Wandering Wonders

So I am sitting in my favorite bookstore, Massolit, and am drinking a kawa mrozona in a dark, dusky room.  Now, back to my blogging, ahem:

What I neglected to tell you about last time in my blog was the centre.  The main square (Rynek Glowny) is very beautiful, with cafes lining the perimeter, and in the middle there is Sukiennice market, which is partly under renovation, but you can still go inside and buy touristy knickknacks and amber and scarves. Outside in the cafes, where people sit and do a lot of people watching, and chatting with friends, coffee, drinks, and food is cheaper than in the United States, especially considering the view. I would love to take a sketch pad there and sketch all the people walking by.

 In the centre there is also a tower, and some sort of chapel.  In the clock tower, a trumpeter gives the call which was given to warn of invasions.  Legend has it that when the trumpeter was trumpeting to warn of Mongolian invasion during the thirteenth century, a Mongol shot him in the throat in mid-call, and the call was cut off.  So to this day, the trumpeter’s melody is cut short.  I wish I could tell you how often this is done per day, but honestly I don’t know.

On the various short streets which connect to the centre, there are a myriad of different Catholic churches that are breathtaking.  I went into this one church, which was very ornate—marble everywhere—and inside they had the sarcophagi of various political leaders, including Kazimierz. On the outskirts of central Krakow, immediately South of Kazimierz and Southwest of the square, is Wawel Hill, where the fortress is and where the legendary dragon was defeated. Wawel is situated along the Wisla river.

The main centre in Krakow isn’t all that big, but it is lovely.  I especially like the kindness of the people—the Poles are more than willing to help you find your way, and a lot of them speak English and can politely help you with your Polish if they see that you are struggling. Contrastively, there are pigeons everywhere— nasty little pigeons which cover themselves in the filfth of every puddle, and poop all over the place, including all over our balcony.   I see a lot of tourists, especially girls from the UK, putting bread crumbs on themselves and letting the pigeons crawl all over them. They are laughing and giggling.  Fortunately or unfortunately—whichever way you’d like to look at it—they don’t know where those pigeons have been.

Perhaps now would be good to tell you about my routine, insofar as I have one.  In the morning I walk about forty minutes to school. Now there is a tramway, but the weather is so nice right now, and it’s really good exercise, plus a dollar (2.5- 3 zlote) to ride the tram, so I prefer to not take it.  On some days I have an Introduction to Central Europe class at 8:30; on other days only Survival Polish at 10:15.  I really like the Intro to CE class, and I have been reading a lot for it outside of class. These are just condensed courses, and only the Intro to CE class counts for credit.  After school, I am on my own, and usually end up meandering up and down the streets, reading in the CES reading room, or planning out local trips to where I should like to go next.

So far I have only taken three trips of my own planning—one to Oswiecim (Auschwitz), one to the Wielicka Salt Mines, and the other to a nearby lake that had been created by digging for limestone. 

Oswiecim was a unique experience—it was ironically very green and even pretty considering what its main function had been—a slaughter house for over  a million people. As I walked the halls, where there were poor English translations, and grainy photos blown to a larger size of victims, papers,  etc, it kind of struck me that the place must not have enough funding.  It’s free to go there solo, but you can pay for a tour if you’d like. I think it needs more funding. Anyhow, back to the experience.  The most interesting room I saw there (I did not get to go inside all of the buildings, however… just hardly one strip) was the room where they had piled women’s hair.  There was so much of it, because the Nazis were selling it for cloth-making.  One of the most horrible sights I saw was the role of fabric in the corner made out of women’s hair.  And the halls were lined with photos of haggard people, each photo listing their birth date, former occupation, etc. Most of the men and women in these photos looked so defiant.  But there was this one photo I shall remember, of a man with beautiful features, only twenty-nine, who had a look of desperation and even hope. Call him stupid if you wish, he probably died there just for being Jewish, but to me it is best—to hope even when there shall be no comfort. Because one day there shall be.  I also saw Maximilian Kolbe’s cell in the basement. I didn’t get to see Birkenau, which is only thirty minutes away walking, or even all of Aushwitz, so I will have to return soon. 

