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Things I learned in Poland

1) Abide pedestrian laws

I'm not entirely sure if there are speed limits in Poland. If so, I'm absolutely certain that they are not enforced. People drive quickly and with no intention on slowing down no matter what. Don't think that you'll have enough time to sprint across a street if the light is flashing because the second a car can go, they'll be speeding towards you. This kind of applies to the pigeons there as well. Those things have no manners and will fly directly into you if you don't get out of their way. 

2) It's not "zlotty" 

Our group spent more time speaking Danglish (Deutsch-English) than Polish because we didn't understand how to pronounce or say anything. Chris, our one fluent Polish speaker, saved the day on multiple occasions. I felt rude not knowing more Polish but that language seems like it's just a ton of consonants thrown together with some accents just to mess with you. 

3) Italian teenagers are wild

The saga of the Italian teenagers staying in our hotel will never be forgotten. We're not entirely sure if they were actually ever doing anything other than smoking directly outside of the hotel doors or leaning against the walls in the hallway thinking they were cool for drinking straight from their handles. I think that these kids were probably 15 or 16 and the idea of getting away from your parents from a week and rebelling is universal. These kids were just plain old rude but now that I'm in my absolutely silent apartment in Fredericksburg, it's funny to look back on. Ah, youth. 

4) Trust James and TripAdvisor

We* found some great restaurants through TripAdvisor during this week. Most notably, the one that had Daniel the Hot Bartender (and good food yada yada yada). Random restaurants that required us to go down spiral staircases or through alleys made every dining experience enjoyable. This is all not including our last night in Poland where we went to Hard Rock Cafe. Judge away, it's ok. 

*By we I mean James. James was the one to find the place, lead us to it, and put up with us throughout the dinner. What a pal. 

5) Americans are loud

The people I was traveling with were funny. Like cackle/crying/hiccup-worthy funny. I could feel us being the hoard of obnoxious American tourists in the streets laughing away as locals briskly walked past us. We talk at a louder volume and it became so obvious so quickly. I tried to be pretty wary of that but there were times where I simply could not help myself. 

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Doors of Kraków

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March 6, 2015

This was the day I’ve been most concerned about since I decided to go to Poland. When I’d tell people that yes, we are going to Auschwitz on my trip, it was always an awkward exchange of trying to avoid the term “excited” and we’d usually agree on the very easy “enriching” or “interesting.”

The bus ride over to Auschwitz I was about an hour long and we watched a video on the liberation of the camp. It was focused mostly on footage shot by a Soviet soldier. I’m glad we watched that instead of just being able to talk amongst ourselves because it set the mood for the rest of the day. 

I’m going to go ahead and attempt to explain why this blog post doesn’t have many pictures. I did take a few and every time I took out my phone I felt ashamed and like I was undermining the camp. I quickly decided that I would only take a picture if I needed to be able to remember an exact feeling I had while seeing whatever it was. I have a pretty bad memory sometimes so I need that trigger of either a picture or a scribble in my planner. There are much better pictures by actual photographers or through google images if you want to see what I’m attempting to describe but I simply could not take pictures of everything.

Auschwitz I is almost fully in tact and houses the exhibit aspect of the camp. There’s always controversy over how to properly display information there and I was unsure of what to expect before our trip. Now I can safely say that anyone who thinks that Auschwitz has turned into some form of tourist trap is an idiot. There were no fancy touch screens, no t-shirts in gift shops, and no colorful signs. Labels were straight to the point with the occasional map or diagram and that’s about it. The camp spoke for itself and for the people who had been there.

Exhibits were in the barracks of Auschwitz I. They had a few that showed living conditions from different points in the camp’s existence, others that showed the washrooms, and the rooms where prisoners would get ready to be executed on death wall.

When we walked into the room with a glass wall full of matted hair on the other side, I got overwhelmed. When the tour guide told us that that there were 7 tons of hair found that hadn’t been made into anything yet and there were “only” 2 tons displayed in that room, I got that feeling of your spine turning to ice. 

There were many display cases that were like tables where you’d have to go right over it to see what was inside because the sides were made of wood instead of glass. The ones in the beginning held documents, such as notices to Jews that they were going to be moving or Nazi forms. I walked up to one display case later on where I was fully expecting more paperwork and instead I was met with the sweetest children’s clothing and items. I couldn’t cowardly look away quickly enough. 

