I got up and made it out fine and in time (I only had three beers spaced out over the course of the whole evening – but the common room was a mess. I left it as a tribute to the reputation of the English lads). The only problem was the tour company I booked through never bothered to tell me they weren’t the ones who ACTUALLY conducted the tours. So I’m there but I almost missed it since I didn’t know. No worries, I made it. Of course, I had booked two tours, one for the morning and one for the afternoon, and I forgot which was which, so I was a little surprised when I realized this one was the Schindler’s List/Jewish Quarter tour. But it’s cool… I can roll with the punches. So our tour guide is named Jacek (but he goes by Jack) and he kinda looks like John Goodman’s character in The Big Lebowski. He’s fun. And he knows his stuff.

I see a dragon... do you?

We head down the road and he’s got us all laughing as he gives us some great history of Krakow and of the Jewish presence

Jacek tells stories

there in. Seems that Poland, and Krakow specifically, had been welcoming Jews and other religious groups for several hundred years and the Jewish Quarter was and is very different than the Ghetto. It’s an interesting thing, similar in certain aspects to Berlin and Germany, in that Poland is doing its level best to convince themselves and the world that they love the Jews and hated Hitler and everyone should just get along. Now, I’m not saying this isn’t true, and I’m not saying they didn’t invite Jews from all over Europe in to escape religious persecution during the middle ages, but it still seems like a bit of a whitewash. The reason for the Quarter, say, is because the Jews all banded together and didn’t want to live elsewhere (but they had limitations on where they could live and the kind of trade they could perform outside the quarter). Again, I’m not discounting any of the good, but no one is blameless for the bad.

Jacek is telling us about all the different temples in the quarter (and other great stories about the Krakow Dragon when we pit stopped in a very funky little bar) and he mentions the Orthodox temple (still in use) but says we’re not gonna see it on the tour because it costs 5 zloty to go inside. But he encourages us to make it out to have a look. Then, a little later, we’re all sitting and listening to a story about a temple and he asks if we want to see the orthodox temple. I say “yes,” thinking he’s talking about later in the day on our own time. Nope, he means right then, as a group. And I accepted for everyone. Sorry gang, but you know what, it was worth it!

Inside the Orthodox Synagogue

It’s interesting to compare the interior of the temple with the interior of the hundreds of churches and cathedrals I’ve seen over the last few weeks. Honestly, if the Christians were to put that money to use solving world hunger, we’d have no starvation problems. Sure, they’re beautiful, but wow that’s a lot of money! In contrast, the temple is very simple and elegant. And plain. The thing which made it the most interesting, though, was the cemetery out back. The oldest grave there was from 1642 and there were about 300, all perfectly preserved. Now, the question arises, how did they remain during the Nazi occupation? Well… the Nazis decided that the perfect humiliation for the Jews was to turn their synagogue and its cemetery into a garbage dump. The upshot, of course, is that when it was excavated, the filth had actually saved and preserved things. However, there is still a hill which hasn’t been excavated and still holds remains and the gravestones which were broken or could not be saved were used in a memorial project and became

Cemetary

Krakow's "Wailing Wall"

the building blocks of Krakow’s own Wailing Wall.

Something which has been happening, and I think I’ve talked about it already, is that I try and learn at least the word for ‘thank you’ in every language. Well, as we were leaving the temple I realized I remembered ‘thank you’ in Hebrew, so I said it as we left.

We passed one very interesting memorial, which was a square full of slightly oversized chairs, commemorating the furniture which had been thrown out of the windows of the homes of the Jews who had been evacuated and sent off to the camps from the train

Chairs

platform which was right next to the square. The end of the tour had us at Oskar Schindler’s factory, which is covered and undergoing serious renovation to open next year as a museum dedicated to the resistance and Schindler.

The next tour was a city walk and while it was interesting, there really wasn’t that much to talk about… wait, that’s not exactly true. We did learn something rather interesting. Krakow is the final resting place of a number of people who never went there in life. There were several very famous Poles who were born somewhere else, lived all their lives somewhere else (mostly Paris) and yet, inexplicably, are buried in Krakow. They even tried to get Pope John Paul II (who did, in fact, live and work in Krakow for a number of years) but the Vatican said no. So there one famous son, the guy they actually liked AND had claim to, he’s in Rome. Crazy.

