My Good Doctor – the naughtiest Panda,

Written in parts when and where I could – bear with the scrawl.

So aye…

Onward – good Christian soldier chainsaw.

So, I’m in Krakow.

Not entirely what I expected. Indeed, how can one city have such a concentration of cool pubs…

Damn I did it again…

I can’t seem to talk to people here without accidentally using inappropriate Holocaust related words and sentences like “concentration” “starving” “where are the showers” “it was a gas man” “Do you know the way to the train station?” “Typhus epidemic” and “Isn’t it terrible what Israel are doing in Palestine?”

They just seem to fall from my mouth into polite conversation and I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because you can tell the people who’ve come from a visit to the camp. That when you do, just accidentally use the wrong phrasing, like for instance, having just freshly arrived at your hostel and being in need of a clean, you ask directions to the showers. There is the quiet sneaking sensation of eyes slowly pausing from whatever they were on and peering up over their guidebooks suspiciously at you.

The sense of verbal paranoia is never too far away and I never really did do well under authority be it moral, social or political.

I am, if nothing else, the out-stretched, grasping hand. So it’s with a certain amount of devious yet righteous glee that like a crazed social Casey Jones, I’ll pull the levers marked “Crimes Against Humanity” and ask each tourist about their culture’s past.

If only, just to see.

Now that’s out of the way.

Running from Dublin as if it was the end of times and the only thing I could aptly repeat was the name of a ‘Jimmy Cake’ album.

“Dublin Gone. Everybody Dead.”

The wanderlust hits with an arm-scratching itch I remember from too many downers. Yet tugs deeper than any lung starved crack-thirst or deep belly meth-rumble-hunger. The worst of all addictions bar grief, it’s not something you can physically assuage with something else like drink or food. It is the encapsulating of your essence in two giant hands that once they have you softly and gently within their grasp begin to work you like an executive stress-ball. But you cannot scratch the arms of your mind nor kill its internal thought mumble-need. And what starts as a mumble slowly becomes the roaring of a heavily pissed off sea. And in the end, you catch yourself kicking off your boots and hastily unbuttoning your shirt before with a screamed

“Fuck It”

you realize you’re already running and rip it off your back in the seconds just before you and the waves crash into each other.

I arrived on Saturday having not properly slept since some time Wednesday. This is probably the reason that traveling from the airport by bus to a rickety old train and on to Krakow, whilst surrounded by babbling Irish tourists, seemed so jarring and vaguely unreal.

I always find train journeys peculiar. As I am watching the changes in scenery roll by, my mind is also usually lost on its only internal journey of memory, imagination and introspection. Perhaps it’s the rhythm and pace of the locomotive acting like a sub-threshold hypnotic.

It fell to Krakow because it was the cheapest flight to Slavic Europe that I could find. It fell to Krakow because – I’m not going to lie even though I could – Polish beer is almost all I drink and Polish women are amongst the most wondrous on the planet. Perhaps its because so much of my trip was fueled by Scott Walker singing Jacques Brel songs, that my mind cannot continue that line of thought without leaning in slightly sleazy to slur

“Ladies! Don’t leave my mountain piece tonight! Understand I may not put it right, but I am just a man of simple pleasures. Fellas! Don’t leave my mountain piece tonight! You know I’m right!”

All those reasons – and Auschwitz.

I was to hook up with this vegan Pansexual Polish Canadian friend of mine and her boyish non-drinking non-smoking vegan friend. Coastally located, she was showing her visitor Krakow. It sounds worse than it was. Showing an impulse matrix close to my own, the VPPC was brave enough to organize me a bed in the same hostel she was staying in. Knowing what I knew she knew about me, I probably would have pretended I’d run away with the circus. Still though, I was greatly appreciative.

