Fint i Danmark: March 2009

Krakow

I started my mainland Europe traveling two weeks ago with an amazing trip to Central Europe. I was only gone a week but the experiences and the adventure alone made it seem like I was gone a month. This was my first trip to both eastern and western Europe and to do them in the same week was really incredible. I skied in the Austrian alps, drank beer in a Munich beer hall and met a holocaust survivor in Krakow. When I returned home too I realized how happy I was to be heading back and how this really was my "home." And what's best, its still a city in Europe!

March 14. 2009
Our great central Europe adventure started with a pop over to Sweden to catch our super cheap flight to Poland out of Malmo. I went on this part of the trip with Amy and we decided we HAD to go to Poland after seeing a WIZZ air flight for only 100 crowns ($15 inc. tax). Well what we didn't think about was that it was $15 out of Malmo (but the train to Malmo is $10, shuttle bus to airport $15...) and that we had booked a discount airline (huge competition in Europe for cheap airfare = more flights packed into one day= more delays = a big mistake to book our flight in the late afternoon). We showed up at the airport 2 hours early to find out our plane was 3 hours delayed from the get-go, then considering we have a 2 hour shuttle from the airport in Poland still ahead of us it was going to be a long afternoon. So we did as best we could in an airport that made Albany look big and wasted all our money on beer, snacks and a new deck of cards.

When we finally got to Poland we were met with a waiting shuttle. Our hassles were over and it was worth it. We decided to couch surf in Krakow and our host couple was waiting for us with wine, friends and still took us out for a night on the town. In the shuttle I asked Amy how many hours of travel she was going on. She didn't have enough fingers for her 12..

I meanwhile was knitting.

Krakow! This is an incredibly beautiful city.. I loved the central Market Square.

There is a great cathedral that dominates the square. Amy is in front of it with our best find, the Polish pretzel.

This little round guy was the first form of the pretzel.. at least Poles claim to have started it. They are sold all over the city in little street stands. (Although this picture was taken from the airport on my way out, we wised up a bit and stocked up on the $0.10 pretzels for our trips home. Nourishment reserve.)

Krakow has some of the most gut-wrentching history but it also a beautiful city with a lot to offer outside its past. The mountains are close by and make a great side trip but unfortunately we didn't have time to visit. Its a university city so there is a lot of great night life and music and many tourists and foreigners. The old Jewish quarter is a reinvented part of town, with some of the most incredible pubs and cafes in these dark and eery old businesses of the main streets and squares. The city is one of the most well preserved Polish cities because it was never destroyed and rebuilt by the communists after WWII, like Warsaw and many others. The history I suppose is hard to avoid.

The food however is very unique. Around the city they have milk bars which are cheap lunch halls left over from Communist times. The soups we tried were incredible! Mine is in the foreground, a clear beet-root soup with dumplings. (Who ever heard of beet-root before coming here, the Danes love it too. This one was so good)

The King's castle is perched on a hill overlooking the river, the Wisla, a major river in Poland. I instead opted to take pictures of all the walls.

Inside Wawel Castle. (Its fun to say too because W's are V's in Polish)

Few more shots around the central square. The yellow building with the arcade is called Sukiennice and its a market place like Pikes place or Quincy markets. The square was so big though it needed something like this to break it up a bit.

There were two churches on the main square, both were skewed but aligned with each other. The white one is called St. Adalbert's Church and it is an 11th century church, one of the oldest stone churches in Poland. The cathedral is called Saint Mary's Basillica and it had some of the most beautiful decorations on the inside. I actually went in as a patron after everything I saw on this trip. I needed a moment of reflection.

Finally we took another look at Kazimierz, the old Jewish district, on our last day after having seen Auschwitz. We went into a book store and had a great converstation with the shop owner, who personally knew all of the surviving jews from Kazimierz during the holocaust. Many of them had written memoirs. One of these women happened to walk into the shop while we were talking to him. He introduced us and immediately she grabbed my and Amy's hands and squeezed them tight. She looked us back and forth and said "Be safe, such beautiful girls." She couldn't stop picking up our hands while she showed us the photographs in her memoir. "And that was my mother and my grandmother.. and this was my brother." The shop owner had been telling us about her before she came in actually. He was writing the title of our book for us on a slip of paper, since he was out of it in the shop.

He wrote slowly since it was hard for him to remember the English title. "Have.. You.. Seen.. My.. Little..." God my heart was dropping, "Sister." Here is her book. She was nine when everything started and she was separated from her family. Her brother rescued her by taking her down into the sewers and hiding her. Her name is Janina Fischler-Martinho a holocaust survivor from Krakow. She's just one story. Its too scarey how real it all is.

"Earth Do Not Cover Their Blood"

March 15. 2009
Part of the reason Amy and I wanted to go to Krakow is because the Auschwitz concentration camps are nearby. The camps are recognizable from history books and perhaps Schindler's List, which took place and was filmed in Krakow, but it could just be the shear volume of prisoners it held and starved or killed in its operation. You don't forget what it looks like.

Auschwitz I was the original camp. It expanded to Auschwitz II and III when the volume was too great. Auschwitz II- Birkenau is the largest of the Nazi extermination camps. It was built by the prisoners and operated by them, under force, which included 4 gas chambers and crematoriums that killed hundreds of their neighbors, friends, fellow people. Not only jews were killed although they were 90% of the population. Catholics, Gypsies (Romanians), Soviet prisoners, Hungarians and Poles were also killed. The total at this camp alone was over 1 million people.

