Day 15 - 11 April 2019 Thursday - Przemysl

Clair, they have done it to me again, a hotel website with lots of happy people standing around the hotel bar, but when you arrive there the bar hasn't operated in years.  Luckily there are a number of other bars, that are open, around the town and I have discovered the bar Bosko and it even has Wi Fi.

Big touristy day, sorry, amateur historian day today with my guide, Marcin and driver, Andrew waiting for me outside the hotel at a rather chilly 9.00 am.   

Andrew & Marcin

We visited four forts on the outer fortification ring, a communist era command centre, a strange bar, a tartar mound and observation point looking over the city, some TGW cemeteries and a bunker from the 2nd WW Molotov line.  And, Andrew gave me a bag full of bottles of homemade preserves, pickles and various home made distilled spirits.

The forts were the main reason I came here and they were fascinating,  Marcin chose four of the best preserved forts or ones that best represented a particular style or era of fort building.  There is about 25 major forts and a similar number of minor forts in the outer ring and probably something similar in the inner ring.  Before surrendering the forts in 1915 the soldiers of the AHE destroyed or attempted to destroy some of the forts with explosives with varying degrees of success so some are more ruined than others.

At the start of TGW the city was part of the AHE and the city and forts were garrisoned by troops from all over the empire.  Then after a siege of 3 or 4 months and the loss of 10s of thousands of lives on both sides, including the civilian citizens of the city the Russians occupied the city.   Then the Germans stepped in to help their AH allies and they retook the city from the Russians after another, albeit much shorter siege.  

After the end of TGW the the parts of the AHE that we now know as Poland gained their independence, but of course the fighting wasnt over.  From 1919 to 1921 the Poles fought a number of wars against the Russians and Ukranians all over the location of the new borders.  Some of the this fighting took place around Przemysl.  Andrew said that his grandfather has lived in four countries without moving house, AHE, Poland, Ukraine and Russia.  He also fought in four wars, on various sides.

After all this Poland settled down to life as a fiercely independent country until 1 September 1939 when it was invaded from the west by Germany and from the east by Russia (USSR).  Przemysl was in the unfortunate position that the the river that runs through the city, the San, was the agreed dividing line between the two invaders.  So the southern bank (old city) was occupied by the Russians and the northern bank (new city) was occupied by the Germans.  During this time the Russians, expecting trouble from the Germans built a series of bunkers along the river, called the Molotov line, one of which we visited today.  The Russians were right to expect trouble and the Germans kicked them out as part of operation Barbarossa and the Germans remained in occupation until being defeated by the Russians in 1945.  During this time the Germans exterminated pretty much all of Przemysl's 16,000 Jews.

After the 2nd WW Poland was occupied by the Russians and remained a communist controlled country until 1989.  During this time the Cold War developed between Russia and the communist controlled Eastern European countries and the USA and their allies, including Australia.  Today, I visited a communist era control room, located under the local primary school.  It is a actually a facility of a number of rooms designed to be sealed off from the outside world in the case of a nuclear attack.  It was constantly manned from the late 1950's until the mid 1990's.  It was an interesting tour and scary to realise how prepared they were for a full scale nuclear war.  The tour finished with a fake nuclear attack and us having to evacuate through a series of tunnels whilst being shouted at in Polish, good fun, I think.

Cold war control room

Nuclear war battle map, check out the little nuclear bombs in western Europe

I've gone on a bit here, but I needed to put things in perspective. Ive had a great day , Marcin spoke very good English, but Andrew not very much but they were nice guys provided a great tour, I would heartily recommend them to anybody coming this way.  This is being composed in bar Bosko over a couple of beers, whilst I decide where I go for dinner.  I haven't downloaded any pics from today yet so they will come later.

Fun Facts:  I was that close to the Ukraine border I coulda spit on it, but this is still a very sensitive area so I chose not to.

Border markers

Step Count: 10,810

Observations:  Average wage for somebody working in a shop here about Zl2,000 (about $750AUD), per month.