Underneath Poland

It was the last Saturday from the first month of 2018. I woke up early (much earlier than usual, what it means that it was not lunch time yet). It took me some time to remember where the hell I was: an empty, though quite familiar apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. That was my first day without work, after the end of my three-month notice period time, since I had quit my job at the end of the previous year. At the time, I had already left my home and had spent that whole month living in the house of a portuguese friend who was in Brazil at the time.

I went to the kitchen and, while taking a quick breakfast based on coffee and buttered toast, I got all the remaining food I had: some breads, chocolates and a fair amount of cheese. As the house would be empty for some time and I had no plans of staying there longer when I get back to Berlin, I took everything that was perishable and edible to consume as meals during my trip – a common strategy for those who travels without money. My bags were already packed, placed in a corner – they would stay there during the 17 days I would spend travelling in East Europe, going through Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. At that moment, however, I was still not sure about my route, once improvising the way is another characteristic of those who travel without reason. The only thing I knew for sure is that I was going to Poland on that morning.

Back to Poland

Just like the German Empire or the Sovietic Union did in past centuries, I was also coming back to Poland from time to time. I have an emotional bond with the country, once I always take with me a small gift Poland gave me: a small scar at the left side of my face. The incident happened in 2011, at my first visit to Kraków, in a tale that was in many opportunities already told, but never before had been transcript in bad-written words.

In December of that year, I was travelling with my dear friend Little-Gustav-Baddie-Boy (there’s really no good translation for Gustavinho Malvadeza). We were backpacking around East Europe, but not so eastish yet: basically the trip was visiting Krakow and Prague. At Krakow, we stayed in a hostel at the old jewish neighborhood (although the jews left the area at the beginning of the 1940s, for whatever unknown reason) that was cheaper and more convenient to our actual situation of two Brazilians travelling with no money, but it was outside the Polish nightlife: the cooler pubs, the Christmas market in the main square, the nice parties in basements, the east-europeans offering haxixe in the streets, the tourist-trap restaurants… those things, the well-known temptations of an underrated touristic european city.

Little-Gustav-Baddie-Boy and I went out to enjoy the night, walking to the center of the city surrounded by walls. We got into some pubs, drank the extremely cheap polish beer, crawled from bar to bar; at some point I remember we had a bottle of Żubrówka (a quite famous vodka that is sold with a single grass inside), but this happened at the hostel, so it might had happened before it, I don’t quite remember. It probably happened before, because I had some memories (and especially, I also have absence of memories) of a drunken night. In one of the places, a girl was talking with us, she was not properly dressed for the polish winter, Little-Gustav-Baddie-Boy raised the possibility that we were in a whore-house, it really looked like it, not that it was bad, but we would rather drink in cheaper places, so we left. Night followed, bar after bar, it was fun, we watched NFL’s wildcard in one pub, Little-Gustav-Baddie-Boy is a great person, easy to talk to, we share interests and talk a lot of bullshit, it is always worth to call him to take some beers, I will do that right now – even though he takes years to reply my messages, probably he is actively ignoring me.

Anyway… night was dark as an ass when we were walking back to the jewish neighborhood. Our path went through a walkway outside the city center walls, there was some kind of park at our left and an avenue at our right. There were some sparse cars still circulating, we were not in a remote abandoned area, it seemed no dangerous at all, especially for two Brazilian guys from the suburbs of São Paulo. We kept talking about any unimportant thing as if there would always be something else to talk about. Until a man came out of the park and walked toward us. He was probably in his 40s or 50s, seemed to be that strong type of fat and was wearing an old jacket, but one that looked warm and cozy. He said something that we could not understand at all, but we didn’t stop, we kept walking. But the man walked with us, talking polish. He positioned himself in front of us, looking to our faces and walking backwards shouting explanations about his intentions in polish and elevating the volume and the anger of his voice. Meanwhile Little-Gustav-Baddie-Boy and I kept calm, understanding absolutely nothing of what the guy was saying, just repeating “sorry man, no money man” over and over again, as relaxed as Einstein solving a Sudoku.

Maybe the man got pissed off with his lack of communication skills, and he imagined that taking out of his jacket a 40 centimeter machete would help to clarify the situation. He was swinging the machete up in the air, still screaming explanations in polish. But he was dealing with two brazilian guys from the suburbs of São Paulo; it’s not a machete that will scare boys who grew up playing football in favelas and had to remove bodies from the field during in order to play (ok, we hadn’t, but it is such a nice example of Brazilian life). “Sorry man, no money man”, we said – and, thinking at my financial conditions at the time, that sentence was shamefully true.

