Almost There

Cathedral at Stary Rynek, with a gigantic fake Christmas tree (I checked)

Łowicz, Poland

In Orson Scott Card’s short story The Elephants of Poznań, a post-apocalyptic narrator begins by describing the city of Poznań’s central square. The “faded graciousness” of colorfully painted buildings catches the eye, and the square is a thriving bustle of book stores, coffee shops, and art galleries. Or at least it was that way, before the plague.

In the way that surrealist science fiction does, the story turns to darker matter. After a mysterious disease wipes out most of humanity, herds of elephants migrate into the town square to claim their place as the earth’s new ruling mammal. The story wanders to far darker places, and I don’t know how to interpret it. That might be part of the point of this kind of fiction, to leave the reader pondering imponderables.

I arrived at the Poznań of today’s Stary Rynek (old market square) with images of elephantine man-beasts on my mind, and wondering: why did Card set a story like that here, of all places? Why this particular European metropolis, and not Novi Sad or Prague or Lisbon? Did he once stay in a hotel above this square, and over morning coffee on the balcony, envision elephants filling the space? Did he draft the story from one of the very balconies I can see here? How does one even get in the frame of mind to dream up a story like that? If Card is dreaming up elephants, what kind of stories could I imagine in my own travels? And, are there science fiction stories published that I’ve never heard of set in Anchorage, Alaska, written in Chinese?

The square today is a bustle of locals and tourists. I had arrived too late to see the famed “fighting goats” of Poznań, wherein a five hundred year old cuckoo-clock like contraption built into the square’s Catholic cathedral puts on a show of two tiny wooden goats butting heads twelve times to mark twelve o’clock noon. They have done so every day for the last five hundred years. 

Petting the goats

“It’s so boring,” summed up my guide to downtown and Couchsurfing host, Gregorsz. “You didn’t miss anything,” he said as we strolled past shops hawking fighting goat t-shirts, refrigerator magnets, statuettes, and a mall’s automatic glass doors with glass etchings of fighting goats, the images ramming into each other all day long as the doors open and close. Personally, I think any kind of mechanical wooden contraption kept in motion for five hundred years is remarkable.

Nieropoznani (“Unrecognized”), steel sculpture by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Park Cytadela

We were headed to Piwna Stopa (Beer Foot), the first of several destinations on our Wednesday evening pub crawl. It was cold outside, and genuinely cozy inside. A couch in front of a real crackling wood fire, warm lighting, many dozens of local brews on tap. “Na zdrowie,” (“cheers), I managed to pronounce confidently after much patient coaching. A shelf of ceramic steins adorn the walls, each depicting quaint scenes of bucolic country life. I could have easily spent the rest of my time abroad right there by the fire.

“Na zdrowie” at Piwna Stopa

On the way out the door nearby, we passed a large domed structure. “There’s the old synagogue,” explained Gregorsz. “One of the few pieces of Jewish architecture that survived World War II. The Germans decided to turn it into a swimming pool in 1940, and it stayed that way until around 2010. It’s an abandoned building now. Can you even imagine?”

***

The next morning Gregorsz headed back out to his rounds of visiting hair salons, and I bundled up in an extra layer to face directly into the east winds on a bicycle. Heading through the suburbs I stopped several times to put on more layers of clothing until I was wearing everything I owned. I had inflated the tires, lubed the chain, and adjusted a few spokes on my new-found bike, ready to ride as far as it’s creaking joints would take me. 

Follow the signs

Rolling east, I only wished I had planned for something like this earlier. Bikes are transformative. Poland seems to know this, too: bicycle infrastructure, even in small towns, is everywhere. Signs, trails, and safe buffer spaces to separate bikes from traffic. Vehicles slam on the brakes if your body language even suggests you might use a pedestrian crossing. Here, bikes are traffic, just as vehicles are. A similar mindset back home would get me quickly squashed. 

It is a different journey on wheels than on foot. Not easier, not harder, but faster. Before, it was becoming obvious my walking pace would not have brought me all the way to Warsaw in the time I had before flying home on February 2. I had been pondering how best to use the time I had. Push on as far as I can and return to finish the route  some day? Choose a mid-point destination and use my remaining time to bounce around between museums? A transition to bicycle has been the right compromise of my intention to experience every millimeter of landscape between start and finish, and the desire for momentum.

A friendly local

I chose not to bring headphones on this trip, so I am left to hum every single half-remembered song I’ve ever heard, and to continue asking myself: why am I doing this?

If anyone even tries to tell me “the journey is the destination,” I will drop a tall stack of new-age self help hardcovers on their toe.

I think I first got this kind of thing into my head when Karl Bushby rolled into town one fall day of my freshman year at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Bushby, a British ex-paratrooper, had just spent the last five years on foot coming from Ushuaia. I skipped an evening chemistry lecture to see his jaw dropping slideshow in a campus auditorium. His mission was to become the first person to proceed without transportation assistance of any kind in the longest theoretically possible path around the globe: from the bottom of South America, across the Bering Strait, and eventually back home, to Hull, England, across the British Channel.