Knowing the VPPC and her friend would be in Auschwitz the day I arrived. I’d resolved to walk from the train station to the hostel in order to see more of the city. Great idea, no? Real organic. Except, I hadn’t factored in the not sleeping and being completely wired on an industrial amount of ginseng and guarana. So as soon as I had a good proper blast of winter Polish air, I made the wooden legged march to a taxi. All would have been fine at this point had the man not had what looked like a small dog stuffed into the sleeping position then glued to his dashboard. This of course, pushed me back into the depths of my seat, my head twisted away, staring intently out the window, like some fall-out from a Stanford experiment. I didn’t want to look at the dog, I don’t want to look at the dog, please don’t make me look at the fucking dog.

When I couple that fucking dog with the fact we had a run through of some of the more slightly introspective and maudlin hits from the late sixties, seventies and eighties; such as ‘Without a little help from my friends’, ‘The Rose’, ‘In the air tonight’ (thankfully he skipped that one), some Roy Orbison and various hits from the bloated council of white rock stars who just won’t die. Yes Collins, I’m looking at you, and of course ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ (the Melanie version). By the time we’d reached the hostel, I had looked so deep within, accidentally found myself singing along with Zorba the Polish taxi driver. Contemplated life, the universe, the evils humans commit against other humans and all the mistakes I’d made in life; that I was exhausted and ready to go home, having accomplished everything I needed from a trip away. All by the time I was stumbling through snow toward the check-in for my hostel.

Seeing Krakow in the daylight on my first day would be limited to that taxi drive, as the moment I’d hidden everything of value in my bed and stuffed the rest into the locker, I passed out. I awoke later, screaming in lyrical tongues, a mixture of Journey and Boston lyrics only to find that it wasn’t a piano solo but the alarm on my phone.

Considering I knew the VPPC from only a couple of brief conversations online prior to leaving, the ensuing evening was fairly interesting. Granted I don’t know why I have a sudden propensity for attracting lesbian vegan extremists lately, but I’m not one to complain – everything is an experience and a story. As you’re always telling me, “Do wonderful things to beautiful people.” Or is it “Do beautiful things to wonderful people.” I can never remember. But I can say, there is something almost shocking when you meet genuinely good people. I guess though, like a sort of social William Munny; I’ve always been lucky in the order when it comes to meeting folks.

For some reason guppy, VPPC’s boyish (mostly) lesbian friend took an immediate shine to me and kept touching and rubbing my head. I’m not sure why, perhaps it was a latent aura I never noticed where people are filled with a deep desire to rub my head for luck. Course it could just be some sort of murderous impulse, where people reach for my head intending evil then get somehow soothed out of it by the fuzzy sensation of a near shaved head.

They took me for vegan food, which I deeply enjoyed and found reminiscent of African flavors. After they had armed themselves with bagels, we retired to the depths of Krakow, to drink, talk and make fun of social sexual hang-ups. I can’t help but wonder, how it is vegans seem to be able to only live on things like bagels with peanut butter and jam and not get sick. Are they living on some sort of karma; “Oh you didn’t eat the cute bunny, here have another six weeks.” I don’t get it. I thought my diet of alcohol, coffee, tobacco and one square every day or two or three or whenever I get around to it, was bad. Just why is it I never seem to meet these skinny vegans people talking about, only plump ones, granted plump ones with those weird mineral deficiency lumps around their eyes but still, plump ones all the same. Still though, it’ll always be the meat for me – I’d prefer a relatively young age of dying than sitting in a chair, still regular but pissing myself and unable to talk without sounding like a drunken docklands hooker giving a blowjob.

It is hard to describe Krakow; were I not a fundamentalist atheist, I’d say it is as close to drinker heaven as something so abstract can ever be described. I’ve never been in a city with so many good bars per square inch. I can only think you and lads would love it here. Within a two-hour period I enjoyed the irony of drinking mojitos in the dead of winter in Poland in a Cuban bar as I did drinking whisky in a dub and reggae bar as I was listening to Jazz before finding myself sitting in a communist tavern under a massive picture of a somehow leering Lenin. Although all the bars were stand-out, one in particular deserves mention. ‘Alchemy’ – though the bar probably hates me now, it provided a source of endless booze related love for me and some of my funniest experiences in Krakow, don’t worry I’ll get to them, madness, shame and all.

