Gold Train (Poland & Lithuania)
October 2015
"Care to visit the tunnels of Osówka?", Poland had asked after a morning at Książ Castle in Wałbrzych, where he had dragged Lithuania during his latest visit. Lithuania knew better than to object. If Poland had set his mind on doing something—and Lithuania could tell from the determined look on his face that he had—trying to persuade him otherwise was a futile activity.
That was why Lithuania was standing in the midst of a tunnel now, shivering because the temperature within the mountain Osówka, 20 kilometres away from Wałbrzych, was much colder than on the outside.
"No one knows what the Nazis were doing here during World War II", Poland explained. "I mean, we're, like, sixteen storeys into the mountain, and even I don't know how far all those maze-like tunnels stretch! There's lots of speculation, of course. Like, they might have built this for an armaments factory or it might have been meant as a refuge for high-ranking Wehrmacht officers."
"You're showing this to me because of the Nazi gold train these two guys, the Pole and the German, claimed they'd discovered, don't you?", Lithuania asked. He had already suspected as much when Poland had invited him to Wałbrzych, where that train was supposedly situated.
"Yes", Poland whispered with a curiously excited expression on his face. "And if you put your hand, like, here"—he placed his fingers onto the tunnel wall—"you can even hear the gold train vibrate in the distance!"
"Very funny, Pol, really!", Lithuania snapped. "I realise when you're taking me for a fool!"
"But, Liet, what else should I do with that gold train story! I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious that this is, like, totally a hoax! I don't believe in that Nazi gold before I've seen it with my very eyes." Then, a sly smile appeared on his face. "But it's, like, damn good promotion for tourism. And when they come here, people probably won't just travel to the place along the line of the Polish State Railway from Wrocław to Wałbrzych where those two guys say the train was and leave, but they'll also go to, like, Osówka and Książ Castle and other places in Lower Silesia that are really worth visiting! Pretty neat, isn't it?"
„Yes, Pol, your tourism strategy is pretty neat", Lithuania sighed. His teeth were clicking against each other while he was speaking. "But, please, can we leave the tunnels now? I'm freezing!"
Notes:
The story about the gold train (or trains) the Nazis buried underground in Lower Silesia when World War II was drawing to an end first came up in the 1970s. In August 2015, two men, a Pole (Piotr Koper) and a German (Andreas Richter), claimed they had located the train / one of the trains near Wałbrzych; it was all over the media. As of November 2015, city authorities in Wałbrzych allowed two teams to search for the train: one from the University of Technology at Kraków and another lead by the Pole and the German. So far (December 2015), nothing has been found, but, as Poland says, the legend of the gold train is very good for the Polish tourist industry.
Most of the information I used for the ficlet, including Poland's "you can even hear the gold train vibrate in the distance", is adapted from the article "Sonntagsspaziergang: Waldenburg und das Eulengebirge" (Sunday Stroll: Wałbrzych and the Owl Mountains) by Martin Sander (Deutschlandfunk, 15.11.2015).