Galicia & Wislanie, around Krakow

And so, I build this pile of humanity atop the stack that has been Slovakia, wholly into Poland now.  Feels good to have this density done, as everything after this for a long time is progressively easier to map.  It's all flat, there are less people ... I'll be gaining speed therefore as I go east.

Krakow is a large, important city because it straddles trade in two directions.  To begin with, it's on the headwater of the Vistula river, which flows to the Baltic sea, so that goods throughout south Poland converge here to be transshipped onto barges.  This also makes it a link between the Danube and the Baltic, as it's the shortest distance between the former river and goods coming down from the Baltic, such as furs, timber, fish and, in some degree, Asiatic goods coming all the way from China.  Finally, west to east, it's the fairest way on the north side of the curve created by the Carpathian mountains, linking northern Germany with Kiyev.  In my game, it's a city of 75,000 people, highly educated and at the time, in the midst of a Golden Age.

The region became an area of religious tolerance, replete with scholars and intellectuals like Brozek, Modrzewski and Zacjusz.  It was a time when many Jews settled into the region; Auschwitz-Birkenau is 33 miles east of Krakow, not shown on this map.  The soil was better at the time, though brown and loamy, and because of the decline of the region in the 18th century, had long lacked the fertility it had then.  It is most likely being much restored now.

The next map continues the outward pattern of infrastructure spreading outwards from Krakow.  I'm at the top of the sheet here, but as I have enough room I'm not going to make the adjoining sheet above until I come back this way, many months from now.  Remember when this sheet was empty, not that long ago?