The day before that, however, I went to the Salt Mine, which was quite interesting.  Of course, the best site was this large room was a church of sorts with large chandeliers. If you want to see it, check my facebook albums out; I posted quite a lot of photos. At one point, the excavation of salt was responsible for 1/3^rd of the income of Poland.  Interestingly enough, Jews were used in the mines as well, and none of them ended up living.  There is a star of David dug into the salt. 

Two days ago I went to a lake that had been formed by limestone excavation.  Although it is fenced off, the fence is quite shoddy with lots of places where it has been cut.  Many people walk along the lake, at least two hundred feet up.  It is quite pretty, and the paths are a little narrow. 

That’s about all I can think about now, but tomorrow I shall go to Warsaw for the weekend and visit the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) as well as seeing some sites around the town. Although I hear that Warsaw is not as charming as Krakow, I am sure that as the capitol, there will be wonderful museums and other historical places to see.  Most notably, we will visit the museum for the Warsaw Uprising in 1939.

 Well, I must go, but later I will blog about my time in Zakopane, and also cover this weekend’s trip to Warsaw.

Do Widzenia!

~Jess

Okay, so it hasn’t been quite three weeks, but it has been around that. Wow, there is so much to say… let me see if I can recap.

The flight was quite nice, and I watched parts of four movies and continued to read 1984 while this German couple in front of me, the guy a Zach Efron look-alike, took turns kissing each other and exchanging sweet nothings… eww. Anyhow, I arrived in Munich, and then in Krakow.  From Krakow I took a Radio Taxi Taxi, and the taxi driver spoke English very well and was quite hospitable. And when I looked out the window and saw all of the urban sprawl scraggling everywhere like a stray mangy cat, I thought to myself, “Good heavens, what have I done?” But I digress. The city is much prettier than its surrounding sprawl.

When I got the Hotele Studencki Piast (which I am sure hasn’t been renovated since the sixties, and the ominous communist style building scars the skyline… thank goodness it’s yellow!), I paid rent, went to my room, and met my new roomie and my two flat mates. There are two of us to a room, and the four of us share a small bathroom.  It’s fine by me, but that’s only because I am low maintenance.

Anyhow, when I came I got acquainted with “the group”– there are about thirty-five of us in the CES programme.  It’s a very mixed group, and most of the people I genuinely like.  A lot of them are into the party scene, which just isn’t me, but I tried to join them sometimes nonetheless.

One of the nights I ended up doing karaoke in a bar with four people. It was awesome! We sang “Wonderwall”, and I got to harmonize.  Ohh, and dancing… dancing’s different here because of all the techno… how do you dance to techno?!?

One day we toured the main square in Krakow, and the other day we toured Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter. I thought there would be more of a Jewish presence here, like there is in Praga, but apparently so many Jews were wiped out here that only 150 people here still claim Jewish heritage. It’s really sad. There are only two running Synagogues– one progressive and the other old school. We toured the inside of the old school one, and the guys had to wear yamakas, while I had to cover my shoulders with a scarf.  We also toured the cemetery which had been renovated, if I can use that word. It had been destroyed, and they manage to put the headstones back into place, but on the wrong graves, because no one knows the order. Jews also come and place stones on the gravestones, so that their wishes may be granted, and  there is a wall there built with old tombstones that had been destroyed. The synagogue itself is being renovated.

Kazimierz is my favorite part of the city, although it isn’t as glamorous at the area near Wawel Hill.    There’s an English bookstore on Felicjanek called Massolit that I enjoy frequenting, and you can hear Yiddish music as you enter some of the stree cafes.  I like it because it isn’t as busy as the other areas.. and you can meander down the street and let time slip by, unnoticed.

I’ll have to post about Zakopane and the Dunajec in a bit… it’s time for me to run and do something else! Goodbye