Polish food is good – everywhere you turn there is meat, sausages, pork knuckles, shoulders. Slightly like Eastern European Korean food, it can in parts be described kind of like ‘The Meatening – “There can be only meat” and as such I couldn’t help thinking of yourself, Phil, Greg and the northerner whenever I ended up staring at the half a pig or cow lying on my plate.

At some point in the blur that is Krakow (my hostel is beside quite possibly the third greatest bar I’ve ever laid eyes on) I ended up in the salt mines. Which is one of the oldest tourist attractions in Europe – having had tourists arriving since around the 1400s. They’re something I think your mind would appreciate – not just for the sheer testament to human ingenuity and humanity itself – but for the fact about 138 meters below the Earth, they have a bar, in a great hall carved out of rock salt. It’s very difficult to describe something like the salt mine with all its intricately carved churches and hundreds of steps. Especially when you know all its beauty is really just down to bored miners with no training in sculptor.

Alone on the trip and surrounded by snuggling couples and groups of tourists, I found myself with no one to bounce off. This can be kind of hard somewhere like the salt mines, as there is so much you’d want to turn to someone and comment on, either on the wow factor or just to crack a joke. So I turned to the dark side and became the most reviled type of tourists, the tour guide’s pet. That’s right man; I was that asshole who always walks ahead with the guide, hogging their attention. That fucker everyone glares at as they’re transported back to childhood memories of school. And you know what? I reveled in it.

It began innocently enough – just asking questions about the mines. Then, not having a camera and not bothered with pictures, it moved to keeping up with her as she moved on to the next chamber. Pretty soon we were comparing drink recipes, trading drunk stories and then she was telling me how drinking in the mine is like drinking at high altitude and how when taking the elevator up, you’ll end up shit-faced. She started it though, suggesting we get tequila shots after the tour.

Ignoring a lot of the usual tourist stuff aside from the imperatives like the salt mine and the castle – I’ve spent a lot of my time walking around the city listening to Scott Walker sing Jacques Brel songs, which seems to add a very surreal if proper quality to life here. Contrary to what people had told me, I’ve found the Polish incredibly friendly; granted they have a hard chocolate shell you need to smash through with a grin, a punched out open hand and a near manically screamed “Howsye!” but once you’re through the shell, they’re a good people.

The Castle is another story – it’s quite easy to see why they’ve been invaded so many times – no bloody guards.

With Guppy complaining of smoke induced headaches and sore eyes, the last night with the VPPC went somewhat slow as we searched for bars that weren’t smoky. I did my best not to smoke, but ye know, there’s only so much charity within me. It looked like it might have ended on a bum note as we continually approached bars only to find them closing or too filled with smoke for Guppy. That was, at least, until, the VPPC discovered ‘Alchemy’ – thus would begin my own private war with one of the best bars I’ve ever come across.

See, when we went in, they had these projectors streaming images and passages on walls and tables. There was a flat-screen by the door showing this strange mini-loop of a train station with a train always just never managing to arrive before disappearing. A bucket with a tap floated in the middle of one of the rooms, a lit-up cadaver under a white sheet floated in another corner and strange almost industrial ambient music broke itself up with shouting, talking, laughing and a clock ticking. To me, this place was amazing – it even had another whole bar beneath it. It was like coming home, like the strange spooky fingers of a lover, having moments ago sawed my skull open was applying her fingers directly to my brain, the rhythmic movements of the massage making a soft yet exceedingly soothing squish—squish.

Done up like some sort of broken down quasi-Orwellian in decay ghost house and broken up into four rooms on the first floor and a second gig bar in the basement. The decoration changed drastically from room to room and I found myself loath to leave. We were almost forced to, as Guppy, on the back of my waxing lyrical about the place, decided to follow suit and wander about the place.

She came back spooked. Slightly pale, wringing her hands, Guppy tried to plainly describe why the place was freaking her out. She fumbled about for a moment trying to describe what was giving her the heebies before bluntly saying, with a hand furiously rubbing the back of her head,

“I know this sounds weird – but it feels like I’m going to be raped.”