Today, twenty-seven years after he set out, Bushby has made it as far as Hungary, and plans to be home next fall. A Byzantine web of visa restrictions, political turmoil, and financial upheaval has made the journey anything but straightforward. But amazingly, he has pushed on. Not without sacrifice though, it seems.

Ruiny Zamku, near Kościelec

More recently, author and long-walk enthusiast Craig Mod spelled it out more explicitly in his new memoir Things Become Other Things. Those of us compelled to undertake these kinds of solo missions, to traverse alone between point A and point B for vague secular reasons - there must be something at least a little bit wrong with us. Something that needs to be processed. Is it healthy to spend that much time alone? Maybe, for a while at least. Results may vary. 

“Pilgrimage” is the word I’ve been resisting. Every year, pilgrims around the world undertake great journeys to Hajj, to Rome, to Bethlehem, to Kumbh Mela, to Disneyworld. Neither religious destinations or Disneyworld pique my personal tastes, so maybe I had to invent my own. Even that would suggest that there was some grand landmark to see at either the beginning or the end of my trip. At the beginning, there was a small empty fenced-in area in the forest with an interpretive sign. At the end will be a busy metropolis. Neither of those are really what I came to see, so what did I come to see? I guess the journey is the destination, and there’s my toenail bruise.

High speed train near Konin 

If I am indeed devolving into new-age speak, I’ll go on. In these travels I’ve learned that when you’re in the middle of something challenging, just keep going and you’ll get through it eventually. And travel light; carry nothing you don’t absolutely need, you’ll go further that way. 

The thought I am left with, at the end of a long day, is: the thousands POWs who were left to wander the countryside after their liberation by the Soviets in 1945; I sure hope they did some hitch-hiking to help themselves get home, along with all the walking. I know that my grandfather did, it’s unclear how much exactly.

Just to know that I am capable of drawing a continuous line across a map is enough, for now, I think. And to give myself space to imagine my own version of post-apocalyptic elephants.

I am planning to arrive in Warsaw in two more days, weather cooperating. Hopefully someone there will want an old bike.

New candy bar coming soon to a Three Bears near you

Art at a rural bus stop

Recent “bóbr” activity near a castle moat

Mural at a tiny distillery in Poznań that made only “Gruszkówka,” a traditional pear liquor

Arrived to Poznań

Abandoned rails near Kwilcz

There are some surfaces of the earth, built either by man or nature, that are best left untrodden by human feet. Freshly spilled lava, the ruins of Chernobyl, pits of writhing jungle snakes … to this list I will add the peripheries of busy interstate roads. The shoulder-less asphalt margins of the world conveying rivers of semi trucks and commuters were not designed for self-powered transportation. Maybe even more like a sneering gasp at the idea. At best, a long-distance bicyclist or pedestrian on these corridors is at constant risk of catalyzing an accident.

And so it was that I set myself a 50 km (31 mile) course east from Pniewy on Interstate 92. In the spirit of my trip to proceed eastwards towards Warsaw under power of my own wit, this was the best routing option I had, for a while at least. I had just come out of another few cold, lovely nights in the woods, but the landscape was changing.

Warta River at sunset near Międzychód

Snowy campsite near Mierzyn

Avoiding walking on the actual road itself, I crossed over the steep ditch to the frozen hayfields, which serve as decent concrete in this frozen time of year. Not a single other soul to be found outside apart from occasional blips of small villages.

Roadside gas stations are true oases for the self-powered traveler, much more so than for the motorized ones. The fuel bill for my camp stove amounts to to about $1.00 per week, but a good gas station feels like a true luxury after a day out in the wind. My highest compliments to the staff at the Orlan station near Sękowo. Everything fantastically spotless, warm, free phone chargers, nine kinds of kielbasa ready on the hot rollers, booths and tables to sit at. 

My bicycle near Bytyn

It was at this moment, after a long morning of whoosh and rumble and tripping over dirt clods, that I noticed the rumpled white frame of a bicycle in a ditch. I went down to inspect - it was overgrown, rusted, but still partially functional. I can only imagine its story - borrowed from a city, left at a bus station, joyridden by teenagers? I decided it deserved a better fate. 

I pondered some moments if it was in the spirit of this journey to all of a sudden transition to bicycle. It was, and is. I would also accept a ride in a limousine or on a hovercraft if it was freely offered. If a wandering POW eighty years ago found an abandoned bicycle in the country, would they take it? Of course. Did kids growing up in 1920s rural Kansas even learn to ride bicycles? I don’t know.

And so it as that I all of a sudden had a magic carpet. I exited the interstate immediately and plotted a course following somewhat longer, but safe, winding back roads and agricultural paths. The city bicycle creaked and complained and groaned and strained, but cooperated. I covered two days walking distance in a few hours.

Forest lichens near Kwilcz

Wind turbines near Pniewy

The lights of Poznań approached rapidly as the kilometers sped by. I had a place to stay lined up again through Couchsurfing.org, so I messaged to say I’d be arriving early. I stopped somewhere in the dark on the outskirts to take in the unmistakable waft of roasting cocoa beans, and sure enough passed an enormous chocolate factory a minute later.

