Caution Wet Floor

Thursday, August 7, 2008 - Tuesday, August 12, 2008

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
Martin Niemöller (English translation)

The day started out with a bang, as normal thing for me but a rarity for this trip, I overslept. A brilliant plan to get breakfast and then pick up items to make gorp (trail mix) fell by the wayside and a miscalculation on my part had us at Praha Hlavní Nádraží an hour and change too early. So there we are in the train station having a quick lunch and waiting. Once we got on the train, we had the pleasant surprise of private cabin like seats, which we had for the whole trip to ourselves.

There was a moment there, when we had one person who sat with us. Phllip, was an interesting guy. A Czech national, who dabbles in everything from computers, to employee training, he entertained us for some of the trip. (more me than Layne as I joined him in the dining car for some drinks) Phillip was an avid Fútbol fan, unfortunately he is a Manchester United fan. (a card carrying one in fact) For those of you who do not know I am avid Arsenal fan. I have been for many many years now. To put it in terms you can understand it’s almost like the Yankees vs. the Red Sox only on a smaller scale. The rivalry was once a great one but lately one or the other has had a good season while the other has floundered. This is what we talked about about over drinks.

As we were sitting there and he ordered drink after drink, each drink taking about 15-20 to get a hold of our waiter who seemed to not like our side of the dining car as it seemed to be the only one not getting any service. At one point while we were waiting two Polish co-eds came in and needed a place to sit. Phillip in his best Polish and ignoring my protests invited them to sit with us. When the introductions began he introduced me as a professor from Massachusetts. After they had left he justified the comment to me. It seems to young Phillip thought with my abundance of grey hair and thick beard and sunglasses (it was sunny in the dining car) that I looked like a professor. This became a thing as he kept pointing me out as “the Professor from Massachusetts” to anyone and everyone. He got a great kick out of it and after a while so did I.

Once we got to Dworzec Główny (the main train station in Krakow), I found myself for a moment reliving my first night in Prague. This time, I must say in Layne’s defense she did not get us lost but rather grossly underestimated how long it would take to walk with our bags from the train station to the hostel we were staying at. Something I don’t think she fully appreciated until the day we left and took the tram back to the station and found it was just 3 stops. All that walking for three stops on the tram. A theme that did continue, but this was really the only time it really bothered me. Anyway once we got to hostel, the night got better.

Our hostel, Momotown was split into two parts one part the dormitory section and the other was private apartments. The private apartments were on Szeroka Street which resembles more of a square in the historical neighborhood of Kazimierz. This neighborhood, was named after King Casimir III of Poland and for much of it’s existence has been the home of Jewish population of Krakow. This is where we stayed, it was a lovely place. As we got into our room, we realized we had not eaten for hours, the time was nearly 11pm and we headed out hoping to find something. What we found was a few places on Szeroka that were still open at this late hour. The one place we chose, was for it’s menu. It was Pierogies, The problem was we sat down and they told us that the kitchen was closing, Luckily we looked exhausted and kitchen staff took pity on us and allowed us to order quickly. So at the very least my first night in Poland ended far better than my first night in the Czech Republic.

The next day was better. We went to have breakfast in the main hostel building. Layne went with the understanding that she could get full breakfast there. I’m not sure who gave her the idea but I let her think it mostly cause I wanted to see her reaction. We walked in and there were people behind the sink and some bread cheese and tomatoes on the counter. There were also two pitchers of milk, one warm (for tea) and the other cold (for drinking and cereal) So I made myself some breakfast, and sat down but I could tell something was bothering her. Later she asked me how could I have sat there and ate my cereal with warm milk. I stopped dead in my tracks and just started laughing. Oh yeah you could not make this stuff up.