Perhaps he got baffled for his incapability to scare us or frustrated for his failures in creating a meaningful connection with his clear and obvious polish discourse, but he got more and more mad. He pushed Little-Gustav-Baddie-Boy, that didn’t lose his equilibrium and gave a small step back, such as is done in the move number 7 of the Charleston. “You don’t need to do that!”, I said, as a remembrance for everyone around for the non-use of violence as a good way of keeping nice and lasting social relationships. His answer was a silent strike with the machete, from up to down, hitting the left section of my mandible. My reaction was closer to shock than to pain. “You don’t need to do THAT!”, I probably said. And then, as a way of completing my humiliation, he slapped my face, a hit that effectively hurt my soul. After that, he probably decided his point was made and left, walking back into the park by the wall.

Oh, boy… Little-Gustav-Maddie-Boy was angry as an italian watching someone put pineapple in a pizza. He kept emphasizing how angry he was during the rest of the short way to the hostel. The cut was not a deep one, the biggest pain was consequence of a bruise due to the stroke. I’ve applied a well-positioned bandage and my chin quickly stopped bleeding. The scar and the small purple ball that popped could be easily covered with a scarf. After some weeks, all I had was a small scar. “You’re gonna get a lot of girls with that scar, my friend! Don’t worry about it!”, Little-Gustav-Maddie-Boy kept telling me that night, in order to cheer me up. But it never worked. Maybe “Hey, girl! Look at my scar! It’s from Krakow!” is not a good opener for a conversation.

After that we kept travelling… We went to Prague for New Year’s Eve, in a story that doesn’t need to be told right here but include russian girls singing “Ai se eu te pego” in the streets, we both were drunk buying 800 grams of ham (thinking that it would be a good idea), an end of night peeing in the gates of a templar house and a fireworks war in the Charles bridge. And a lot of cold: it snowed in the first week of 2012 in Prague, that is something I can say.

Wrocław

One of the greatest things about living in Berlin, apart from the dozens of wonderful parks, public transportation working all night along from Friday to Sunday, high quality beer for 60 cents, great kebabs always open, the Sunday karaoke at Mauerpark, the crazy nightlife, the 3-euro burger that are cooked in bathrooms, public pools, cycleways going through questionable paths, the incredible and quite recent history of the city visible in buildings, streets and monuments… well, there’s a lot of great things about living in Berlin, but the point here would be the well-privileged location of the city inside European continent.

Germany is well located between many different Europes: it is strategically positioned close to the continental touristic countries full of chinese excursions; close to the expensive nordic countries where lobster costs as much as a lobster would do, but a piece of chicken also cost as much as a lobster would do; close to the balkans, with such bizarre countries that even the fictitious land of Molvanîa sound like a reasonable place; and close to one of my favorite parts of Europe: East Europe.

Berlin, particularly, is extremely well located: taking a bus from the city and traveling for three hours would take you to Denmark, to Poland or Checz Republic, depending on the direction you move. Dear god, if I take a bus from my home in São Paulo and ride it for three hours, the farthest I will get will be four neighborhoods away.

So there I was, in a Polski Bus (continental traveling through Europe, spending as few as a RyanAir ticket), going to Wrocław, the biggest city of East Poland, a region I’ve never been, once that the East side of the country is the most exciting place to travel.

Wrocław, however, is as cool and charming as Krakow or Warsaw. In the end of January, the huge Christmas tree was still placed in front of the main church in the main square of the city center. Lights and other christmas decorations were still on, making the whole sightseeing even more beautiful. A bunch of small statues of dwarfs also can be found all around the city and spotting them is part of the fun – they are not Christmas related; actually they began to pop up in 2005 and are already more than 350.

After spotting some of them and posting an Instagram Story with some explanation in portuguese, I got a message from Ewa, a polish friend who grew up in Wrocław saying “I don’t understand what you’re saying, but you pronounce Wrocław wrong! It’s something like Vrotzlove.” – this pronunciation, by the way, is much closer to the Checz name of the city (“Vratislav”), but still far away from the german name of the city (“Breslau”).