Say the what?

I can’t say I understand where this came from. I probably greeted it with a concoction of incredulity as I did cynicism mixed with a need to understand. I was about to find a way to ask had she ever been raped but she answered the question for me,

“…and I’ve never been raped before…”

Now I don’t know whether this was some sort of excuse to get us out of the smoky environment or just to finish the night for whatever reason. But I couldn’t take it very seriously. But then, I don’t think the VPPC did either as I caught her rolling her eyes. I was however, sorry to see Guppy go, our little drunken vegan-omnivore three-way had been a lot of fun.

Freed now from the need to be outside in what I’d refer to as the non-smoker dead zone, the VPPC and myself retired further into the depths of the bar and the strange psychotropic installation that filled it. Nestled in the corner of a backroom, we talked until the small of the night then departed for the hostel where we shared a beer and said our goodbyes. Alone now with my beer but buoyed by good company, it would be here, in a hostel on the fringe of Krakow’s Jewish Quarter. In the last dark hours of a winter morning that I would be forced to face a great darkness – an evil that like Le Guin’s Ged, I had been running from for years.

Namely, passing out on the toilet. Though, like Ged; having left a trail of concussions, toilet seats shattered by tumbling head-butts and bloody smears down concrete walls. I had long ago come to recognize this as a sort of separation of my evil self yet still I sought a reason and solution for it. The answer would come in the unlikely form of a pair of hostel toilets in Krakow. Having retired to the cubicle to do some Nasa style deep thought over a guidebook to Poland, I woke up some hours later, splayed across the bathroom floor, unsure of what had happened or how I’d managed to curl into such a complete ball. The answer wouldn’t come to me until the next night when much the same thing would happen. Except this time, I would not pass out completely, but rather fall to my hands and knees on the cold floor of the cubicle.

It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts back into the space called brain before I realized what was happening. As I stood up, I was whiting-out, a sudden rush of blood to the head and I was gone, a gone headed mess that would stand up straight then collapse. Discovering this, the source of the great following darkness, was heartening, yet I still couldn’t understand why I woke up so quickly in this cubicle and not the other. Sadly the answer to this question would come only two short days later and it would lead to one of the darkest and bleakest chapters of my life.

Sorry to lose the company of the VPPC and Guppy, I slept late the next day out of sheer sulky spite. Once again missing this mysterious breakfast the hostel staff spoke of, but that now I’d begun doubting the existence of. I realized if I didn’t get up at a decent daylight hour at least once during my time in Poland I’d never see anything. With that I promptly fell out of bed and onto the streets of Krakow in a mad rush for the bus to at least one of the sights. Driven forward by a skin burning hangover, early onset emphysema and the driving beats of Scott Walker. I found my way to a bus marked ‘Salt Mines’. With the heat of the small bus, the gentle rolling rhythm of traffic, I spent the first few minutes of the journey lapsing in and out of consciousness. The ipod had stuck itself on Jeff Beck’s ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining” and the lyrics seemed so fortuneteller apt that I began to get a little freaked out that maybe the machine knew something I didn’t, I literally lurched myself from sleep to drag the hat off, skull two cans of Red Bull and skip the ipod to I Monster.

"You’re everywhere and nowhere baby
 That’s where you’re at,
 Going down a bumpy hillside, 
 In your hippy hat.
 Flying across the country,
 And getting fat. 
 Saying everything is groovy,
 When your tyres are flat."

Rolling quietly between stark grey black and brown Soviet architecture whilst listening to I Monster’s ‘Heaven’ was something akin to watching a really dark humored magic surrealist film as you straddle the wall of sleep. Beautiful in that it is the very antithesis of anything humanist, it didn’t need the music, but accompanied with it, there grew a secondary philosophical narcosis. As you found yourself unable to think anything properly descriptive instead just staring open mouthed, unsure if you are even allowed to think anything and if you were, what was it where did it go, was that behemoth a block of apartments?

