19.Oct.08
It is not even painful anymore to wake up super early. We were out of the house walking towards the Wroclaw Glowny under a black sky while the teenagers were still stumbling home drunk from their long Saturday night. We skedaddled on the train and caught a few more Zzz’s on the way to Krakow.
Jess brought up an interesting conversation topic as we loaded our bags into the Krakow train station lockers. The lockers are clearly big enough for a whole human, how often do you think a corpse or live person have gotten locked in one? We pondered and discussed as we meandered out and towards the city center. Along the way we discovered an awesome treat that is one of the main symbols of Krakow; GIANT BAGELS! We bought a cheesy one and thoroughly enjoyed its deliciousness, reminiscing on how seldom in this year we have had a good bagel; very exciting! The nearest information booth gave us our first essential quest item; a map! The friendly attendant gave some info on the castle and things to do in the city. We had all day to explore before our Couchsurfing hosts got home from work and we’d meet at their house.
The city square was beautiful with the usual statues, fountains, & floods of people shadowed by a towering cathedral. On instinct we skipped into the cathedral not expecting such a massive gathering for Sunday Mass. After all we have just come from such ‘evil’ atheist countries, and naturally we expect cathedrals to be mostly empty save some tourists even on a Sunday. Poland is a whole different enchilada however, a very catholic enchilada. So we wandered through the gaggle of people listening to the unseen guy somewhere near the altar talking in intangible gibberish. For the first time ever we saw people giving confession, complete with old dude wearing black robes, massive silver cross, and a funny black hat which looked like a pair of tits on his head.
We got more bagels for a snack, which are sold everywhere & ridiculously cheap, then headed to the castle sitting atop a hill (as always). As with most castles it had walls, turrets, doors, plants, murals, stones, museums, and a cathedral. Our first stop was the cathedral where photos are, as usual, forbidden which doesn’t stop us from sneaking a few; its not like our photos will suck their soul…or will they? We climbed the steeple to some ancient bell, which would have been more impressive if we could actually ring it. There wasn’t much of a view so we went back down and enjoyed all the art including one quite spectacular silver plate dented delicately to form an intricate war scene.
We have simply been to so many museums and weaponry exhibits in the last month that we didn’t feel up to paying the entrance fees so we headed back out and into the city. A band in traditional Polish costume were playing outside which made for a nice pic:
Around the corner the castle was protected by some fire breathing bronze dragon, which kids loved to climb all over. We wandered more through the city checking out the many surrounding park areas and cathedrals then settled down to a great lunch of traditional Polish dumplings. Feeling lazy we plopped down at a bar where we used the free Wifi and had a beer to kill time before our hosts got home from work. Then we saw a bit more of the city before heading to the station to pick up our bags.
Next to the train station is one of the most massive modern malls we have ever seen; we thought only America built such monstrosities. We killed more time there then grabbed our bags and made a long walk to our hosts place. Ola, Tomek, and their crazy black cat greeted us warmly and we chatted a couple hours away and slept on a pull-out bed.
20.Oct.08
In the nick of time we hopped on the bus to Auschwitz, luckily only a Polish bus or we may have not returned. First stop was camp I, the original detention center and HQ for all death camps. Amazingly the Polish youth don’t seem to have learned anything from history as we caught one high school Neanderthal mocking an Asian family walking by. You’d think they’d learn from what happened here, but we continuously hear other stories even from our hosts of Polish Xenophobia, Homophobia, and Anti-Semitism (maybe goes hand in hand with being 90%+ Catholic?). Camp I’s entrance is the famous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign (Works makes freedom).
Beyond which lay a series of detention blocks with small museums filling many. The museums were packed with documentation, pictures, and relics of the atrocities at Auschwitz. Most stunning was an unreal amount of woman’s hair in a massive pile behind a glass case. The hair would have been used to make cloth which there were examples of. Diagrams of the killing chambers, piles of glasses, briefcases, combs, prosthetics, the stories of Jews, Homosexuals, Roma/Sinti (AKA gypsies, which we finally learned were originally from India), and the tales of those persecuted and brought to Auschwitz from each individual European nation. It was all exactly as we expected to be, but still very powerful.
One disappointing part was the massive amount of Catholic relics as opposed to Jewish. At many monuments where mostly Jews were killed stood crosses, images of the pope and JC, and often not one Star of David to be found. I felt it necessary to be a temporary “good Jew” and drew a Star of David to put among the plethora of placed crosses on a firing squad wall.