Auschwitz I is in an old army baracks. We had a guided tour which took us into many of the buildings and explained their original purpose. Most of the buildings have been turned into a museum, but the original structure is always in tack. While looking at photographs and models and rooms filled with clothing, shoes, toothbrushes, etc. you are still in the dank halls and rooms of these buildings.

When we left Krakow that morning the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.

As we walked around this camp it got darker and started to sprinkle. By the time we got to Auschwitz II it was raining. Outside the main gate:
Arbeit macht frei ~ Work shall set you free

There was a building we were brought into that was not converted into a museum. It was the court or prison building. This is where people were brought to face trial whether they had committed a crime or not. They were led to believe they were having a fair trial which was immediately followed by a sentence. We walked around the basement where many of the torture cells were. There were rooms that were pitch black, standing chambers, starvation cells.. it was disgusting. There was a cross etched into the wood of one of the cell doors, it must have been done with a fingernail. Outside this building was the execution yard where people who were not sentenced to some form of torture were directly marched outside, positioned in front of the wall and killed.

The first crematorium was built here and experimentation on how much gas was needed to exterminate groups of people was done here. An experiment, they didn't always get it right. Adjacent to the gas chamber is the room with ovens. This is the only surviving crematorium because they destroyed the other, much larger and more thought out, chambers at Birkenau to hide evidence. Just outside this bunker is where the leader of the camp was hung after his conviction.

We visited Auschwitz II as part of our tour as well.

After the visit to Auschwitz I its hard to describe your mood. You feel odd taking pictures where people's lives were taken. Its strange to be a "tourist" but I suppose its just a powerful museum. You walk around with headphones on so you can hear your guide and it gives you this kind of disconnected experience from all the other visitors. You don't talk to anyone, what on earth would you have to say. Its weird but at the same time far too surreal to really feel anything.. Its something you think about a lot afterward.

When we arrived at Birkenau I appreciated the vastness of it. Despite how the size was related to the volume it saw there was a peace about it. Birkenau, I learned, is translated from the

German word for Birch because of all the trees around it. It was like a big field, half empty from the Nazi destruction at the end of the war, and everything left in rubble. But you couldn't hide what hung in the air, obviously, and being their in its final state, still, quiet, abandoned, brought some peace.

At the end of the tracks was a beautiful, simple monument to the 1.1 million victims of the camp. I didn't get a good photograph but there were many other impromptu ones.

Some of the surviving buildings showed us how the prisoners were held. These wooden buildings were first stables. The left over chimney stacks give an idea of how many buildings there once were.

In the Jewish quarter in Krakow there are many museums and monuments. This one was outside a synagoge and I particularly liked it's message. Its a tough day to go and visit these camps but you keep the ground open. And that's something we couldn't do without.

Munich

March 16. 2009-
Amy and I departed in Poland

and I flew to Germany to see my friend Jon. I was greeted in the Munich airport by a huge BMW hood that revved its engine at me, and five friends with beer. Before we left the airport I was sitting in a beer garden in a huge courtyard outside the terminals. I liked Munich before even leaving the airport!

The highlight of my stay was the Starkbierfest which is a celebration of the strong Easter brew that comes out during Lent. It was made by the monks to help them through their fasting, and it was strong. We went to the Paulaner beer hall and watched as it filled up with hundreds of people from 4pm on, on a Wednesday afternoon. There was a full brass band and a lot of singing and dancing. It was so much fun.

Jon and his friends.

Really enjoyed my drindl costume. The mass, or Maß in German (I love the ß double 's' letter), serves a liter of beer. Its made of ceramic and you get a work out lifting one, but waitresses walk around with 8 or more at a time. This was my best attempt at becoming a bar maid.

Many, many drinking songs and classic(?) songs turned drinking such as Hey Baby from Dirty Dancing, Country Roads Take me Home, Anita, Summer of 69, and a children's song that's been commandeered and given a little dance. I will try to find an example of it on youtube. In the meantime this is "Viva Bavaria" performed about half-way through our evening.

The rest of the week I hung out and explored Munich. This is Marienplatz, the main square. I took this picture when I climbed to the top of the neighboring St. Peters church tower.

Another view down on the rest of the church and city center.

This market is called Viktualienmarket and its filed with fruit stands, food vendors and of course beer gardens. I had already tried apfelstrudel and Wiener Schnitzel so I complied with a beer in the courtyard and felt very Bavarian.

The city was wonderful to walk around in. There was so much character and it almost looked like it could fit in Disney World.

A memorial/rally for the students and teachers who were killed in the German school shooting a few weeks ago was taking place in one of the plazas. I signed a book that was addressed to the surviving students at the school. Afterward a guy asked if he could interview me. We'll have to see if I show up in some German newspaper.. I felt bad when I had heard about the shooting but I didn't realize until I was asked to talk about it how hard it was, coming from the states, to see that kind of thing happen out here.

I took some side trips outside the city. I went to Olympiapark where the 1972 Summer Olympics were held. Its a great complex with some cable and tent-like sculptures that really got me excited. They also had a big hill you could climb and overlook Munich (and the alps if it was clear enough). I read this mini mountain was constructed out of the rubble from Munich after WWII.