Breslau, by the way, was the official name of the city when the region of Silesia (where it is located) still belonged to Prussia – consequently, it was german. Breslau was, at some point, the sixth most populated city in Germany, but after the defeat of nazism in the Second World War, Potsdam Conference defined once again much of the borders of that part of Europe and Silesia became polish. German and checz population were kicked out from the area and replaced with polish, who were themselves kicked from other areas of Poland that now belonged to Soviet Union.

On the road

The following day was a Sunday. I woke up before sunrise – an achievement not so hard to do in European winter, once it’s not rare for the Sun to come up around 8 am. While the breakfast was getting ready in the hostel’s kitchen, I split all the cheese I got through all the bread I had available, and that, with some random chocolates, would be my meal for the long day ahead.

I got on my way to the train station, although my main transportation would not be trains, but I was going to rent a car in order to arrive at the entrance of the abandoned underground city of Osówka, that was in a remote, isolated and hard to reach spot in the East Poland.

Despite the fact it was the end of January, the weather was much better than I expected. It was not snowing and the streets were not frozen.

“I won’t need snow tires, right?”, I asked.

“You are renting it just for one day, so surely not.”, answered the clerk.

I got the car and hit the road, following the instructions from Google Maps, which quickly took me to a path outside a highway, going through bucolic sightseeings, running by rivers and forests.

After something like one hour and a half getting deeper in the countryside of southeastern Poland, GPS route turned abruptly to the right, getting into a tiny street that I just missed because didn’t realize that it was actually a street. I returned and got into the narrow way – wide enough for one single car each time. After some meters, the road began turning white. And, to help, it started snowing.

The feeling was like getting into a magic snow globe. Suddenly everything got white around me. There were no other cars or person in sight, snow was hitting hard in the windshield and I was driving slowly, thinking that it would be much safer and smarter to reverse (once it was impossible to turn around in such a narrow path) and give up. I kept going forward, inconsequently. After some time, the street began to go down. The car was skidding in a terrifying way, as it was reminding me that I disregarded snow tires in that same morning. I strongly held the wheel, trying to stay on the road, pumping the brakes with chariness and never hitting the gas.

At the end of the slope, the car stopped. Huskies were staring at me behind a fence, as the only entertainment available in some hundreds of meters. I checked my mobile to be sure it was the right way, to guarantee the city of Osówka was really around there. I was supposed to move on, in that road, for eight more minutes and, because it seemed impossible to me to go through that slope in reverse, I went forward. Soon, so abruptly as it started, the snow ceased and I was in a dirt road already located in the tiny city of Głuszyca, at the base of Sowie mountains, with something around 7000 habitants. There, 80 km after I left Wrocław, I found the first sign pointing to Osówka, when I was already 5 minutes away from arriving.

Osówka

Two other cars were parked in front of the building that was a coffee house and also the tourist office for the underground city. Not only is hard to get there, but is also hard to find tourist information about visiting Osówka. The mystery around the place has its origins in the Second World War: here would be the entrance of just a small part of a series of underground rooms, tunnels and excavations that were being made by nazis around Lower Silesia, a region that nowadays belongs to Poland, but were part of Prussia and, consequently, it was german territory until the end of World War II. Location was strategic because, besides being originally german, it was only 350km from Berlin, so quite in a central area of nazi ocupation.

The megalomaniac and almost unknown underground complex I was visiting had the name of Project Riese (“gigantic” in german) and their final objectives are still not clear. Going underground seemed like the logical thing to do, once axis were being bombarded almost on a daily basis. But the underground constructions were not just simple bunkers: in some other places, nazis were already building full weapon factories underground, like the Mittelwerk bomb factory, in Central Germany, or the recently discovered Bergkristall Complex, which was only found in Austria in 2014, by the filmmaker Andreas Sulzer, who started searching inspired in a document of an american spy from 1944 which reported the possible existence of a bomb factory in the area.

Those huge underground structures make historians and explorers believe that the final outcome of Project Riese would be a fully functional underground city, taking an area of around 35km² and big enough to 20000 habitants, with full facilities including power plant, military industry and even all the required equipment for research and development of new weapons, including something that would probably became the nazi atomic bomb.