Gregorsz and a traditional Polish breakfast at his home in Poznań

I’ve hosted 80+ guests myself over the years through Couchsurfing, but it would be difficult to compete with this Gregorsz’s hospitality. Before I even had my shoes off, there was action in the works to boil handmade pirogues, get my clothes in the washing machine, offer several varieties of liquor, and all the other offerings of a four-star resort experience here in his 500 sq ft (45 sq meter) apartment. A man who works as a busy traveling hair products sales representative, who happens to be without hair, he began hosting guests a few years ago to help keep his English skills intact.

I’m about to head out to see if I can find a bicycle helmet and a few other accessories. Hopefully also see some of the famed local midevil architecture downtown here. I’m meeting my host at a famed local city watering hole to try “real” beer this evening. I feel I’m in good hands.

We’ll see how long I can stick with the bicycle. It is a fairly dilapidated beast, and my knee no longer handles long distance bicycling very well. If I end up leaving it by the side of the road again somewhere, I can only hope it will find some other adventure.

Sketches and blisters from a cold, wet walk

   

Above: illustration of front gate at Stalag IIIC from 1944-1945 logbook of George Boersma, courtesy Jackie Kruper. Below: photo of entry in January 2026

Article 7 of the 1929 Geneva Convention states that prisoners of war must be evacuated from the combat zone to safer depots as soon as practicable. It specifically says:

“The evacuation of prisoners on foot shall in normal circumstances be effected by stages of not more than 20 kilometres per day, unless the necessity for reaching water and food depots requires longer stages.”

The rule was intended as a humanitarian limit on how far captured soldiers should be forced to march in one day, unless exceptional logistical needs require otherwise.

I’ve been reflecting on that distance, 20 km (12 miles), as I make my way step by step east from Kostrzyn nad Odra. In a vehicle or on a bicycle, it’s a pleasant blink. On foot with no weight to carry, it’s a nice stroll. In my case, tromping through wet snow with winter camping gear, it’s been a somewhat exhausting and blister-inducing experience. 20 km a day clearly does not account for weather.

In the specific and chaotic case of POWs liberated from the Stalag IIIC camp on January 31, 1945 (see earlier post), I would guess that they carried not much more than a wool blanket and a canteen. Today I have all the lightest modern winter camping gear I can afford - not to mention that the land I am traveling through is no longer a recently flattened combat zone - and the journey still offers me plenty of physical challenge.

Above: photos in the dusk of Stalag IIIC camp, and sketches from the logbooks of interned prisoners Tony Vasquez and George Boersma, courtesy of Jackie Kruper

Hopping off the train from Berlin and a short 8 km hike north brought me to the gate of the former POW camp. I arrived in the dark, and set up camp out of sight in the woods nearby amidst ancient foxholes, one of which my grandfather reportedly hopped in once long ago. At first light the following day, I spent an hour pacing in circles around the place, consulting maps and sketches and documents compiled by Jackie Kruper, whose father spent a few months here in 1944-1945. (I’ll share the full packet of scanned documents I received from Jackie here for posterity’s sake: Stalag IIIC Documents). Here were the guard towers, here was the barber shop, here were the latrines, here were the barracks. A quotidian stroll. In Jackie’s documents there is a description of around Christmas Eve 1944 where guards and prisoners joined together in a round caroling Silent Night, Stille Nacht, presumably in several more languages.

The place is peaceful and beautiful, and I was charmed to see a plaque installed by a local group just one year ago to commemorate the 80th anniversary of liberation. And yet, a mass grave lay unseen somewhere nearby, containing approximately 20% of the 70,000 or so persons that entered this place but did not leave. Superstition has never guided me and ghosts don’t have a role in my imagination - and yet when I walked through the three foot high gate to enter this place, instinctually I reached back to close the latch, but stopped, and instead left it open. Why would I ever close the latch to this gate while I was inside?

Briskly, ready to move on, I continued northeast to Debno. My route for the most part has been on rural logging roads used by the Polish Forestry department. The walking is mostly flat and easy, if slowed by snow and ice. Owl hoots echo and deer tracks etch fresh snow. A convoy of enormous lumber trucks roar by every few hours, perfumed by fresh pine sawdust.

Last night I arrived in Gorzòw Wiekopolski, a larger regional hub. Here I am hosted by Içlal, a local English teacher and fellow user of Couchsurfing.org. I’ve never been more grateful for the idea of strangers letting strangers stay in their home. She invited me ahead of time to sit in on her evening class, so I arrived around 6:00 pm ready to answer questions about Alaska. I was greeted instead with the surreal experience of having my previous blog post having been assigned as reading homework to this classroom of teenagers, and they peppered me with personal questions.

Tomorrow I will continue on towards Poznàn, batteries recharged and sleeping bag dried out. I am grateful  for all I’ve absorbed so far in my brief time here and can’t wait to see what’s around the corner.