Oblivious to where I was supposed to get off, I ended up going to the end of the line and having to use a mixture of broken Czech-lish (the dumb ideology that if you smatter your conversation with Czech perhaps the bus driver won’t leave you in the middle of nowhere but rather take you to the salt mines.) I know I’ve already typed to you about the salt mines – this email-letter-type thing having come unstuck in time and chronological order like a weak sort of Mr. Pilgrim. But really man, that’s only cause the sheer grandeur of the place had me a typing the gun a little bit prematurely there. Tunnels go on and on, fading off into barricades and darkness and even though the tour finished up, I think I must have spent another two hours slowly eating polish sausage soup and roast chicken, sipping a beer, writing the first pages of this. Quietly wondering how I could have a rave in this magnificent place.

After that, I hooked up with this wee Japanese girl called Tomoko whose English wasn’t exactly the best – but who made up for it by being very friendly. I’d returned from the salt mine to the hostel to find her standing all zipped up in her coat in the hostel reception looking lost, said hello and asked her what she was up to. She seemed confused, so I took her out for dinner. As it turned out, she had been doing the day trip tourist stuff in Krakow for three days but had not been out a single night. Partly because she was nervous and had no one go to with, partly because she had been warned about going out on her own. So I took her out for her last two nights in Krakow – showed her as much of the nightlife as possible.

Part of this involved Alchemy – I was telling everybody how cool it was – the noises, projections and ambient music. Well not just cool, but amazing that a bar that unique existed. I’d even brought Tomoko there especially to see it. Of course, I walked into the bar to find it properly lit, playing Tracy Chapman. We got beers and sat down as I flopped about trying to explain why cool stuff wasn’t happening. A trip to the bar left me with the knowledge that what I’d experienced was actually just an art installation I’d been lucky enough to experience on it’s opening night.

“It’ll be on each night at 10pm. Anyway, who could listen to that noise all night?”

Sufficiently chided, I retreated waving a clenched fist, demanding that they’d better hold true to their promise of a repeat performance.

Thus the war had begun.

Sweet little Tomoko left me at some point before one in the morning with a pint of beer and a double cherry vodka something she didn’t want. I drank until they closed and then I drank until they disappeared from the bar leaving me with a bitter half Lithuanian half Pole who hated the Polish and muttered and grumbled into his drink. It took some serious punching to crack his chocolate shell.

“Look man, I’m just being friendly, if you don’t want to talk to me, just tell me, I don’t want to talk to you then I’ll leave you alone.”

It appeared to work, the moment I stopped, he turned around and started talking to me quite animatedly.

Course – all of this describing, this dawdling on detail and random occurrence has just been the dragging of feet-fingers in the describing of the following darkness. That darkest, bleakest, chapter of my life – the discovery, the realization and the horror.

Oh the horror.

I dunno man, I remember shards of the short walk back to the hostel. Tatty drunken sleep deprived moments of tramping up the stairs as I pondered bothering going to the bathroom or just going to my bunk.

This shit won’t happen in Valhalla you know.

Rewind a bit. I might have spent some time talking to whoever was behind the desk. Then came the tramping. Remembering now, I made it up the next flight of stairs then turned and walked back down, deciding the bathroom was, probably a good idea after all.

This is the shit they fuel injected refuse to tell you. The omissions and the polishing – you never hear about the bad freak-outs or the horse lips of things that might weaken those – the beautifully wasted Loa.

And yes – this is the dragging of the feet-fingers. But then all these stories I’ve heard from those who put themselves on a similar cross seemed to carry too much gloss and any way I’ve told the truth – still though, when it gets there, I’m not afraid to lie.

With that slight swelling fist sensation I didn’t pay any attention to which cubicle I took as I thumped through the doors and twisted about to disentangle myself from hoodies, coat and rucksack. Throwing myself down upon the mercy seat with a thump, I gave a final kick to my things so they ended up in the corner a clump.