There was another display room full of women’s shoes. We’ve all either been to the Holocaust Museum in DC or have seen pictures of that exhibit where all the shoes are piled on the floor and are left in the open so you smell the old leather. I saw the shoes around the corner and thought, “Ok I’ve seen this before I can do this one” but then these shoes weren’t just a pile of black. They had character. I don’t know if that sounds dumb and I don’t particularly care. They did. There was a green shoe with a tassel on it. A practical sandal where you could see which buckle hole the woman used most frequently. A heel that was so dainty that you could picture the ladylike owner. 

There was a new exhibit that showed the life of the prisoners beforehand through personal videos. It was a dark room with projections on all the walls and it brought back the idea that with every single one of those pairs of glasses, prosthetic legs, shoes, etc. there was a person that went with it. 

The next room had an exhibit by an artist who transcribed children’s pictures to the same scale onto white walls. Children don’t embellish. This exhibit was genuine. There were scenes of people being shot in the woods, prisons, moms holding crying children, fire and smoke, and things that children should never see. 

We walked through where the first gas chamber was and learned that the first time gas was used, it was to kill the people in the hospital that were just wasting space. One soldier came up with the idea. Since they didn’t know how much Zyklon B to use, the prisoners were left dying for two days. We saw the standing cells where people would be forced to stand four to a square meter. We saw the cell where Father Maximilian Kolbe gave up his life in exchange for another. The first full crematorium of Auschwitz was in this part of the camp and we walked through it as well. It felt like the inside of one huge tomb underground. 

After a break where we all forced smiles and tried to make light conversation as a distraction, we took the bus to Birkenau. 

Birkenau is huge. Pictures absolutely will not do it justice. You feel small, helpless, and uniform just looking at the ruins that are there today. It’s just barrack after barrack after barrack. Each one of those uniform barracks meant for 52 horses held 400 people. As I was taking this picture to ATTEMPT to show the width of half of the camp, our tour guide told us that the barracks actually used to be double that on this side and went into where the trees are now. I nearly dropped my phone. I feel like there’s no way to get across how minuscule you feel walking through this camp where everything looks like it was copied and pasted over and over again. 

These two pictures are at either end of the camp from the train tracks:

From a historic preservation standpoint, these buildings and foundations may not last much longer. The whole camp was muddy and the structures weren’t exactly built with the highest level of craftsmanship. I’m going to need to do some research when I get home about what’s going on with that, if anything. There is no way to do preservation or really even have the camp exist without some group being upset. Our tour guide said that sometimes Orthodox Jews feel that the camp should be closed and should be a memorial without any tourists involved. I know I have absolutely no right to have any actual say in the matter but my opinion is that the camp should be open to visitors. I would not be able to even begin to grasp the volume and feeling without having gone. It is a graveyard of the highest and most horrific degree. 

We went through the administrative building where prisoners were processed after selection. If they were going through this building, they weren’t being sent to the gas chambers. What a sick silver lining. The building felt like somewhere where animals would be herded through in a processing plant. Much like everything else, the Nazis had a brilliantly smooth system going on in this building to turn a person with an identity and character into yet another striped entity to be humiliated and worked to death. 

I tend to shut down when visiting weightier sights. When I went to Pearl Harbor as a kid, I remember just needing to sit down on a bench and try to not think. Hiroshima in the 8th grade made me question my entire American education. As a worrier, I was concerned about not staying focused during this trip and launching into a spiral of “what ifs…” and combing through the information I knew about Auschwitz or going off on a tangent in my head as a weird coping mechanism. I think being older now and being with a small group of twelve other people I respect made me stay on track and be able to remember the whole experience. That being said, the second I got on the bus I crashed and fell asleep. 

I’m going to try and go back and edit this super ramble-y, poorly organized post at some point but I need to just sit and try and get this eyebrow crease I’ve had all day to go away. 

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March 5, 2015

We did so much today and had a great time doing it! We needed this break between yesterday and tomorrow's trip to Auschwitz. 

Gregory briskly picked us up at 9am from our hotel and we headed into downtown Krakow. It was castle time, people. 

The Wawel Royal Castle sits at the top of a hill (as do all good castles, I believe). You can see the old and the new mixed together from this angle like a patchwork quilt of architecture with things being destroyed and rebuilt or redesigned based on need. 

We climb the hill and rounded the corner to see the 900 year old Wawel Cathedral. If my church looked like this, I would be a much better Catholic (no offense, Blessed Sacrament of Norfolk, VA). Sadly we could not take pictures inside the Cathedral but it was like the inside of an Art History book in there. Ornate tapestries, sculptures, paintings, tombs, etc. were everywhere. I felt my eyes widening so that I could try and soak it all in. I honestly need to know Gregory's study tactics. The man knew everything and even started to show a little personality (!!) by throwing in some sarcastic comments. This definitely kept my attention. 

