MrBiffo
patreon
THE PO-PO HAS LANDED
🕑 Added 2025-03-06 08:49:34 +0000 UTC
Hello, hello. We are home. Now we need to go through a ton of footage that is scattered across a bunch of different devices, hard drives, and SD cards. God knows how many hours of footage we have… it’s going to be a massive effort to get it all into order.
Despite a bit of fun at the beginning with the flat tire, the trip exceeded our expectations. By not just visiting the obvious tourist places, and going deeper into the history and relevance of the country, I think we got something much more real.
In fact, if we hadn’t had the flat tire, we wouldn’t have changed the itinerary – which led to some of the most fascinating stuff of the entire trip. Our (over) friendly mechanic told us not to bother going to Suwalki (our original plan), because it’s boring, so instead we moved things around and drove up to the Gdansk areas – which is far more ripe in history, and has its own flashpoint border with Russia/Kaliningrad.
We’ve got a bunch of Patreon-exclusive stuff for you in addition to the main videos we’ll be putting out. There’ll also be outtakes etc. And I filmed in the Wolf’s Lair gift shop, which was eyebrow-raising in itself. We bought a few bits and pieces of inappropriate merch, which we’re going to give away to Patrons.
We ended up filming every day, and though I ache like heck… it was worth it. I’ve still got one big interview to do over Zoom, which is going to be fascinating, and we need to record some voice-over to tie the narratives together.
I’m toying with breaking the videos down into smaller chunks, rather than putting out a couple of big ones. Every location we went to kind of justifies its own focus, but I’ll make the call once I start editing properly.
One thing I will say is that as much as we try to keep it light and fun – and we do dick around as usual – many of these places are steeped in some pretty dark history, so at points it’s going to get serious. We didn’t go to any concentration camps – because we didn’t quite want it to get that heavy - but man… they’re everywhere. We kept driving past them. Just horrible. Every single town has its own story.
I’m not going to include all of it in the video, because it makes me feel far too vulnerable, but I got pretty overwhelmed by the Wolf’s Lair. Going into Hermann Göring’s basement was the most unpleasant thing I’ve ever experienced (not a sentence I thought I’d ever say). Such a palpable feeling of dread and heaviness – probably because there’s a particularly grim story associated with it. I came out and had to ask Sanja to stop filming, because I pretty much burst into tears. And I’m not usually that guy.
We’ll do a Writer’s Club/Biffo’s Brain Zoom next week where we’ll discuss our experience in a bit more detail, but every tier will get something exclusive.
Suffice to say, thank you SO MUCH for your support. This trip was possible because of Patreon, and it has made us hungry to do more. I really, really hope you enjoy the videos.
Paul
Comments
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
Thank you, Marc. What an amazing experience - saw a lot of bullet holes in Poland...
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
It's good stuff!
BeasBotBonanza
Glad to hear you made it back! Poland is a beautiful country with such history and I'm excited to see what you guys have done :)
Marc Newitt
It looked a thoroughly awesome trip and can't wait to see the videos. I have never been to anything abroad to do with WWII but I did once visit the former RAF Raynham in Norfolk to look at an aircraft that was stored there, the owner said, "would you like a tour," now being a military history buff, I leaped at the offer. It was like every other RAF base I have visited until the last part. The base, like many at the time, came under attack. This attack came from a Messerschmitt ME110, the pilot strafed one of the hangars. He pointed up to one of the support beams outside of the building and it was peppered with bullet holes. At that point history became very real and and looking at those holes I suddenly became very aware at how terrifying it must've been, to make things worse, the attack was at night. So imagining this ME110 flying around and not being able to see it and all you can hear are the engine sound pitching up as it goes into the dive. Then all hell breaks loose and there is a rain of fire. It must have been a horrendous experience. Thanks again for all you are doing, you guys are awesome. Take care.