Tunnels began being excavated in 1943. Architect Albert Speer was responsible for the whole project; he was Hitler’s close friend and ministry of Third Reich’s weapons production. The company responsible for the whole engineering was Organisation Todt, Hitler’s trusted enterprise, which was also the main company who built the Atlantic Wall, the most important defense mechanism of occupied France; a series of weapons, walls, bunkers and roads built in the northern beaches of Normandie.

But Project Riese was so big that a whole new company was created to take care of its construction: the Silesian industrial Company (Schlesische Industriegemeinschaft AG) and Albert Speer was the main responsible for all the construction works. Excavations began simultaneously in many different points of Sowie mountains. Nowadays, there are seven underground spots known, but not all of them can be visited. 

Osówka complex is one of the biggest and it has the best tourist structure. But that doesn’t mean a lot: there is an audio-guide service in english, but the guides speak only polish. It’s also required to make a reservation with a little bit of antecedence, a moment in which it will be recommended the use of warm clothes, waterproof shoes and take a flashlight with you. In my group there were around a dozen people, all of them polish (except for myself).

We gathered in the entrance of the tunnel, where a mandatory helmet was given to us and the first security instructions are taught (only in polish, so I had to deduct most of it as we got going under the earth).

Once we get into the tunnels, it’s possible to understand why all those security gadgets are required: the path is primitive and was excavated in the mountain going through corridors which does not look so steady, as they lack security structures. Cemented walls and roofs are rare, and the few areas where they are present are also from the nazi times. The biggest room, a huge saloon eight meters high is fully cemented, but the ceiling is still supported by the original wood columns used in the construction, rotting due the action of time and humidity inside the cave.

One of the first rooms in the entrance of complex also seems to be completed: there is even a tiny squared window in front of entrance aisle, positioned in a way that a soldier could guard the entrance. As a demonstration of its use, an old weapon is positioned where the soldier would be. In some points of the tunnels you can also see collections of uniforms, gas masks, construction tools, and a lot of nazi paraphernalia that was abandoned when Soviet Army was getting closer, in the beginning of 1945. When he realized the war was lost, Hitler issued “Nero Decree”, which gave orders for the destruction of all the german structures in order for them to not be used by the oncoming enemies. Important documents, such as those that explained in detail the project that was in construction were also completely destroyed. Nero Decree, however, was deliberately disobeyed by the architect Albert Speer, what make historians believe that a lot of equipment and military machinery were taken by Soviet Army when they were found. Even so, walls were put down, roads were blocked, and tunnels were sealed and were only found many decades later. That only throws more mystery around the place and spreads theories about the underground complexes until these days.

During the escape, nazis also tried to erase the existence of Groß-Rosen concentration camp, where the jew prisoners who worked in the construction of the underground city were kept. The composition of rocks and soil in Sowie mountains is much harder, a characteristic that allowed tunnels and rooms to be much wider, but also made the excavation work much more difficult and dangerous. A small sub-camp was built 700 meters from Osówka entrance, what demonstrates the importance nazis were taking in the construction of the city in their plans. All the prisoners were jews and all they ate for a whole day of work was soup, three pieces of bread and half a liter of coffee. Life expectancy of a worker from Osówka was around four months. Estimations are that 13000 jews worked in the construction and almost 5000 died while working, due to diseases, subnutrition or accidents.

Further inside the tunnels, it’s possible to see the rail carts used to remove dirt and rocks that were being excavated. It’s hard to imagine the tough work those slaves had to deal, once, even years later, with the existence of a basic tourist infrastructure, it’s still quite hard to walk through the complex. A section of the tunnel is underwater and cross it is only possible with the use of a small boat and, after that, the visitors still have to walk over wooden planks badly balanced into chains and supports on the floor. Sometimes the ceiling is so low that you quickly understand why a helmet is mandatory. On many occasions, as well, rocks are kept together with the use of wire mesh and iron supports completely rusted, suggesting the requirement of a tetanus vaccine. Bats also sleep in the ceiling, completely ignoring tourist activity. After two hours in the claustrophobic moist of caves, it’s inevitable to be relieved when the sunlight pops out at the end of the tunnel that leads to the exit of the underground city. We left through a different tunnel than the one we got in, a little bit further and more isolated in the dense forest of the area, and we slid back in the ice that was covering the trail taking us back to Osówka’s parking lot.