After the tour, I went and found Massolit Books, which I had been told had a nice English Language selection. When I finally found it, it was great! The almost perfect used bookstore! (The only thing which would have made it better would have been a

Bookstore

selection of sandwiches and soft drinks in addition to the coffee and pastries) So I grabbed a book (Stanislaw Lem, whom I’d been meaning to read anyway AND he’s Polish – I like to be a book ahead. So as I get close to finishing one, I pick up another) grabbed an iced coffee and a brownie and had a seat. At the next table over, a guy and a girl were speaking English. I ended up joining the conversation and when the guy left, the girl, whose name is Carolyn, came over and joined me at my table. We ended up talking for a bit, then went for dinner, which included a walk through the square and ended when I dropped her off at the train station so she could get her overnighter to Budapest. That’s the cool thing about backpacking trough foreign countries and doing things off

Me and Carolyn (I'm on the left)

the beaten path. You meet these really great people who you hope will become friends, you hang out for a couple of hours and then they go one way and you go another. And the next night you’re going to meet someone else and the process will continue.

For my part, I’m hopping a train and a bus to Vilnius, the capitol of Lithuania, where, yes, I am like a god!

I got back from Auschwitz (the first time) at around 19:30, feeling pretty sober and not sure I wanted to do anything. But I was hungry. I went down to a local store and after much hand gesturing and nodding with big smiles, the guy behind the counter made me a couple of sausage sandwiches. The conversation went something like this:

“You want butter?” he asked, holding up a knife with butter already on it.

“No thank you.”

“A little bit.” He assured me and proceeded to spread butter on the bread.

“A little bit,” I agreed.

“You want salad?”

“No.”

“A little bit.”

So I had sausage sandwiches with butter and lettuce, a bag of chips and some little Polish candies for dessert. I also grabbed a big bottle of Iced Tea to drink and headed back to the hostel. I figured I’d eat in the common room since no one was in there and I could also get some work done. So I grabbed my computer and sat on a couch. It didn’t take long for that plan to go out the window.

Joe

I ate fine and then Joe Walsgrove showed up. I’d met Joe the night before. He was traveling with a former roommate and two of said roommates friends. Forgive me for not remembering names (However, if anyone reading this has those names for me, I’d be most grateful). So Joe was part of a discussion about how the English are really superseding the Americans as the most obnoxious tourists in Europe. And to be fair, Joe was being picked on. Mostly because Joe was being loud and…boisterous would be a good word. So anyway, Joe comes in and has a seat,

The Common Room at hostel Bling Bling

then “The Band” comes in, who are four other blokes, also from England, who are traveling together (And were named “The Band,” by Joe, when they had first walked into the common room a night or two before). So they sit down and beers start being drunk. Now, me, I’ve got my ice tea and doing a bit of work on the computer. But I can’t resist getting in a dig every now and again, especially at Joe’s expense. Several other people drift in and out, but mostly, it’s the six of us and Tam (who shall be known as “Hat”). Eventually, the computer goes away and I take full part of the conversation. Joe offers me a beer from a stash which doesn’t belong to him (“It’s my mates and he’s sleeping, so…”) and after

Champions of the Night (1)

initially rejecting the offer, I finally accept. With my beer open, Joe offers the toast which makes up the title of this particular entry – “Always a pleasure, never a chore.” And we drink.

So Joe wants to go out and Joe is the kind of guy who brings energy to any room he’s in. So when he wants to go out, it’s a good bet he’s going to get at least a few takers. Not in this lot, though. We’ve all been to Auschwitz and it’s a bit cold and damp outside and we’re all just really enjoying the evening’s conversation, which is ranging from history to politics to music to girls to whatever else pops into our heads. Joe nicknamed all of us (I became “The Professor” or “The Lecturer” but most everyone else had much ruder monikers) At some point Joe wakes up his mates and gets them to come out with the idea we’re all going out and they need to join us. So they come out, sleepy from their naps and we

Champions of the Night (2)

all have a laugh and the conversations continue. Mind you, at this point it’s getting close to midnight and Joe still wants to go out.

About half twelve, Joe raises his glass to us all and says (*language alert for those with young ones reading) “You’re all a right bunch of cunts.” Now, naturally, we all take offense. But then he explains that he’s having one of the best nights of his trip just sitting around talking. Of course, this doesn’t change the fact he wants to still go out and continue the conversation in a bar somewhere. I figure you can probably guess what happens next.

So we’re all walking down the street, it’s pouring down rain, Liza and her friend (two girls from Chicago) have joined us to go dancing when there’s a police siren behind us. It seems that in Poland it is illegal to walk down the street with an open container of alcohol. And naturally, amongst our group of twelve people, we have three who are imbibing (I’ll get to imbibing in a second) and even more naturally, one of them is Joe. The police in Poland, though, are quite thoughtful and considerate when it comes to these little infractions. They take your ID (like, say, Joe’s passport) and then tell you the fine is 100 zloty (about $50 or 25 Pounds) and you can go to the cash machine right over there and pay them. Of course, if you’d rather not, you can go

The boys and their expensive souvenirs

down to the station at which point the fines increase since you’re putting the cops through all sorts of paperwork hassles. The other two guys who got caught ran off to a bankomat but Joe just held up his cash card, which had a rat sized corner chewed off, and explained he couldn’t get the money out. This was the point where Jason (one of The Band) and I stepped up with 50 zloty a piece and paid off the cops. Joe’s mates had gone to a bar, had a quick pint, and were on their way back with money by the time it was all sorted out. The girls, meanwhile, had just kept on walking when the cops showed up, so we could only assume they were dancing the night away.