Things began to take longer than expected. They often do. I remember scrabbling for my rucksack only to find I’d kicked everything further away than I could reach. Yet having to sit, slightly sickened, glued to the mercy seat, this arms stretched scrabbling ended with me leant back, wheezing that smokers sweet nothing.

Fuck man, sorry about that, I drifted a bit there, got a bit flowery. I think probably it’s because I’m sitting in this cybercafé listening to Nina Hagen do Vedic chanting, furiously drinking a mixture of Red Bull and beer as I try to ignore the kids smoking apple tobacco hookahs behind me. I can hear the water bubbling menace and broken promises behind me. I got so lost in typing out this letter, I’ve just realized I’ve got two ashtrays, one Black Russian smoldering close to gold and two half smoked Javaanse by my left hand.

So anyway, where was I?

Doing that thing where you cross your trouser covered ankles together so you can hoist yourself up off the toilet, remaining almost hook bent, I snatched the top of my bag and wrestled the clasp open so I could drag ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ from the top. Struggling and arching back so I could throw my wobbly self back onto the toilet, the first rush tingle of the white-out began just as I hit the seat.

I awoke several hours later, half heaped on my bag and jacket, lying like a broken question mark. Struggling with a thumping headache and the fact I’d almost hogtied myself with my boxers and jeans, panic began to set in as I flopped about like a dolphin having a seizure.

Things didn’t feel right. The sensation of stuff drying taut against skin was a distant thought as I forced myself up and around. For a moment I thought I was still dreaming some Irish Republican nightmare as I shook my vision straight against the sight that presented itself to me.

Shit, there was shit everywhere.

My first thought was something said slow, like;

“Mother-Fucker…some bastard snuck in while I was asleep and smeared shit about the walls, mother-fucker…”

My second thought was a little more coherent, not as slow, like;

“Motherfucker, some fucking asshole snuck in while I was asleep and smeared shit about the walls. I bet it was those assholes on the second floor booking showers and strutting about the place in y-fronts. Motherfucking, fucking mother, fuck, I’m gonna, when I get cleaned up, I’m…”

My third thought was more a blend of the animalistic principle of sheer indignant rage and thoughts of vengeance as my body swung drunkenly about trying to get its bearings. Remember your time in Scotland man? When you’d see a drunk bump into a lamppost not realizing it was a lamppost then start spinning about looking for someone to hit. It was a bit like that.

Taking a breath against the rage I surveyed the scene again. The small patch on the seat wasn’t anything compared to the streaked lines of rubbed in shit along the walls. Then I saw the two small perfect nuggets that lay neat and untouched by the wall where my ass had ended up, took a cold sweat shivering moment to look at the feet of my boots, sighed and nodded calmly to myself. I remember saying something groggily to myself along the lines of;

“Fuck…I think, I think, I managed to dirty protest myself.”

Then I locked the somehow unlocked cubicle door, and repressed any thought of the fact the door had been ajar back down with most of my childhood and did the single most important thing I could think of. I spent several panicked moments checking had I got shit anywhere on me besides my shoes. Happy that I hadn’t, I quickly removed my shoes and socks and dropped the liftable evidence into the bowl, destroying it with a flush.

Using the bowl like a painters water bowl I would replenish with clean water every couple of minutes I set about scrubbing the dried shit off the walls like a coprophiliac Van Gogh. The entire time my mind was racing, more then being caught in the act of cleaning, I was trying to figure out how I had collapsed off the toilet bowl mid-shit then had a sort of greyhound dream where I must have been trying to escape, my kicking legs in the air grinding shit into the walls like a bad bad dog. Within seconds though, I was dizzy and dripping sweat and had to strip down to my boxers. It was then, in the blinding heat that I touched the large pipe in the corner on curious whim. My hand was stung by the heat, I’d white-ed out beside a heating pipe.

I don’t know how I did it. But I managed to get the bathroom and more importantly, my runners, spotless. Dressed, I stumbled upstairs on the wrong side of morning, unashamed though somewhat troubled by the events in a brooding sort of way. By the time I was tucking myself in to waste another day in bed, I had made piece with the incident, happy in the knowledge with a small mantra I kept repeating to myself,

“Well, at least I didn’t shit myself.”

