So, I am finally just getting around to sitting down to continue my documentation of my after-Christmas travels. To help orient all of you as to my geographic whereabouts during this time, below is a little map that shows where I was (approximately) from Dec. 24th to January 5th.
A brief summary to accompany the map: I started out in Mainz (A) on the 24th, before I headed to Altenkirchen/Westerwald (B) for Christmas with Vallie's family, as described in the previous entry. From there, I headed to Berlin (C) for a night, before getting on a train to Krakow (D) until the 30th. I was back in Berlin for New Year's Eve (E), and then spent a few days in Hamburg (F). Finally, I came back home to Mainz (A, again), and...slept.
So...onto Poland!
After Christmas at Vallie's, I arrived in Berlin for a nice little reunion with a few Berlin Fulbrighers (Halley, Jill, Lauren and Chris) as well as Marty and Shane (both of whom have already been prominently featured on my blog - see the Nürnberg pictures), who had spent Christmas together at Shane's place in Munich. We had a low-key evening hanging at a living-room-like bar - I hadn't seen Halley, Jill or Lauren since Marburg, and it was great to catch up with everyone.
The following morning at 9AM, Halley, Shane, Marty and I (and Chris, who came to see us off) met up at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof and hopped on a train to Krakow! We got a great deal on the tickets (less than 50 Euros per person, round trip) and all of us were psyched. The trip to Krakow lasted ten hours, and once the initial excitement wore off, we spent a good deal of the trip like this:
The train trip itself was interesting - at some (seemingly arbitrary - as the train stop signs were in both Polish and German for a good hour, giving us absolutely no concrete idea of where the border might be) point, we could no longer understand the announcements and the train stations and little Polish villages in the snowy countryside were decidedly non-German. I also observed a change in the apparently acceptable train etiquette - once Deutsche Bahn no longer had a presence, lots of people were smoking in the little areas in between the cars.
As more Polish-speaking people got on the train and the Germans got off, I started to get a taste of what was a recurrent theme over the following three days - really feeling like a foreigner. I will not flatter myself in saying that my German is anything more than bare-bones basic, but I can get by - I complete all of my transactions, visit the doctor, etc. in German. While I can't necessarily understand every conversation I hear around me, I at least have a general idea of what's going on. However, after three straight months of German everything, it was a very strange feeling to revert into "tourist mode."
Continuing with the train ride: Unfortunately for us, we assumed that there would surely be a snack car on the Poland Express (as we lovingly dubbed our railway adventure), but around lunchtime - while we watched everyone around us unwrap homemade sandwiches and pieces of fresh fruit - we realized that we would have to make do with the random food items that each of us had brought with us. This comprised exclusively: banana-chocolate granola bars, peanuts, tortilla chips and a single clementine. Stone soup. Being recent college graduates, we didn't think this was too bad, but certainly less than ideal. However, much to our surprise, about halfway through the trip we felt a jolt during one of our stops - apparently snack car service was only provided for the latter five hours. Any resultant joy we felt about the prospect of real food after half a day on the Bahn was short-lived, as we stocked up on...more peanuts. Stone soup, nochmal.
The city at night time was really beautiful and we enjoyed getting to walk around a little bit before checking into our hostel...
...getting some warm, yummy Polish food...
...and sampling some various Polish vodkas.
The next day was spent exploring the city's market square and the Wawel Cathedral, which we paid to take a little tour of. It seemed like every important person in the existence of the country Poland was buried in this church, and we basically got a crash course in Polish history since 1000 A.D. - a lot of bang for our Zloty, considering our non-exhaustive-four-day tour of the country.
...
On a more serious note: on our third day in Poland (after some deliberation, I should point out), Shane, Marty and I decided to visit Auschwitz. We paid to take a tour of Auschwitz I and II (the former is better known as Birkenau), which is located about an hour outside of Krakow proper. I did not take pictures at Auschwitz. It was technically not forbidden to do so, but none of us felt that it was appropriate the second after stepping under the infamous Arbeit macht Frei gate at Auschwitz I. [If you are interested in seeing pictures of the camp's interior you can take a "virtual tour" at the museum's official website, here: http://www.remember.org/auschwitz/.]
Auschwitz I, which is microscopic in size compared to Birkenau, is mostly now a museum, with an intact crematorium and gas chamber (both of which we walked through), and contains various items belonging to those captured, as well as recovered documents and photographs. Birkenau is now mostly empty space, as the Nazis burned down a great deal of it before the liberation, to destroy evidence. In the past, there were hundreds of those long bunkers for housing prisoners, which I'm sure you all have seen photos of, as well as several gas chambers and crematoria.
I don't think that I will ever be able to find words to describe how I felt there. Any description that I could possibly summon would not even come close to pin-pointing what it is like to actually be at Auschwitz. Our tour guides prefaced our entry into the camps by qualifying them as "the world's largest cemeteries," and reminded us that we were always standing on human ashes.
It was freezing. Somewhere in the range of -10ºC (around 14ºF) plus wind chill. I was wearing two pairs of wool socks, long underwear, gloves, a hat, scarf and down coat and my teeth still audibly chattered for the two hours we spent outside. I don't think the experience would have struck such a nerve had I seen the place with the spring sun, fresh grass, warmth...Winter in Auschwitz is as dismal as it can possibly get.
...
In stark contrast to the aforementioned trip, the four of us spent the afternoon/evening at the Wieliczka Salt Mine. The mine is - naturally - completely underground (we walked down stairs for about fifteen minutes to reach the first level of the mine) and has apparently been an important fixture in this area Poland for hundreds of years. Though the mine is no longer in use, the Poles are still very proud of the rich history of the place (salt used to be used as currency...check out the etymology of the word salary sometime) and have reconstructed a great deal of the mine exclusively for tourism purposes.
Everything you're about to see in the pictures below is made out of salt - from the sculptures to the light fixtures:
In summary: I certainly don't feel like I got a fantastic idea of the country of Poland during this short trip, but Krakow is a great place. The bars and restaurants around the market square and in the Old Jewish Town are really unique and interesting places to spend a few hours. Also, the Zloty goes a long way. We stuffed ourselves silly on pierogi, beer and soup every night we were there for under 10 Euro per person, and we really didn't need to budget our money very stringently at all. To boot, it is an absolutely charming city. Visit Krakow!
(Also, I highly recommend checking out Halley's blog post about our trip to Poland for some different stories/highlights and more pictures. You can find it here: http://halleyingermany.blogspot.com/2009/01/poland-express.html.)
My subsequent updates will be about our New Year's Eve pit stop in Berlin and adventures in Hamburg.
Bis dann,
Ashlan
Oh, and contrary to what my prior entries may seem to indicate, I am actually doing quite a bit of chemistry these days as well. ;)
1 comment:
Love re-living the Poland Express memories!! And thanks for the shout out : ) loves! Halley
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