Gregory led us up an almost comically tight set of winding stairs up to the top of a tower to see this bell and the view of Krakow from the window shown. I included the other people that were up there in this picture to show scale. We then went down into the tombs of the cathedral. This has been the main burial site for Polish rulers since the 14th century with the most recent burial being of President Kaczyński and his wife from the 2010 plane crash over Russia. 

We didn't get to go into the Wawel castle itself but I'd love to go in someday! The courtyard was impressively large. I tried to do a pano view but this gave better detail. 

Nina and I took a quick picture with a statue of John Paul II but were apparently too apprehensive of the Catholic guilt to get anywhere close to him. That's my only possible explanation.

On to the next stop! 

These streets are all just so beautiful. Every one of them could be photographed with the worst camera in the world and still look charming. I have about fifty iterations of this picture with a winding cobblestone street and elegant buildings on either side but I'll spare you from having to scroll through all of them and just allow myself to put one up for now. 

Gregory asked us what we thought the holes in the piece of stone to the right of the door were and by his sly all-knowing grin I immediately knew that my first guess of some sort of massive lego had to be wrong. It turns out they were used to put torches out back in the good ole days. This was yet another reminder that America is essentially an infant in comparison to Europe. 

We eventually made our way to St. Mary's Basilica which is right on the Main Market Square. There's pictures of it in the background from my blog post a few days ago. This time we got to actually go inside! I happily paid the extra 5 PLN to take pictures but I don't think that any of them do the masterpiece any justice. 

We waited a few minutes for a grand reveal of the Viet Stoss Altar. You know it's an impressive altar piece when there's an entire wiki article on it. It was nice to see the close ups and explanations of each piece so if you're interested, check it out! 

For our 40 minute break, we decided to have a sit down lunch. This may not have been the most responsible of decisions but I'm glad we did just so that we could see this restaurant. 

After being herded down a spiral staircase past the cute coffeeshop area and into the basement, we were greeted by this bizarre wall. Bonus in this picture: Michael scoping out the kid's play area. I feel like this may have been some sort of front due to our surly waiter and the fact that the only other customer was a serious looking man on his laptop sitting directly under this face. I got a hot meal out of the deal so I really can't complain. 

We made our way over to Jagiellonian University, the oldest University in Poland and the second oldest in Central Europe. We were handed off by Gregory to another tour guide in the University's museum to go through the strangest tour I've ever been given. He was funny but it was all a series of one liners through a very thick accent that none of us could pinpoint and he moved so quickly! I know we talked about Copernicus. 

I think Seaco needs to step up its game. This was the dining hall of the University in the beginning. Maybe our new campus center will be more along these lines? Minus the whole disease and lack of knowledge on expiration dates though, please. 

Most of us bought sweatshirts from the gift shop then we had a few hours to kill before our evening started. We realized that this was prime souvenir shopping time. After dashing to the ATM and trying to keep calm as I typed in "300zl" (about $75) we dove into the tourist trap of an alley in the main market square. My parents are seriously the most difficult people in the world to buy presents for but I think I ended up with some winners for my friends and family. Things are so cheap here! Even in tourist trap central, it wasn't that bad and I'm happy with what I got. 

After all that shopping adrenaline, it was time to power walk back to the hotel and look decent for the evening Herr Rotter had planned for us. 

We went to a Klezmer concert in Isaac's Synagogue. The band was so good! Every girl in our group ended up with a band member that we favored like it was One Direction or something (#TeamDrummer). We walked over to our fancy dinner at Pod Baranem. Natalie sealed her spot as Most Likely to Bundle Up when she whipped out a pair of zebra fuzzy socks from her coat pocket and put them on over her tights at an intersection while wearing a fancy dress and bright lipstick.  

I ordered the stuffed cabbage with mushroom sauce and man oh man could I have had that for the rest of my days. Delicious is an understatement. I was so impressed with our waiter. He remembered who ordered what, who he shouldn't serve rounds of meat to, and still had a sense of humor through it all. 

We all ordered dessert and this are the remnants of my Polish take on schokotorte. I really meant to take a picture beforehand but then I took a bite and that all fell by the wayside so we're just going to go with this instead. Thank you to Herr Rotter for finding this restaurant and putting up with us at a fancy restaurant! 

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March 4, 2015

The whole point of this trip is to study Jews in Poland before, during, and after the Holocaust. Today was rougher than the others. It's starting to get real and I feel like this whole week is culminating to Friday when we go to Auschwitz. 