The next day I met an Englishman in the kitchen and told him all about Alchemy, gave him the time when they said the installation would be showing. It was Tomoko’s last night so we went for Jewish food in the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz. I ordered a three meat three-bean course. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d settled for a slice of pizza from place in the square. It was like eating the poor snot creature from ‘Flight of the Navigator’ and it definitely felt as if it’d remained alive in my large intestines, writhing about in death throes that would last well into the next day.

The war would enter its second night.

At Tomoko’s urging I was allowed to give up trying to force the food down and we made our move the short distance to Alchemy for the installation as promised. Upon entering a packed pub we found them playing something insipid like REM. We shuffled about looking for a seat only to bump into the Englishman and his friend the Scotsman, both avidly waiting for the wondrous installation to start.

Some drunken negotiations later, the staff made a half-hearted attempt to turn the installation on. The projectors in our room went on sans sound and one or two more in the other rooms. Any further hopes of them fixing things so we could experience the fullness of the installation were dashed when the Scotsman, a game fella known only as Cockblock Hughes, threw a pint of beer over the bar woman. He says it was an accident, but having seen him in action later on in the week, blocking cock like a man possessed, I have to wonder.

Tomoko was leaving in the morning for Prague, so the Englishman, the Scotsman and the Irishman went drinking – in one long continuous joke.

The English man, Scott, is the lead singer for a band called the Tea Monkeys, the Scot, Cockblock Hughes, a theatre set designer. Deciding that being the living embodiment of a Paddy Irish man joke was too good to pass up – we headed out to drink. Any and all plans to try and get to Prague were squashed. In between the drinking and the madness that was the terrible miasmic state Auschwitz leaves you in, we discovered something vital – Polish men have no rhythm – none at all – for one night – during a hip-hop and funk night – we were gods – the women formed a protective circle around us like a naval blockade with tits and we bopped until the place began to become a danger. A lack in seeming basic safety led to the small club being over-packed. With no end in sight to the amount of people they were letting in and the increasing upper riddled aggro number of Polish stumbling into the club led us to call it a night.

Then I guess there is also the matter of Auschwitz. Jokes aside. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and something I think every human over the age of fifteen should be made experience. Go in winter. The drive in itself is an ordeal, the suspension on the bus crap, the scenery increasingly bleak until you roll through this barrier like forest of thin tall trees that just shoot out of what looks like dead ground, their middles swathed in a thick mist. It is rather like the opening drive from a horror film like Evil Dead. The tour bus has small television screens and the entire time as you pass on, as through strange increasing disturbing temporal shifts of modernity, communism and the wreckage from World War Two – the horrors of the concentration camps are radiated from the screen with a narrative just on the verge of being inaudible.

Public Image Limited’s ‘The Order of Death’ had just started playing as we reached the town that was or is Auschwitz. Lydon’s repetitive chant of “This is what you want…this is what you get” ran in strange concert as we began to move parallel to the train tracks and past huge festering necrotic factories that’d once been manned by camp inmates. The surrounding land seems to make one last valiant effort to be fertile (as it is apparently incredibly so) but the pus yellow and scab brown soil is rather like a dying animal trying to raise itself on its haunches for one last spluttered groan – one it doesn’t quite manage. The fact that the Nazis used the ash from millions to fertilize the ground give it a sickening mental hue.

Now I’m all for an extreme option of the visit to Auschwitz. Like a box you tick and a release form you sign and when they get to the town train station, you’re taken off the bus, made put on overalls and herded into a boxcar where you are then taken to be deloused and processed, a number roughly tattooed on your wrist, your head shaved and then you spend the day experiencing just some of what those coming to the camp would feel. It would probably do a lot of people, deniers and otherwise a lot of good.

As it stood, when we rolled up to the visitor centre outside the main camp, I was getting slightly worried it would be a homogenized experience, but this was slowly withered away by the sheer number of people on the site, the robotic, militaristic way the guide delivered the information and herds you through the place and the crowds that infest it.

