August 15, 2009 - Bunkers in the mountains

Our day hiking in the mountains turned out differently than I had expected. We did hike a total of about 10 km, but what we explored were two of the 9,000 military bunkers built between 1933 and 1938 to protect the northeastern border between Germany and what was then Czechoslovakia.

Military Bunker

The land across the border is now part of Poland, but was German territory at the time of Hilter's ascent to power. There was felt to be no need to protect the southern border, as it was assumed that Austria would remain neutral and be a buffer there, which didn't turn out to be the case. The bunkers were built at great expense in materials and labor, but in 1938, without Czech consent, the Munich Agreement gave the Czech land with the bunkers to Germany as an attempt to appease Hitler and avoid conflict, so the German army was able to use them for target practice to test out their new weapons to see if any of them could penetrate the 3.5 meter steel and concrete roofs and walls. The first bunker we visited is now private property being renovated as a museum by weekend volunteers.

The other much larger one in Hanička u Rokytnice v Orličky hořach is a government owned museum where our tour took us down a stairway 36 meters underground and we followed a series of tunnels to explore the 1.5 kilometer underground area, which was much like a submarine with only slightly more headspace. This tour did give us a very visual representation of an important part of Czech history, but was not my idea of a day hiking in the mountains.

In addition, the mountain roads were a challenge for our buses. The road was about one and a half lanes wide with no shoulders, so if we met a car, the car had to pull halfway off the road to let us by. This is a popular biking, hiking and skiing area, so we also met several tour buses towing extra trailers for bike transport. At one point the other bus was stopped and we slowly passed them, getting closer and closer. When we were about 2 inches apart, I thought we were already set to make it past, but at the last moment our bus made contact with the end of the bike trailer. A little unnerving, but our driver didn't feel a need to stop.

Another challenge for the Americans in the group is that this is the second day we have had bag lunches on whole day trips that included unrefrigerated chicken - on the Prague day a breaded chicken patty sandwich and today a quarter fried chicken. The chicken started out at room temperature and there was no way any of us were going to eat it four or five hours later. On both occasions it does not appear that any of the rest of the group became ill with food poisoning, so it's a bit puzzling, but our ingrained training about food poisoning is strong enough that we were willing to survive the day on a banana and water, rather than take the risk. I am having way too much fun to risk losing a day to food poisoning.

Border into Poland

On the way back from the trip, we stopped at a border crossing into Poland and were able to walk across the bridge into Poland for a bit. There is no staff at the border and no attempt to monitor foot or motor traffic across the border - quite a contrast to what is now in place between the U.S. and Canada and Mexico!

More on the Eagle Mountains - Military Bunkers and Poland