Day 1: Wawel Castle, Wawel Cathedral, Zygmunt Bell, Royal Road, The Cave of the Dragon

Wawel is a symbolic place of great significance for all Polish people. The Royal Castle and the Cathedral are situated on the Hill. Polish Royalty and many distinguished Poles are interred in the Basilica. Royal coronations have taken place there since 1320. They had a very nice exhibit of the old castle ruins, no cameras allowed unfortunately and yes they had people standing everywhere just to make sure you followed that. The cave of the dragon was an awesome sight as you walked down this narrow spiral staircase in to the depths below the hill. You knew you had gone far down when you finally got to the cave as the air and cave walls all around were rather moist.

Day 2: Auschwitz and Birkenau Memorial Museum, various exhibitions

I would love to write something witty and long here, but to be honest there is nothing witty to say. It’s one of those things in life that if you did not see it for yourself you would not believe it ever happened. It’s also one of those things that you cannot put into words. You have to experience it for yourself. Many great authors have tried and failed, so I am not even going to attempt it. All I will say, is that you have never and probably will never see anything like Auschwitz and Birkenau, except of course Treblinka, Chełmo,   Bełżec, and Sobibór. But if you have never seen any of those or walked through them, then the Holocaust is just something you learned in history class.

The most telling thing about what I saw at Auschwitz, that day were three things; One a room that was filled with women’s hair, the hair was in various shades of gray but there were some that still had a little color. I was not really talking, as I just could not bring myself to, but one of the other people in our tour asked why. The answer was so simple, I am not sure why it did not occur to us. You see the hair that still had color was that of little girls. There were other rooms with various things, collected by the Nazis. Stuff like kitchen wares, prosthetic devices, suitcases, toys, but nothing got to us quite like the room with womens hair. I gotta tell you honestly not one person in our group walked out of that particular room with dry eyes. Another thing, generally when we think of the holocaust we think of older people being gassed and tortured, there was a hallway with pictures on it of Polish Jews who had died in the camp and each and everyone of them looked college age, that took a lot of people by surprise. The third thing that really got me and I took a picture of it, was this memorial glass urn, that held the ashes scraped out of the crematorium.

Birkenau was a different scene though. Whereas Auschwitz was still mostly intact, Birkenau does not look the same as it did back then. It was at the time, the largest Concentration Camp in WWII. More people died there than in any other camp in WWII. The railroad entrance to the camp is most photographed and seen picture of the holocaust. It appeared in Schindler’s List and pretty much every major movie about the holocaust. The view from the tower above the entrance of the largest Concentration Camp in WWII is both breathtaking and surreal. It’s even more amazing when you consider the fact that now it largely overlooks on the right side of the camp the ruins of hundreds of barracks. Of those barracks that still remain, the insides had either rooms with more beds that made impossible to it to be even remotely suitable for living. The bathrooms, which they were allowed to use only 3 times a day for a total of 10 minutes (5 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 3 right before bed) were as unsanitary as one imagines they would have been.

The whole scene was an impressive sight, one I will not forget for as long as I live and on top of that it was raining. You could not have written a more somber sight if you had tried.

Day 3: St. Peter and St. Paul Church (where I went to Mass in Polish), Rynek Główny, McDonalds (oh yeah this was very very cool), Sukiennice, Oskar Schindler’s Factory, Concentration Camp at Płaszów, Amon Göth’s House, Jewish Ghetto, Apteka Pod Orłem, Old Synagogue.

I like to call this day my examining of my religious past and present. For those of you who are confused, let me explain. We began the day going to Mass at St. Peter and St. Paul Church. It’s a Catholic Church and we ended it standing in front of one of the oldest synagogues in Poland. That’s actually traveling from my religious present to my past but who’s counting. After Mass we went to Rynek Głowny (Main Market Square) which is the largest medieval square in Europe. For Lunch we ate at McDonalds. Now before you roll your eyes and scoff, let me tell you about this McDonalds. When they were building it they decided as most first floor establishments in Europe do, to build below instead of above. In this case when they were excavating to a larger dining room downstairs they found 13th century ruins. Instead of building around the ruins or knocking them down, they decided to incorporate them into the dining room, therefore it’s the only McDonalds in the world where you can eat under the medieval arches, so we did. After that we went to the Sukiennice (Silk Hall) which is a giant marketplace.

