Poland

In Krakow, Gina and I decided* to try something new: Couchsurfing!

Basically, couchsurfing is an online network where people allow out-of-towners to crash on their couch/spare bed/floor for free, in theory so they can meet people. I saw it as a winning combination of a way to meet locals (something I struggle with while traveling) and free lodging. So my cousin back home did some online screening for possible hosts in Krakow, and then while in Turkey I messaged the 3 that seemed the least sketchy. We got a response from 1, who agreed to host us and offered to meet us at the train station.

The girl, Julia, met us at the train station, and our adventure began… and it was safe and uneventful. While 2 free nights and no mishaps is recorded as a complete success, it would have been nice to have had a more lively host. Julia, however, had just had a grandparent pass away and was in the midst of trying to shake up new roommates for her apartment as her previous roommates were graduating, so I believe she did the best she could. We did go out to eat with her the last night we were in Krakow, and I had an interesting conversation with her about languages* and culture** another night. She had an apartment about 20 min from the station and 5 minutes from the center square. Her roommates were gone so Gina and I got beds, and we shared a bathroom (After 2 nights in Dresden and 2 nights in Krakow, Gina and I never figured out how to shower in a bathroom with no shower curtain).
*and confirmed that I cannot tell the difference between Polish or Belorussian. Interesting that Slavs can tell the difference between Romance and Germanic languages, but we (not just Americans) typically cannot tell the difference between various Slavic languages.
**Julia is Belorussian, not Polish, and made a few comments that suggested that, as a minority, she occasionally gets irked by Polish nationalism. I asked if she had ever been up to Wawel, and she was like, "nope, nothing there interests me. That's not my history."

Poland is still a very Catholic place, and in Krakow I saw an interesting phenomenon I have only seen before in Rome – nuns on the loose! Seeing nuns in full habit going about their business is almost a strange as seeing the monks in Thailand out and about, though sadly there were not as many nuns. The second day in Krakow, Gina and I had a friendly competition to see who could spot the most nuns, with myself edging Gina 15 nuns to 14 nuns. The only rule of the game was that you had to call the nun first. This led to an awkward moment when we were walking across Stare Miasto, the main square, with Julia, and I shouted, "nun!," notching a point but then having to explain to Julia what we were doing.

We came to Krakow for 3 reasons. 1, I thought it would be on the way from Dresden to Budapest (nope). 2 and 3 were the Wieliczka Salt Mines, a priority for Gina, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Because we had lost a day traveling from Dresden to Krakow, we decided to book organized tours instead of trying to navigate public transit for both of these sites.

On the first day we booked an afternoon tour of the salt mines and spent the morning checking out Wawel Hill, the home of Poland's national cathedral and old royal castle. That afternoon we went down the Wieliczka salt mines, following a centuries old tourist trail through the mine, complete with informational displays carved out of salt. An elevator at the end is a recent addition, but you begin by climbing 54 flights of stairs straight down, eventually getting 130m below ground. The chapels carved out of the salt were stunning and a testament to man's artistic prowess (I believe the famous chapel of St Kinga was carved primarily by miners, not professional artists).

The following day we took a full day tour of the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) concentration camps. Auschwitz I, the best preserved and the home of an excellent museum and collection of artifacts, was very informative, but wasn't as emotional as I was expecting. As Sophia had warned me, the Holocaust is so terrible and inhumane that it is almost impossible to grasp. I was most moved at one of the first displays, a small collection of Jewish prayer shawls recovered from the collection of Nazi contraband. The collections of clothes, suitcases, eye glasses, shoes, and so forth were of such large scale it was beyond comprehension. At Auschwitz II, more commonly known as Birkenau, was where most of the murder took place. This camp was of staggering size and scale, especially b/c only 2/3 of the land is preserved, and it did well to physically demonstrate the scale of Nazi evil and the industrial efficiency with which the Nazi went about exterminating people. For the former, there are rows upon rows of brick chimneys, standing as silent vigils marking where 200 humans apiece were stored, awaiting destruction. Polish refugees, returning after the war, had stripped away all of the wood in the camp to rebuild their villages. For the later, I was reminded of the comment about evils of "progress for progress sake" made at commencement by Sister Mary Scullion, the Laetare Medal recipient . The camp was enormous, yet 70% of all arrivals were exterminated within a day of arrival. The crematoriums could burn ~1300 bodies a day, yet the 6(?) crematoriums at the camp couldn't keep up with demands at its peak, so the Nazi's resorted to burning bodies in an open field behind the camp, and pictures of this burning survive.

A quote in the museum reminded me why I came to Poland, "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again" ~George Santayana.

The monument in Birkenua said, "For ever let this place be a cry of despair / And a warning to Humanity, where the Nazis murder about one and half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews, from various countries of Europe"

***

We went back to Julie’s apartment, grabbed dinner with Julie at a nearby resteraunt that she liked, and then scurried over to the train station to catch our train. The first ride was uneventful, but we were a bit confused waiting for our night train in Kattowice. Ultimately the train came and we slept. The train took an odd route – we arrived at Prague at 7am before Budapest a bit after 8 – and I think we spent a few hours just sitting in a train station somewhere in Poland or Czech Republic just killing time so that we would arrive at our destinations at a reasonable hour.