Next we headed to Camp II by bus which was beyond any size we have ever imagined. This was where the true evil took place and millions of people lost their lives. In a last ditch to cover their tracks while under pressure the Nazis bombed and burned most of the camp, leaving a sea of standing brick chimneys surrounded by electric barbed-wire fence, and a handful of intact wooden structures. The feeling was somber as we walked through the camp reflecting on the atrocities which took place all around us. To actually walk the road where a million people’s final steps were taken is deeply moving and horrifying. Though the crematoriums and gas chambers lay in ruin, and grass covered the tossed ashes of those incinerated, one could feel the depth and suffering by knowing that these once functioned as factories of no use other than mass human extermination. From early on we learn about the Holocaust in school, books, television, movies, pictures, & stories, but only here, where you can feel the pain of the deceased and hear their screams for help, is one fully able to reflect on the brutality of mankind. The suffering one can so easily inflict on another is astounding. Nothing like the Holocaust must ever happen again. Sadly the human race continues to commit such atrocities, and hatred and suffering exist in the skeleton-filled closet of every country on earth.
Making our way back to the entrance to catch the bus home we passed two groups of Israelis draped in blue and white flags. We later learned from our hosts over a home cooked dinner that the Israeli government flies school classes out to Auschwitz all year.
21.Oct.08
Today we began by taking a stroll old Jewish quarter. Sadly those swastika wearing shit-heads ripped away anything Jewish and left empty buildings that could nowadays barely be called temples or synagogues. The area was used as a Jewish Ghetto before many were sent to Auschwitz. The survivors would have moved back to their Polish homes, but ironically enough the Polish turned around and decided to be anti-Semitic as well, leaving currently not one Jew or used Jewish building in the area; there was the only Jewish bookshop in Poland however!
We had some nice ribs and soup at a local place and for the rest of the afternoon we enjoyed the beautiful weather, strolled through parks, sat and read/played Sudoku, and walked to a gorgeous Cathedral in the distance with a really disappointing interior:
In the evening we hung out with our hosts at their place and they made us some pickle soup dish.
22.Oct.08
Krakow has a nice, efficient system of private buses which we caught for an hour ride out of town to one of the world’s largest salt mines. We paid for entrance and waited for an English tour to start because you cannot enter the mines without a group and guide. When we had a group we made our way down a nearly infinite number of stairs. The tour was a couple of hours with a background and history of the mine. Most notable were the “Methane Burners” who were life-sentence criminals who would wear thick water drenched cotton and come down with massive flaming cotton swabs to burn out methane vents for the days work. If this weren’t done, the methane would build up and when it touched a flame would engulf a good chunk of the mine, making a charred corpse of all the unfortunate who stood in its path. Accidents still happened, which is why lifers were put down there. The next most interesting part were the statues made of the dark gray impure salt, and an entire cathedral deep down carved out of the salt walls.
We became among the lucky few to use the deepest toilets in the world, a place where the deepest bungee jump was made, and the deepest area where a hot-air balloon was raised. Thankfully instead of killing ourselves on stairs back up there was a convenient elevator to surface us. Then we took a bus back to Krakow where we got some goods from the market and made dinner.
In the evening we strolled back into town with Ola and Tomek for some bar hopping. They brought us to a place with a huge variety chilled Vodkas served in frozen glasses. We sampled many varieties and the night felt warmer all of a sudden. Then we hopped in and out of a few more bars and later headed to get the best Kielbasa in town. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere a green truck pulls up every night for a few hours and serves fresh kielbasa with bread and mustard. This has been happening for around 20 years, and people come from all over the city for the BBQ; delicious.
23.Oct.08
We spent the morning cooking socks on the electric stove top to try and dry them. The washing machine doesn’t have the best spin cycle so even leaving them hanging for 24 hours left our clothes wet and we didn’t want them smelling in our bags. Still slightly damp we packed our clothes away and walked to the bus station grabbing a few delicious farewell bagels along the way.
A short train ride later and we were in the nowhere city of Rzeszow. There was one sort of okay looking downtown area in the city surrounded by industry. We spent the afternoon in a bar using WiFi and reading. We only came here for one night and then tomorrow we leave for Ukraine. Our CS hosts Piotrek & Dorota picked us up when they finished work and we headed to their brand spanking new, modern apartment and shared travel stories from India and elsewhere. They were super nice for hosting us just one night.
Krakow Flickr Photos:
http://flickr.com/photos/flufflebuns/sets/72157608592143860/
