We're not actually in Poland at the fortress right now.
We're just across the border in Ukraine
at one of the outlying forts to one of the forts.
We've talked to the Ukrainian authorities, and they've sent us here,
and we've got help from Roman and from Ryan
to explain what exactly we're seeing.
This is the overgrown outside of Fort 1-6,
which is an outlying fort for Fort 1 of Przemyśl Fortress,
which is called 'Solis Soglio', and we're going to be shooting there in just a little bit.
♪ 'The Great War' intro ♪
Okay, this is Ryan, and he's going to show us something cool underneath
deep underneath the back end with–
or the outer end of the fort so let's go in.
>> Ryan: All right, so Indy, in the 1980s
there was a Ukrainian boy exploring this fort,
and he didn't have a light so he was guiding himself
by putting his hand on the wall as I'm doing now.
And unfortunately,
when he got to about this point, the wall ended
and he leaned into this—what was at the time—
— a 100 meter shaft. >> Indy: And it was uncovered with the the metal there?
>> Ryan: It was uncovered. The metal was recently installed actually.
>> Indy: So what's this shaft for? Is it a well, or something else there?
>> Ryan: That's just the thing. Locals tried to fill it in with garbage and dirt
to avoid having a repeat of that scenario.
And when they were doing it, they discovered active ventilation shafts
all the way down at the bottom of the well.
There's also this mysterious, very, kind of
solid hook that you would not typically have over the well.
And so there are urban legends
and our guide here really emphasized that
—it's nothing more than a legend probably—
that at the bottom of the shaft was a tunnel that
extended all the way to the Polish city of Przemyśl.
>> Indy: Uh-huh, okay. That would be cool if it was true,
and I guess you could lower people,
100 meters down this was, with ventilation shaft.
>> Ryan: That is what the experts estimate.
>> Indy: Poor, poor Ukrainian boy.
I'm going to take a look quick walk in, and see what we see,
see what we see here, down here, okay?
This is the– This is an old Chair of Wisdom
I wonder why this chair is here.
Okay, these are the old barracks.
You can see– it's pretty beat up in here.
And again, okay, here's a– here's a–
where someone or people used to live.
Same thing as in Solis Soglio.
Again, this is like a 'Scooby-Doo' episode.
[as Shaggy] Like, that crazy clown's out to get us, Scoob! Oh-ho-ho!
You can edit that out.
Aha, there's a window.
Uh-huh …
That's a chimney, I guess, or something. Maybe an oven?
And this window looks back in the direction across the border,
back to Poland, back to Przemyśl,
back to Fort #1, Solis Soglio.
There's six of these. This is number 1-6.
There's 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6 …
This is the one that Tomas said is actually
the best preserved out of the six of these forts.
This pretty much hasn't been touched,
which is why it's just been falling down for itself.
A lot of the other ones, people have cannibalized
the stone, and whatever wood they could get out of it.
At least, that's according to Tomas. I don't think I want to go down there.
Let's go back the other direction.
We have permission to be here, but this is forbidden, normally, to everyone.
So we got really lucky that we're allowed to be here because of 'The Great War'.
You can see that it's not full of graffiti,
like some of the rooms in Solis Soglio,
because nobody's allowed to be down here.
>> Ryan: Why'd you step there guy? Don't fall in the well.
>> Indy: These stupid shoes are not good for this.
>> Ryan: The last thing you want to do is break your leg in a Ukrainian fort.
>> Indy: Yeah, just shoes my sh– hehe.
Okay, there is a little graffiti here, as opposed to in the barracks.
Uh-huh. He would come out …
So it's really three rings. You had the 45 kilometer outer ring of all the forts, for 15 forts.
You have the inner ring of the four forts of Przemyśl, and you have this–
further little rings for some of the fort– forts had outer rings like this.
Pretty impressive defenses, considering all we've seen,
but not against modern artillery.
As I said when the Russians first attacked Przemyśl under Ivanov, Justin,
they took 40,000 casualties in just the first attack, and that's why they decided to lay siege.
Because, even for the Russians, that's a lot of people to lose.
What were you saying about this entrance, Ryan?
>> Ryan: So it's pretty interesting that the sheer nature of the design of this fort was to
minimize the amount of people who could enter at one time.
So when you go down these steep stairs,
you'll encounter a lot of very sharp turns.
That was intentional so that if an enemy was invading
They would: 1) have a hard time invading en masse,
and 2) be more likely to kind of be trapped,
and shot from the people guarding this fort.
>> Indy: Probably get lost as well. >> Ryan: Definitely.
[Roman speaking in Ukrainian]
>> Ryan: So he's explaining that this was a strategic point of the fort,
because it was kind of always covered, not looking like a fort when the Russians came and attacked.
There are machine guns positioned here– >> Indy: And on the other side, too?
>> Ryan: Yeah on the other side as well,
so anyone who went here that wasn't welcome here would essentially get shot up.
>> Indy: Okay, thanks. It's nice that he pointed this out,
because next to the gates of Solis Soglio there were also a couple of enfilading machine gun places.
so even if you went through the gates you'd get shot up.
Okay. This is what's left of Fort 1-4 —we were just in fort 1-6—
and you can see it's– well, it's kind of crumbling down.
But Ryan was just telling us something really cool
that the Ukrainians actually do here. Can you … ?
>> Ryan: There's an institution called Дзиґа (Dzyga) in Lviv, Ukraine, not far from here,
and they put on an annual festival called "Fort Missiya"—later known as "Franco Fest"—
and inside of these forts were modern art exhibitions, which was awesome, but what I really liked was that
there was a stage here for acoustic folk performances
and the main festival stage was a little bit further
but it was a very ominous and stunning place to watch powerful Ukraine …
>> Indy: They used the forts to build a festival. How big was this festival? I mean, was it small? Was a huge? Was it–
>> Ryan: On the peak day, they estimate there were between 50 and 80 thousand people. It was a free festival …
>> Indy: That's a big festival! >> Ryan: … and I think this says a lot about Ukrainians.
They really go to great efforts to utilize the
interesting spaces they have to make art, poetry, music.
>> Indy: That's really cool. >> Ryan: It was great.
>> Indy: Now you play music. Did you ever play at the festival here?
>> Ryan: I played two editions of the festival.
I actually headlined one of the additions, and it was a monumental experience in my life.
I still talk about it a lot today because the Ukrainians here were very, very kind of sensitive and involved,
not only with the music, but with their culture, and the history of this place.
So everything kind of colliding into one made for
a very, very climactic and emotional memory.
>> Indy: Now I'm upset that I missed it. Is it something they're going to continue doing or is it a–
>> Ryan: Let's cross our fingers.
>> Indy: You got let me know if they do. We're going to come down to the festival if they do that again, right?
Right, okay, cool.
And if you'd like to see more videos from in and around Przemyśl, you can click right here
to see our good friend Ryan's channel, 'Kult America',
when he spent some time in Przemyśl making such videos.
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