The tour ends with the correct idea that there is still a lot to find out about Project Riese. Based in some private documents and mailing from the nazi architect Albert Speer, some researchers estimate that only 10% of all tunnels has been found until this point. At the rhythm it was being built, it is believed that, if the war lasted two more years, the city would be fully working, but probably basic structures could start being used much earlier than that. In his memoirs, the architect says that the concern with the own survival of high nazi commanders were getting to “insane levels”, what leads to the fortification of the bunkers with the same evolution in which the destruction power of allie’s bombs were growing. In Obersalzberg, the nazi-only city depicted in one of the final chapters of the series Band of Brothers, a similar underground bunker was being built, but it was never used. Nowadays it’s possible to visit that bunker as well as the Kehlsteinhaus (also known as “Eagle’s Nest”), a residence nearby which was given as a gift to Hitler. Kehlsteinhaus is located at the top of a mountain and can be reached through a tunnel and an elevator surfaced with polished brass.

It’s not a huge surprise, then, that nazi leaders had finished their lives in underground bunkers. Project’s Riese architect Albert Speer, though, was one of the nazis who were judged in the Nuremberg trials after World War II. He declared himself guilty but completely regretful for the crimes committed by the nazis, although he claimed total ignorance about the mass murders that happened during Holocaust. To portray him with an even bigger image of “good nazi”, he also claimed that had pretensions to assinate Adolf Hitler some years before that. It’s hard to believe in his defense speech: Speer used a lot of slavery work in his weapon factories and he was “Best Friends Forever” with Hitler. In another excerpt from his memoirs, he claims that, when he confronted the Führer due to disobeying the orders given in Nero Decree, Hitler had said that “If you were not my architect, I would take the measures called in such a case”, leading to the idea that punishment could be much more severe. Speer, however, collaborated with the allies since his capture. And his charisma and false candor gave him some good results: while most of the Nazis were hanged or condemned to a life-time sentence, he was condemned to 20 years in prison, being finally released in 1966. He died in 1981 in London. Despite having two autobiographical books published, he barely touches on the subject of the incomplete underground cities in them.

Besides the lack of information, deeper research are extremely difficult for some reasons, like the actual conditions of the known tunnels, the practical challenges in making new excavations, and also due to some bureaucratic problems, once everything found one meter down the surface belongs to Polish Government.

Other treasures

In february 2015, Poland slightly changed their laws about the treasures underneath its soil, changing the reward to the explorer that find anything: what before was a tiny compensation now it would be 10% of the value of whatever has been found. Because of that, a lot of the excavation works and researchers being done lately is being coordinated by local teams of treasure-hunters (though they prefer to call themselves “explorers”), who spend months studying old maps and documents left by the german habitants who got kicked out of their houses after 1945. They also spend whole afternoons walking around national parks, paying special attention to the topology of terrain and looking for elements that doesn’t seem to fit the scenery, such as air ducts, which could lead to underground tunnels.

They are looking for valuable artifacts that ended up in the hands of the Nazis, such as “Amber Room”, a whole chamber with its walls decorated with gold leafs and amber, which was stolen from St. Petersburg Palace during World War II and it has not yet been found. People believe it might be hidden in some tunnel underground. Only that single room has today an approximate value of 200 million pounds, so the investments and bets on the searches for those kinds of treasures are quite high lately, deu to the value of the prize. Consequently, the attention given to explore a bit more about the complex rose.

Other treasure that might possibly be hidden underground that area is the “Nazi Gold Train”, a train filled with gold, diamond and valuable artworks such as tapestries and paintings that were taken from its previous owners, killed by the genocide promoted during Holocaust. Some reports, not completely trustful, claim that the train was hidden by the germans around that region when they realized they were going to lose the war. The existence of a precarious rail system in the underground tunnels, the maze-like style it was built and the fact the entrances were sealed before evacuation bring a lot of interest in the area. The last great expedition happened in 2016 with a lot of help from modern technology: the team of explorers used metal detectors, thermal cameras and radars. They even had the help of polish government in the searches, but nothing was found yet. Great international broadcasters, such as BBC and Discovery Channel also sponsored some explorers in the hope of getting, besides financial revenue, a good documentary.