We had another 6 hour tour since we're in a new city. Gregory, our new tour guide, may or may not be a walking encyclopedia. He's definitely less smiley than good ole Ziggy was but the amount of information he told us today was amazing. It was absolutely disgusting this morning weather wise. Snow and rain mix, winds, and just a general sense of ickiness (my English major friends will be so proud of this stellar word choice). 

We saw a few places where scenes from Schindler's List had been shot. Although this area isn't actually in the Ghetto, it was close by in the Kazimierz-Jewish district and Spielberg liked the open courtyard. 

The Izaak Synagogue was under reconstruction so we couldn't go into the main section but we did get to look into it. It was tiny and our tour guide talked about how few practicing Jews there were in Krakow nowadays. 

The cemetery had been used as a garbage dumping ground during the German occupation. The graves were cleaned out in the 1960s, if my memory is serving me well, and I can't imagine the work that went into cleaning all of those tombstones. They now have these metal plates on top of the tombstones to protect them from the elements like little umbrellas. I thought that was so brilliant to keep the stone in better shape and safer from the elements! Those things were definitely being tested by the weather today. 

We went into the Krakow Ghetto after a short coffee break. Seeing the chair memorial made my heart sink. You see the square and you know thousands of people were torn from their lives and either murdered on the same pavement you're standing on now or sent away to face a death in the near future.

We learned that walls to the ghetto were either made of barbed wire or this stone fence meant to look like Jewish tombstones. This is the point of our tour where I started to feel nauseous. Trying to imagine living in an enclosed, cramped area with towering tombstones caving in around me was impossible. 

We made our way to Schindler's factory which now has a museum dealing with way more than just Schindler. It was an incredible museum providing the entire history of the German invasion into Poland. The exhibits flowed well and Gregory walked us through the whole thing beautifully. I wanted to highlight two things that stuck out to me out of the sea of information and displays: 

1) the grand architectural drawings that the Germans had made for powerful structures that thankfully never saw the light of day 

2) a German infographic showing who to choose as workers (they're the ones with the shovels in the middle of the age range)

We had enough time to stop at the Memorial of Torn Out Hearts overlooking the Plaszow Concentration Camp. We were all pretty tired at this point and I feel embarrassed even admitting it now but when we first heard we were going somewhere else I felt petulant. I take it all back now after having gone. I don't think I understood what it was we were going to be seeing at all and assumed it was just another monument. 

This was not just another monument. At the top of the hill, you look out over where the concentration camp was. Gregory told us that executions were held where we were standing and how some Jews in the camp even said they looked forward to executions because that's how you could see women. That went to show how lost their sense of humanity had to have been after being beaten, stripped of any dignity, and subjected to endless humiliation. 

It's safe to say that at this point, we were all tired and sad. We hadn't eaten yet so we were dropped off downtown and went to a calzone and gyro place. This was where I started to genuinely smile again. I really enjoy the group of people I'm here with. They're all intelligent, funny, and charismatic. We can all talk to each other freely even though most of us haven't known each other before this trip. Megan and I both ordered calzones that were in fact just whole pizzas folded over each other and I'm still recovering from this poor decision. (also, I found a Mountain Dew!! YAY)

I've been wanting to go to an actual Zara since I've seen all the cool things people end up getting there when they go to Europe so we went to the mall and I spent some money. Everything is so cheap here!! It's probably for the best that we can't just magically send everything back home or else I would've done some damage at Zara Home. You know I can't resist a good throw pillow. I mean I had to today, but it was hard. 

We took a long nap/resting/wifi session back at the hotel then a few of us wandered back downtown to find dinner. I have no idea WHY I ate after that freaking calzone but I had the best pasta salad of my life. I was totally that person and whipped out my phone to take a picture so that I will never forget the joy I felt while eating this. It helped that the bartender at this restaurant was SO HOT. I haven't seen many (any) attractive European guys but this guy knew how to make a drink and look good while doing so. Love ya, Daniel. Keep doing you.

We (by we, I mean Nina and Natalie. I was too busy tripping over my chair and purse while getting out of my chair.) asked Daniel for a picture and he comes out five minutes later blushing and holding a massive bottle of vodka. What a man. Immediately after taking this picture we booked it out of there. Natalie shouted all the Polish words she knew (including “grzyb” meaning “mushroom”) as a means of saying goodbye to our newfound love, Daniel. Sadly, the front door had locked by the time we were leaving so we were all crammed in the foyer trying to make a smooth escape and we were trapped. We ended up having to turn around and go out some back entrance which meant reentering the restaurant and waving to the Polish people who were laughing at our truly embarrassing situation. This was easily the most embarrassing “American tourist” moment but luckily everyone in the restaurant was kindly laughing instead of pointing and laughing. There’s a difference...right? I’m going to tell myself that anyway. 