We actually tried to find them, but the club they said they were going to was closed up tight so we all ended up in this basement bar, again having a beer and a laugh. Well, most of us were. Joe’s mates, in his words, were not IMBIBING. See, it seems this coming year, at medical school (yes, Joe is going to be a doctor who wants to go to Africa and help people) Joe is captain of his Rugby team, UBHRFC (I promised I’d give them a shout out here in the blog and I wish I could remember what that all stood for – again, I plead for help from anyone reading this) and the weird rules of Rugby say you can’t use any words which start with D so “drinking” is out which is why people this night were imbibing (I can sense a future generation gathering around a solemn table and intoning “why on all other nights do we drink OR imbibe but on this night we only imbibe?”). Evidently, there’s also a thing where if someone starts singing a song called Father Abraham (is that right?) and you join in, you have to take your clothes off. Rigby is an odd sport off the field.

So by the time we got home and into bed, it was close to 5am. And I had to get up early since I had a tour of the city starting at 10.

Just remember, when drinking anything, the toast for this trip is

“Always a pleasure”

“Never a chore.”

End of the night

(Bailey and Riley, I expect you to learn this so we can toast when I get back)

I’m not sure where to begin. It started on Monday and continued on Wednesday, my visit. I went twice. The first time I went with an organized group. They picked us up at the hostel, drove us directly to the camp, and had us planned out so we met with a tour guide, got our audio systems and headed out. (the audio systems are actually rather interesting in that you are wired into your guide so they don’t have to shout and you can still hear them. And our guide was great. An older woman, who we found out was the daughter in law of a survivor who used to lead tours himself. She promised him she would do tours and has been for 35 years and she still got choked up when she saw the things she was showing us. But that’s the point. She wasn’t showing us everything, the important stuff, sure, but we were passing by exhibits with no mention. This is fine, I understand tours like this have a limited time (and you can take one, even if you don’t come with an organized group, you just randomly join in with a group of people). Thing is, though, you have no time to absorb it, to get your head around it, to just sit and reflect.

So I went back.

I wanted to sit in front of a display window showing 14,000 pounds of human hair and try to contemplate the number of people represented. I needed to stare at the suitcases of people who were told they were going to a better life and had brought all of their valuables with them (some had even PAID for their own passage on the train cars) – and read the word “kind,” German for “child,” and wonder when it had shown up to try and figure out if the ‘kind’ in question even had a chance of survival or if they had been immediately sent to the gas chambers. I was obsessed looking at pictures of more than 1000 children (only a small fraction of those who passed through the camp’s gates) who were killed.

And that’s just in Auschwitz I. Auschwitz III was destroyed after the war, but Auschwitz II – Birkenau, is still there. At least parts of it are. In its entirety, Auschwitz II was 25 times the size of the original. In fact, the reason there is still a gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz I is because it was taken out of service before the war was over and turned into a munitions bunker – it wasn’t efficient enough and couldn’t keep up with demand. Over at II, they had oven which could handle more than 12,000 bodies in a 24 hour period and at times, they couldn’t keep up – which is why the camps had to resort to open air pits. The chambers at II could handle up to 2000 people at a time and it only took 15-20 minutes and slightly less than 7 kilos (14 pounds) of Zyklon B.

Those ovens are long since gone. But in Birkenau they haven’t memorialized anything. They have barracks in as close to their original state as they could make them. They have the train tracks leading to the disembarkation point where the selection was made, where a German doctor (not always Mengele) used a single finger to point to the right (death) or left (work). I’m getting chills just sitting on a train typing this up. The numbers are so staggering when you think that something like 1.3 million Jews (and another 130,000 gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners, etc) were killed over the course of almost five years. And yet here we are today, walking through with our cameras and teenagers who are required to be there for school and infants or toddlers running around and screaming. I don’t know if it’s disrespect or the ultimate in honoring the dead – that life goes on and we can commemorate the huge loss, but we are here, and we are learning and remembering and I can only imagine what the sound of a laughing child would have been like to the thousands of men and women who were being forced to stand at attention for roll call in the frozen winter for up to twelve hours at a time.