But they also have to deal with an immense area to search. After visiting the underground city, I hit the road again, this time in order to visit the Książ castle, a splendorous palace located at maybe 30 km away from the entrance of Osówka. Two floors of underground tunnels were excavated underneath the castle, more than 60 meter below it, and researchers believe that the final nazi plan was to connect all excavations as it was one single huge underground city. That is the base of the theory that the underground city in Lower Silesia was being built to became the headquarters of Nazi Government, once Książ castle was also being renovated to became the residence of Adolf Hitler. The room that was supposed to be the main accommodation of the austrian leader would even have an elevator with direct access to the tunnels, all the best for the comfort and safety of the Führer.

Książ

I arrived at Książ Castle after getting shamelessly lost on the road – my phone battery was over and I had simply to guess the way to go in two opportunities (I got it wrong twice). I parked in the muddy parking lot and decided it was a good time to have my lunch – that one based on old tough bread with obscene amounts of cheese, but in that moment the cheese had already melted and merged into the bread, creating a single gluing dough which every bite took half an hour to be properly chewed. There I was then: walking around the castle and chewing, like a curious royal cow.

There are a bunch of trails and paths available around the castle and walking through them is a delicious experience, even despite the colder weather. Książ has a much bigger tourist infrastructure, obviously, although the place also has his underground history. And it includes his own mysteries, being the most popular one the final graveyard of Princess Daisy.

Daisy of Pless was born on June 28, 1873 as Mary Theresa Olivia in Denbighshire, Wales. She spent her whole childhood closely associated with the high hierarchies of British Empire, such as the court of Edward VII and George V. Besides a beautiful mind, she was lovely, elected in 1907 as the most beautiful british woman from royal families, although I have no idea about the parameters of this contest (but it could have been presented by Steve Harvey). A cute little doll like her would not stay single for too long in a royal family and Daisy got married with german Hans Heinirch XV. They both moved to Książ, so Hans could be closer to the coal mines that he was managing in Silesia and there they lived that immeasurably rich and incredibly sad life that only the people with blue blood is capable of living. She even received a pearl necklace from Hans, who was aware of her weakness for beautiful jewelry.

Daisy still had close relations with British Empire; and by her proximity with King William II, she was trying to keep peace with German Empire. The First World War, that began in 1918 is the proof that she failed in her peacekeeping duties. During the war, Daisy worked as nurse and stood out as a lovely soul, for treating soldiers from both sides with the same caring.

With 50 years old, after war, after receiving her necklace, and after giving birth to 3 children, Daisy and Hans got divorced. It was 1923 and she kept living in Książ castle until 1941, when the property was taken by nazi authorities. At that time, the princess and her sons were opposed to nazi regime – one of them was killed as a result of a cruel interrogation from the Third Reich. Later, it was discovered as well that she helped prisoners from Groß-Rosen concentration camp, providing them with food parcels.

Daisy died poor and alone in June 29, 1943, at Wałbrzych. Legend tells she was buried with her pearl necklace in a mausoleum at the castle but, when Soviet Red Army arrived, they moved her to a new burying point. That would supposedly be a protestant graveyard in Szczawienko, but Silesia authorities destroyed that cemetery in the 80s and her body would get back to Książ castle. So one of the mysteries underneath Poland is the princess final resting place, which could have or not the valuable necklace – which might not even have the initial seven meters, once it is said that she sold some of the pearls in exchange for some food when she was in poverty.

Leaving Poland

The castle was already closing when I finally finished my long visit. The parking lot already was practically empty and the sky was already getting dark, even though it was still 5pm. Night was already completely up when, after the trip back to Wrocław, I gave back the car. I had dinner in some fancier place (anything is fancier than eating bread with cheese while walking), took a nice last walk around the wonderful city center, and got back to the hostel in order to rest before taking the bus to Krakow early the next day. Krakow is my favorite polish city, even after machetes got popular in the region. There I had my hair cut, went to ski for two days in the barely known Kotelnica Białczańska ski complex, ate cheese, drank beer and after all that went to Warsaw, where I spend a bunch of hours before taking the bus to Belarus.

I watched Superbowl in a 3-star hotel in Minsk (something around 20€ for one night), watched the first Falcon Heavy launch in Lithuania and, already in Latvia or Estonia, contacted my editor at the brazilian magazine SuperInteressante trying to sell an article about the hidden treasures underneath Poland. In the email I sent, I told a bit about Osówka and the mysteries surrounding the area. Some days later, I got a call: they would buy my article, but the title should be “Hitler’s underground city”, so I had to change the main focus of it.

Well, at least is possible to say that, from the underground of Poland I could excavate an article.