In our roundup of travel stories this week: the seven-foot “monster” that stalked West Virginia, the Roman tunnel where a hated emperor nearly met his end, and the enormous bunker city built by Nazis in central Europe.
Poland’s Nazi labyrinth
The countryside around the little Polish village of Pniewo looks serene, with its yellow crops and patches of forest, but beneath the surface lies a sprawling 20-mile maze of tunnels, shafts, underground railway stations and combat facilities.
This is the Ostwall, a fortified subterranean complex built by the Nazis and abandoned in 1945. In the 1980s and ‘90s, a subculture known as the Bunker People took over the tunnels, hosting unauthorized and often dangerous events here, from raves to weddings. Today, bats are its inhabitants, some 40,000 of