles instead of just quickly smashing a window and grabbing anything on view. Subsequently we found a few small scratches near one of the quarter vent windows where they had apparently attempted to force an entry, and in the process set off our alarm, so we were very lucky not to have been robbed.

May 04, 2006 Thursday. Zadiel Canyon Slovakia. Rain overnight gave way to a sunny day again. Yesterday we spoke to a Pole whose car alarm had also been activated by the thieves and he commented that the winter had been unusually long and cold and that the trees were two or three weeks lake coming into leaf, confirming what we had been told in Germany. So the particularly bad cold and wet start to our tour we had endured in early April is unusual. Fortunately now the weather has greatly improved and most days are warm and pleasant.

We drove west through Rosnava and stopped at the Tesco supermarket for bread and some local cakes. Bread is available in a wonderful variety of rolls and loaves in Czech, Poland and Slovakia at very cheap prices. Beer too is very cheap, even more so than in Germany. I was able to buy 500 ml bottles of about 5% strength beer for SK5.70 each, which is about €0.15 a bottle or about A$0.23. All the brands of beer I tried are good, and any preference would be a matter of personal taste. We bought three varieties of local cakes at the supermarket, but only one was at all palatable, the cakes are not so good in Eastern Europe compared to the varieties available in France, but there the variety of bread is superior.

We used our spare Slovakian currency to purchase LPG and Diesel, which are considerably cheaper in Slovakia than in Hungary, and crossed into Hungary near Banreve with the now usual lack of border problems, just a passport check and a stamp that only took a few minutes.

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"The ignorance of the masses is profound."

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed, is for good men to do nothing". - Edmund Burke