Poland...Every Corner Has A Kebab Stand and Every Man Has A Mustache

November 14-19, 2008
Cracow or Krakow, Poland

“You made out during Schindler’s List” -Seinfeld

American Song of The Week: James Brown, “I Feel Good”

This Week’s Travel Tip:
1) Poland is a cold place…bundle up.
2) The greatest card game of all time, Euchre, is a great way to have fun and pass time.
3) Poland is on the Zloty, not the Euro, which has a 3:1 U.S. dollar to Zloty ratio. This saved a LOT of money.

I’m currently taking a history class on the Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler. For this class we took a five day trip to Cracow, Poland and Auschwitz. Friday evening we got into Cracow and immediately started being tourists. We had a guided tour through and around the old city and the beautiful cathedrals of St. Anne’s and St. Mary’s.

St. Anne’s is an important church because it was near and dear to Pope John Paul II. You can’t turn a corner in Poland without seeing something about the Pope. He felt it was very important for the youth to be involved in the church so since Cracow has a large university population he did a lot of work at St. Anne’s, next to the college.

Saturday morning we went to a WWII museum which basically showed us how Poland got run over by Germany. Then after WWII were under Soviet Communist control. In this museum was also the holding cell where Germany used to take in the Poles for questioning. These were not homey holding cells. Most of the prisoners didn’t make it out alive.

We then went to the remains of the original Jewish Ghetto in Cracow where all Cracow Jews were placed before being sent off to Concentration Camps.

For anyone who has seen Schindler’s List we were taken to the original factory and also to a place where an important scene from the movie took place. The factory has since been turned into a museum.

Recognize this from Schindler's List?

We saw so many churches and art museums that you start to blank on the names and the significance. All of the churches were beautiful and the art museums were, well, art museums. However, this was Saturday night’s sunset :)

Sunday was Auschwitz day. It was a 2 hour bus ride from Cracow. Auschwitz actually was made up of two camps: Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau. Birkenau is the much larger camp and also the one seen much more frequently in pictures and movies. We were taken through the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Work Makes You Free) gate at Auschwitz I, through the torture chamber of Block 11, the execution courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, gas chambers, and the only remaining crematorium where the dead bodies were burned. There were displays of left behind shoes, suitcases, hair, pots and pans, and other objects that people came in with but obviously never had the chance to leave with.

About 5 minutes down the road was Birkenau or Auschwitz II. This camp was over a mile wide and half of a mile long. The barracks went on forever. It was impossible to grasp the concept that the exact place we were standing was the major site of the death of over 1 million innocent people.

Sunday night we grabbed a Kebab (gyro) for dinner and everyone attended a concert by a 22 year old prodigy that was playing the music of Frederic Chopin. Chopin is Poland’s most famous composer of classical music.

Monday we took a short ride to the small town of Nowa Huta. This is a town that the communist designed and built after WWII just outside of Cracow. The planning behind this city was genius with a town square in the center, easy access everywhere, parks, schools, everything which made the people content. However they left out one thing: churches. The communists built no churches in the town and this caused the biggest uprise from the people. The church was finally built but by this point the communism was on its way out.

Monday evening we made the trip to the town of Czestochowa. The holy place of Jasna Gora is located in the town.I don’t know how to pronounce it either. This is the home of the historical painting of ‘Black Madonna’ and is also a place that Pope John Paul II visited and said mass at over 100 times. The Black Madonna is a symbolic painting of the Virgin Mary that has been in possession by the Poles for over 600 years. It is believed to have been painted by St. Luke so it is incredible how many years it has lasted.

The dinner that night was a traditional Jewish meal of Duck pate, Sabbath soup, turkey, cake, and coffee. It was quite an interesting meal but the highlight was the Klezmer band in the background. The music sounded to me like the Polka.

Tuesday we went to Wawel Castle and learned the history of Poland dating back to about 1100 through paintings. Then went to two more art museums which I can’t even tell you the name of because we got shuffled in and out of them so fast and I, as well as everyone else there, could only take so much of the history of Poland in the year 1100 through art.

Tuesday afternoon was a great time though. We went to the Kopalnia salt mine and received a salt mine tour 100 meters under the surface. They had a chapel made of salt, Pope John Paul II made of salt, “paintings” of the last supper done completely in salt; it was pretty incredible. If you ever make it to Cracow it’s a pretty fun experience. Of course we didn’t leave Poland without grabbing dinner at Pierogi Paradise.

A Salty Pope John Paul II

Overall it was a great experience. Walking out of the gates of Auschwitz was a queasy feeling. It taught us all what we take for granted to be able to move freely where and when we want. There were prisoners that kissed the earth they walked on as they left those gates and we were just worried about what we were going to do for dinner.