The first camp is big, a little bigger than you’d have imagined it to be from the documentaries, but not by much. Cold and oppressively silent, each building, each stop a grinding slow notch up on the staggering level of inhumanity and evil contained within.

I have now seen what two tons of discarded human hair looks like. Apparently there was seven tons found when they liberated the camp. I’m not sure where they keep the other five – I didn’t feel like asking.

There is a room, filled with prosthesis – legs, arms, braces, and crutches – which is just hard to describe.

Before the end, they take you to the wall of death and on into the torture chambers. Where you find, people, I’m not sure why, I can’t understand the mindset, have scrapped their names into the paint of the corridors that lead to the cells where maybe forty people were stuffed to suffocate and die between beatings, torture and rape.

Just, really, why?

Why would you think it even remotely acceptable to scrape your names into the walls of a place that serves as a monument to gross inhumanity?

There are simple rules to the place – signs everywhere saying them, the guides repeating them. Why then did I see so many people breaking them with such disrespect to those destroyed by a machine that was apparently just following orders. From the man smoking outside the prison block beside the no smoking sign, shame on you – to the couple shoving their way through the crowds to the holding cells and on to be surrounding by names like ‘Marketa’ ‘Sean’ ‘John’ carved into walls where people were tortured to death. My companions and I felt an immense shame first that this happened at all, then at just being human. Because by being human we were complicit in the abject idiocy of those touring Auschwitz I with us. Shame rapidly turned to indignant rage and perhaps it was a good thing the three of us were there to verbally bounce off each other, as at various times other tourists might well have been going home with their teeth in their pockets.

Then it’s to the gas chamber.

Which, by slightly jogging ahead, I got to stand in, alone, for a couple of seconds. It still smells of Zyklon or something. I can only imagine it has to be the lingering smell of Zyklon impregnated into the walls as it reminded me of DDT or Paraquat. The ovens that remain, rebuilt from those destroyed act as a jarring punctuation mark to the blue stained non-descript-ness of the gas chamber.

After that, you’re taken to Auschwitz II – Birkenau.

They park a little bit down and you’re allowed to walk up to the train tracks that lead to the arch that is or was called ‘The Gate of Death’

It’s only really then – when you see the unending sprawl – that the entire thing sinks in.

To the right, as far as the eye can see – there are the wrecked chimneys of cellblocks. To the left, a forest of the structures that remain – the women’s camp. In an area, that if included with Auschwitz I, III and the sub-camps, are, unless I’m wrong far bigger than the Phoenix Park. The phoenix park is 700 hectares – Auschwitz over 25 square miles. The sheer scale of the machine is just hard to comprehend until you get there.

When you see it, when you know that out of the thousands of SS only eight hundred were ever caught and tried. It’s hard to think the Germans have said sorry enough, paid enough.

“Just following orders.”

Really?

I find that hard to believe my friends.

Hard to believe.

Everybody, particularly my Jewish friends, had warned me that going to Auschwitz was something I needed to prepare for. That it would change me.

I don’t think it has, more so it has just resettled the hatred for fascism I always had but had slightly let simmer down in recent years. Maybe, I’d begun to think, out of cynicism due to Israel, Germany had apologized enough. Maybe we could move on.

No, the eight year old me was right.

Fuck this. Fuck them.

Ain’t no sorry big enough to sort this one out. It’s as if you turned Ireland into one big famine road with everybody working to death it. Then borrowed another couple of million people from Scotland and Wales. Then killed them all and left the island a wasteland.

I’m reminded of the reoccurring comments made by Dutch, Polish, Czech and Slovaks about visiting Germans who strut in on their holidays acting like they still own the place and I have no sympathy for their lost national identity and years in the wilderness.

Every human has to go to Auschwitz – if only because they have to see – they have to know.

I hope everything is well with you and that things with Sol are still beautiful.

I’ll write more when I can.

Stay very well man

See you for a pint when I get back.

FlupMD