Here are pictures of people bundled up today. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a deep, introspective reflective part of this blog post but I feel that it's necessary.

Also, I haven't included a picture of some pretty building or church in this post so here's the daily quota: 

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Ah yes, the traditional polish rubber ducks (?)

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March 2, 2015

Today we went all over Warsaw with the help of Ziggy/Siggy/Zygmunt/Sigmund. 

The Warsaw Ghetto was humbling and ghostly inside. We walked around the Jewish area and saw Nozyk Synagogue, the last standing synagogue after WWII. This Catholic Church (pictured) played a role in smuggling children out of the ghetto by the hundreds.  

We went into a courtyard of the Warsaw ghetto where children would play. "Trapped" is the only word I could use to describe the feeling of walking in there. I automatically craned my head up to try and see the sun but the tightly packed buildings towering over you made you forget there was a real world out there. 

In trying to find a fitting adjective to describe the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, I keep on thinking about how beautiful it was. It is one of the largest cemeteries in Europe with over 250,000 marked graves and even more mass graves. Tombstones were crumbling back into the earth and they were all right on top of each other. The cemetery was for "meritorious Jews" and most of the graves were ornate, no matter how aged they were. 

We saw some headstones with bullet holes in them from the Warsaw Uprising. A cemetery is already eerie enough but then to think that people were shot while hiding between the headstones adds another element that makes the place truly unforgettable. 

There was a memorial for the children who died in the Holocaust close to the outer edge. Thousands of stones were placed on top of it as people's offerings.

We briefly stopped by the Umschlagplatz and saw the tree standing between the narrow walls of the memorial, signifying the tree of life. This was one of those moments where you realize what had happened not so long ago on the same piece of land you’re stepping on now. 

The Polin Museum was recently opened and I was entirely impressed with the aesthetics of the museum. However, none of us got done in time without having rushed through some aspect of the Polish Jews' history because it was a very text-heavy museum, separated with touch screen displays to have some sort of interaction. There were very few artifacts in the museum and I'm assuming that's because most things were destroyed or in other museums.

Since we had only gotten to see Old Town in the nighttime before, a group of us headed out to get a glimpse of it in the daylight. We went to a coffeeshop after walking around for a while and had a chance to decompress after a long day.

For dinner, we all went to another restaurant in the old town and I confidently ordered pierogies  with my vegetarian partner-in-crime, Emily. We were sad to find out that they had meat inside of them (I really should have tried to ask) but both enjoyed spinach stuffed pancakes. 

Writing this blog post has made me realize how much we got to experience in 24 hours!

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March 1, 2015

I can't say that I remember much of our 8 hour flight from Dulles to Vienna because I spent almost the whole flight blissfully sleeping on the tray table of the seat in front of me. Luckily, there were no crying babies, loud people, or offensive smells. We landed in Vienna's very Helvetica'd and sleek airport and stayed there for five hours. Seeing my classmates and professors contort themselves to try and sleep on some chairs was the main source of entertainment for our time in that airport. Our second flight was in a much smaller plane and was only an hour. Again, I completely passed out after dutifully trying to get through some of my book. I woke up with the book open in my lap and everyone around me completely knocked out. 

We met Sigmund/Zygmunt (Nina and I aren't entirely sure how he spelled it), our kind and chipper tour guide, at the Warsaw airport. He took us to the Ibis Hotel where he told us a little bit about the city of Warsaw. We all looked like zombies at this point so I'm impressed that he wanted to come back and see us the next day for our tour of the city. 

For dinner, we went to a nice restaurant in Old Town Warsaw. It was within walking distance so we got a chance to stretch our legs out and get a better view of the city. I ordered some fantastic grilled vegetables with baked goat cheese on top and drizzled in balsamic.

We walked around after dinner and got to finally see the beautiful architecture. Since most of Warsaw was destroyed during the war, the Polish are now some of the most desired architects as far as reconstruction goes since they had to rebuild most of the city. Walking around helped us get a better understanding of the layout of Warsaw and forced us to stay awake a little bit longer to get adjusted to the time zone. The Old Town is beautiful but it's surrounded by huge Soviet Era apartment complexes so it was a stark, obvious contrast when you entered the Old Town. 

Nina and I went to bed at 10pm this night. Getting wild here.