Trail of the Eagle’s Nests

This post will cover some spectacular tourist attractions close to Krakow. This is also a page of Poland’s history that resembles, in certain ways, what happens during the last months in Ukraine. The castles on the Trail of the Eagle’s Nests are located in the Polish Jura mountains, North of Krakow, and they can be reached by car in one or two hours of driving. The Polish Jura are old mountains with maximum heights under 500m, similar to the Dobrogea Mountains in Romania. The hills are not high, but the views are beautiful.

A map of the castles on the trail of eagle’s nests. The ones colored red no longer exist, and the black ones can be visited. Some are renovated while others are not.

In the XIV century, the Polish King Casimir the Great (1333-1370) built about 25 castles in these mountains between Krakow, his capital, and Czestochowa. These castles attract many tourists for the spectacular sightseeing in the present days. The area was the border between Poland and Silesia, a province of the Bohemian kingdom.

Casimir the Great did more than build castles. In 1367 he founded the University of Krakow. This University is vital for the city even in the present day. Krakow owes its current growth mainly to the University. The increasing IT sector is a good example. An investment in education pays a lot in the long term.

Let’s return to our topic. There is a good site with helpful information regarding castles in Poland. You can learn about the history of every building, and you can also see that many are entirely destroyed. This is because of an event that deeply impacted Polish history.

The 30 Years War finished in 1648. At the end of that war, Sweden remained with a powerful army and not enough money to pay its soldiers. As often happened in history, countries with mighty armies looked for opportunities to attack their neighbors. In 1655 Sweden decided to attack Poland, which was not affected after the 30 Years’ War. Poland offered plenty of things to loot for the invaders. The Swedish troops occupied almost the entire country as Poland had problems preparing its army to defend it.

The turning point of the events was the unexpected resistance of the Jasna Gora monastery. This monastery was and still is the most important religious site in Poland. In 1655 Polish people became highly emotional hearing about the fights for the sanctuary, and they gathered an army to start fighting the Swedes. The unsuccessful siege of the fortified monastery was lifted after more than one month. The Swedish forces eventually retreated with all the goods they could carry. One-third of the civil population of Poland died in that war.

These events remained in history as “The Deluge”. Henry Sienkiewicz wrote a novel on this topic. A well-known movie, “Potop”, was made based on the book in 1974.

The Swedish army destroyed all the castles part of the Trial of the Eagle’s Nest during the deluge. They tried to steal everything they found. The ruins remained in some cases since those events until recently. Because unfortunately, for every war, the impact and destructions last for generations after it ends.

Last decade, as Poland joined the European Union, they got funds from the union or other countries. They were able to renovate or rebuild some of these castles.

Many of the castles on the Trail of the Eagle’s Nest are open for tourists for small fees. In my opinion, the best time to visit them is in autumn when the trees from the surrounding hills are beautifully colored.

Maybe you wonder why these attractions were called Trail of the Eagle’s Nest? All of them are situated on high limestone cliffs or huge rocks, which suggests a resemblance to the eagle’s nests.

Besides castles in the same Jura mountains, you can see many gates created by nature by carving big stones. Examples are the Krakow gate and Twardowski gate.
These attractions combine history and nature. Maybe you’ll also find them interesting to visit someday.

Run around the house and chess in Bucharest

During WWII, while working in Bletchley Park to break the Enigma code, Alan Turing invented a game that combined chess and running. The contest rules: You sit with your opponent in front of a chess table. You make your move and run around the house. The other player has to move before you return. Once you sit down at the table, the other player runs around the house. Then you have to move, etc. You lose if you are checkmated or fail to move before your opponent returns to his chair.

The above mentioned is a rare example of a game that exercises both mind and muscles hard. But what made Turing invent such a strange game? At Bletchley Park, there were excellent chess players ( e.g., C. H. O’D. Alexander was the British chess champion and became International Chess Master). They were playing a lot of chess. Turing was a modest chess player despite all his tries. But he was a very competitive person. And a great runner with a personal best of 2:46 per marathon. That would be a fantastic time, even by today’s standards. The game mentioned above helps the fast runners as it gives them more time to think.

During my stay in Bucharest, I played in a chess tournament and ran a half marathon in May. The chess event happened inside the giant House of Parliament, the most prominent building in Europe. The start and finish of the race were in front of the same house. That made me think about the game proposed by Turing, although in my case, the two events (chess and run) happened within one week, not on the same day.

It is funny to imagine Turing’s game inside the House of Parliament in Bucharest. One run around this house is longer than 3 km, and after just 14 moves, you run more than the equivalent of a marathon. This game would require players with great physical shape. This is an amusing edge case for the proposed game.

Playing venue inside the Parliament House.

First, it was the chess event. About 200 players from 15 countries gathered in a massive hall from Parliament House. There were 10 rounds of rapid chess (15′ +5″ format). My result was 4.5 points from 10. Because 9 out of 10 opponents were ranked higher than me, I gained 38 ELO points. My opponent had a considerable advantage from the opening in one of the games. I continued playing as I still had pieces on the table. He relaxed, and his advantage started to decrease. I kept calm and played the best I could. The position was drawn, and then I had the advantage and won. The win was not because of a blunder but because of the constant improvement of the situation. Later, I saw that my opponent was above 2200 ELO in classical chess while I was 1800. The lesson is to continue the game as long as the position still could give some hope. Playing in this tournament was a fun experience!

I was happy to see that chess is becoming more popular in Romania.

At the start of the Bucharest Half Marathon

The second event was the Bucharest Half Marathon. I’ve participated in the last five editions of this competition. This year the weather was ideal for running. I tried to improve my time from the Warsaw half marathon in March but failed to do that for 3 seconds! The official time was 1:54:30.

One statistical aspect is that the average time for finishing this half-marathon was 1:58, while in Warsaw was 1:54, and in Krakow, 1:52. Although I failed to improve my time, I was happy to see many people I knew. It is good to say hi! and exchange a few words.

With colleagues from “Trupa lui Fane” after the race

Let’s get back to the story about Turing. The run-around-the-house chess had no success. Nobody was willing to play it (for some reason, runners are not interested in chess, and chess players do not run). Turing did not give up. He came up with the idea to create a program to play chess and defeat his colleagues. At the time, the computer was at its beginnings. Turing created the first chess program called Turochamp in 1948. His idea was that if I couldn’t beat you, I would make a program that would do that. This second plan was much better. It led to a challenge between man and machine. These days a chess program on any smartphone can defeat the best human chess player.