So yeah, I went back, and I took pictures of gates and barbed wire and Jewish children proudly wearing the Israeli flag draped around their shoulders. I read and I thought and I contemplated and I cried and I got angry and I said my own prayers. I looked into the eyes of photographs and ran my fingers over lists of names. I made silent promises and I smiled at children.

But mostly, I remembered.

My last day in Vienna was fairly uneventful… this seems to be my pattern now. I got up, and Imbi and I went and dropped my bag off at the bus station before grabbing breakfast (well…trying to find breakfast was an issue and we finally just settled for Starbucks where we could get free wifi). She tried to talk to her mum and dad and sis on skype on my computer but it was too

Imbi on my computer

slow so she went off to find an Internet café while I finished a post from last week (I swear I’m trying to get caught up). Then I went looking for a post office (which I found and wasn’t open on Saturday) and met up again with Imbi while she was finishing her family chat.

I had wanted to go to the Lower Belevedere museum to see an exhibit but by the time we were both finished with our stuff, it was getting later in the day and besides, it wasn’t really her thing so instead, we just walked around the park, talking and doing things for free. Took some pretty cool pictures under a dramatic sky and generally had a lovely afternoon. Around 4:30, we parted

Vienna Presidential Palace

company, she had things to do in the evening and eventually, I had a bus to catch.

Of course, it was only 4:30, so I decided to try and get to the museum (which closed at 6) and see if I could catch a little bit of the exhibit. I tried to read the map, had a bit of trouble but hopped a U-Bahn and headed in what I thought was the general direction. When I got out of the underground, I saw a sign pointing the way to the museum. Yay me! So I started walking. And I walked. And walked.

And walked.

And walked.

(sensing a pattern yet?)

And walked.

Eventually, I oriented myself and my map (seriously, this was like negotiating an Israeli/Egyptian peace accord in 1973) and discovered I’d been heading in the wrong direction. I turned, refocused and began walking. And I walked. And walked.

I’ll spare you the gory details but suffice to say I when I finally got to the museum , it was nearer six than half five and when I asked if they offered a late entry discount. Nope, not a chance in heck (Bailey and Riley are reading this!). So I went into the gift shop just to see what I was missing and you know what? The exhibit wasn’t what I thought it was! Actually, I’m glad I didn’t go earlier, I would have been horribly disappointed. This way, I got to find out I didn’t want to see the art AND got 250 words of a funny story. Win win I’d say.

So I left the museum (not gonna talk about the horrid directions I received from the cloak check girl which put me on a tram going the wrong direction and ending up further away than where I started) went back to stephensplatz and waited out my bus.

When I got the bus station, I was about 45 minutes early. Not a big deal, really, so I had a candy bar (oh man have I discovered I really like Twix!) and waited, knowing my bus was going to be pulling into gate A. About 3 minutes to 9, still no bus and now there were three of us waiting. It should have been more, but the departure board was still insisting we were in Gate A. 20:59 and I headed to another bus, just to check. Yeah, you guessed it. No indication the bus was going to Krakow, in the wrong gate, but sure enough, that was the bus I was supposed to be on. So I handed over my rucksack and got on board, looking for an open seat. I finally found one and settled in, knowing I had about 7 hours of sitting too close next to a complete stranger and trying to sleep . Looking around, I noticed a mother and son had taken up two whole rows across the aisle from me, each sitting on the end with backpacks on the window seat and stretched out luxuriously. Just plain rude if you ask me.

The bus took off, and I caught some cat naps. At one point, my row companion departed so I ended up with a row to myself, which was nice and then the bus stopped. And the driver got out. I tried to sleep but then I heard some sort of industrial clanging. Don’t know what was wrong, but when I looked out, the driver had his shirt off and a huge box of tools open next to him. I kept my eyes closed like a kid who didn’t study for a math test, hoping I wouldn’t get called on to try and fix something (completely irrational, I know, but it was 5am and I was still sleeping). When we finally pulled into Krakow it was just after 7am.. I found my hostel fairly easily, dropped off my bags and booked a tour for that morning – The Salt Mines.

Copernicus made out of salt

The Salt Mines were pretty cool (cold actually, though not as cold as the Ice Caves). They started the tour with a bit of history, some statues made out of salt and then some dioramas showing how the mines worked. There’s 2% of the mines open for the tour and we ended up about 135 meters underground. Even down there,

Underground Cathedral

we saw two chapels (a little one and the big one, dedicated to the queen who was responsible for the salt coming to Poland, according to legend) Both chapels are made entirely of salt and you can book them out for weddings and other ceremonies (they have a big ballroom for receptions as well).

After the mines, I wandered a bit around the town square, then headed back to the hostel to officially check in and have a nap. That evening, I didn’t do much, made use of the wifi, talked to some people and generally relaxed. I knew what was coming. Monday was Auschwitz.