In the afternoon, we took a tour of the sites featured in the movie Schindler’s List. On this tour we got to see where Schindler’s factory was, not actually go into the factory it was closed, in preparation for it’s conversion into a museum sometime in 2009. We also got to see the last remaining wall in the Jewish Ghetto. To me there were two poignant moments in the tour. The first was the actual Camp at Płaszów. It’s now a open grassy field with hills. Quite a beautiful site actually for a place that was the site of so much horror. In what once was the building where people were tortured and murdered, the last remaining building standing of the old camp is now a private housing area. That’s right people actually live there. It must be a sight for them, everyday as people come to take pictures of their house. During our time there one of the people living there actually came outside to walk her dog in the camp itself. Our guide told us that by decree of the state of Poland, that no building would ever occur on that land. It was to remain as it is now for the rest of time.

The second was the Plac Zgody (formerly a market square) in the Podgórze suburb which was the heart of the old Jewish Ghetto in Krakow. This square has one striking object, a memorial to the victims of ghetto. It is a series of chairs scattered in different styles and shapes. When Jews were rounded up to be sent to Płaszów, they were made to wait. They were made to wait in the rain for days on end. They used to bring chairs to wait, when they were taken away the chairs remained. At the end of the day we ended back in Szeroka Street in Kazimierz, which just happens to have both the Old Synagogue and the New Synagogue. The Old Synagogue is also unique because of a law in Krakow that stated that no religious building could be taller than the tallest church. As a result they sunk the building by lowering the ground the synagogue was to be built, so it is actually taller than it looks.

Day 4: Wieliczka Salt Mine

The Wieliczka Salt Mine features a 3.5-km. tour for visitors (The mine reaches down to a depth of 327 meters and is over 300 km long, so the tour only covers about 1%) that includes statues of historic and mythic figures. Active mining was discontinued in 1996 due to low salt prices and mine flooding. My tour guide (I say my because Layne and I were in two different groups) really brought the funny in his delivery. He was a former guide at the actual park itself and now was working for a private tour group. He told jokes the whole way down including continuing to tell me and another person in our group afraid of heights that since we were going down it was not as dangerous. The tour begins with a statue of Mikołaj Kopernik (Nicolaus Copernicus), it was here where our tour guide first told us to feel free to go ahead and try the salt, but to please not try the statues as they will disintegrate and then no one else will get to see them and wouldn’t we feel bad. Of and of course we could be arrested for destroying a World Heritage Site. Like I said he was funny. Another funny story he told was from his first trip to the mine. There is a group of statues made of salt that resemble the Seven Dwarfs, he asked his father where Snow White was and his father told him in the kitchen. Then he watched as his mother proceeded to slap his father silly, sure enough a few guys in our group started laughing and their wives proceeded to slap them silly as well.

The most impressive part of our tour was the main church. Known as “the Underground Cathedral” it is an impressive sight that doesn’t even look like salt but rather unpolished granite. The crystals of the chandeliers are made from rock salt that has been dissolved and reconstituted to achieve a clear, glass-like appearance. The carvings, which depict various religious scenes including a copy of DaVinci’s The Last Supper are amazing, especially when you consider the fact that the oldest ones were actually done by the miners and not by artists. The trip ended with a a speedy lift that brought us back to the surface. There were a few people who were very claustrophobic and me with my fear of heights, of course we were all in the same lift. It worked out okay as keeping them calm, helped to keep me calm.

The day ended with a search for an all night Pierogies place and watching the fire eaters and throwers in Rynek Główny. I have been asked what was my favorite city or place to visit by everybody I have run into on my travels, hands down it was Kraków.