Sad Day

Day 221
I was up early, packed, and put my things into storage quickly. I had to be on a 12:30 train and there wasn't much time.

I decided to go out to the Majdanek death camp. I have been in the vicinity of these several times now, but really haven't wanted to visit. I've been to several already and I am sure they are all alike. I picked Majdanek because it was not just a death camp but a concentration and transit camp as well. It was also not destroyed during the Nazi retreat, there just wasn't any time, as the other camps were.

Majdanek functioned from October of 1942 to July of 1944 when it was liberated by the Soviet army. The first exhibit was on letters that the Polish, political, prisoners were able to sneak out. Most of them were in code.

For some reason I went through the place backwards and headed straight to the mausoleum. I already knew that this was a large pile of human ash. It was windy and I kept my mouth closed. When I got close I could see that there wasn't much of a need for that. The pile had solidified into rock. Next door was the crematorium.

I then moved past the crematorium to the barracks, most of them were locked. I looked through the keyhole, there wasn't anything there. The Polish part of the camp looked like many of the hostels that I have stayed in. The Jewish barracks would have been packed full, up to 800 people in a room only meant for 250.

Eventually I moved into the informational bit. One of the barracks was full of shoes. At the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. there is a room of shoes with a fan on it. There was no fan here and the smell was stifling.

78,000 people died here. I took pictures of zyclone b (gas chamber chemical) and of piles of human hair. I read the info on camp life and looked at the objects that have been left behind. I'm finding this to be rather difficult to write about. At the end of my tour, but at the beginning of everyone else's, I found the gas chambers. I went through them quickly, I had done this before at Auschwitz and didn't see a need to do it again. I think the only reason that I was there was that I think that castles and history museums are great, but sometimes we have to remember the bad stuff as well.

When I got on the bus and was out of site of the camp I felt a whole lot better. After grabbing my I headed to the bus stop. I couldn't find it and as I was panicked for time I just kinda stood there asking if anyone spoke English. Finally someone did and I got to the right place. I made my train with about 10 minutes to spare.

After about 4 hours of listening to the woman in my compartment talk on the phone I was fed up. I didn't have a phone to call anyone on but I did have my ipod. I put it on and began to sing along. She got the message and stopped, and so did I.

Once in Krakow I found my hostel quickly. I met an older Polish woman there who had been living in Sweden for about 20 years. I will call her annoying lady. I knew her entire life story before she even knew my name. She didn't speak English very well and I was having big issues understanding her. She was pressuring me to go out because she wanted me to help her pick up men. I figured that if I went out I could talk to other people. In the end she got bored and wanted to leave. She wanted to go to clubs with big covers and I don't like clubs, I wanted a quiet pub. I told her that I would see her the next day. When I was sure she was gone I went back myself and went to sleep.

In the House of Nuns

Day 220
So there are two hostels here. One of them is actually part of a convent and one of them has a lockout and a curfew. The one run by nuns doesn't have a curfew. So, for the first time ever I slept beneath a picture of the virgin. The young nun who had checked me in did not know if there was room for me the next night. She suggested I wake up early and ask her fellow nun at 8am if there was space. There was, I paid and I went back to sleep.

When I got myself together I headed out to explore the old town. It's really quite beautiful in that sort of decaying eloquence way. It was not heavily bombed, it just wasn't always very well taken care of.

My first stop of the day was Lublin Castle. This had been used as a Nazi fort and prison. It's not the most attractive castle I have seen, but it was a must see in my guidebook.

It started with a lot of folk art, both old and modern. There is a particular type of Christ statue that shows him standing wounded and looking sad called Christ as the man of sorrows. These are all over Europe. For some reason the ones here all showed him sitting instead of standing. Nearby a saint gnashed his teeth at me.

The Trinity Chapel, the reason this is must see, is only opened for 30 minutes at a time. I had to share my time with a class of about 40 high school kids. It's quite small, but is entirely coated in frescoes, albeit kinda cartoonish ones. All of it is painted in the Byzantine style. Over the years a lot of restoration work has been done, not all of it positive. Currently they are working on cleaning parts of it.

The rest of the museum wasn't all that interesting. There were weapons, knickknacks and coins, plus a display on a guy who traveled round the world with a brick. And I think my pack is heavy sometimes. Unfortunately photography wasn't allowed so I can't share the things I liked best.

My next stop was a bit of a waste of time. It was the old town history museum. No pictures here either. Nothing was in English, in fact, I think they only had about three dozen things to even look at.

I had saved the best for last, the Archdiocesan Museum. Here pictures were allowed. This place had a lot of really old statues that had once been in churches. Music was playing with chanting monks. This mixed with the decaying statues and poor lighting made it a bit of an eerie place. An angel hid on a window sill, three others peered down at me from a nook in the wall. There must have been about 200 statues here.

The top floor was really scary, with the music and the wind and the cold coming in all directions I was afraid I would blow away. I didn't stay up there long.

I thought about going to a movie, but wasn't really in the mood. Instead I went to an internet cafe and spent some time with blog. I then found a supermarket and picked up some dinner. It was raining at this point and I didn't know if I was going to make it to Anne's bar or not. I hate going out in the rain.

Luckily it stopped around 8 and I headed out. Anne had off but was there to chat with her boyfriend behind the bar. He did his best to make me try all sorts of Polish drinks, but I only stuck to beer. I had a long ride the next day. I did let him to convince me to try the hot beer and strawberry mix though. It was shockingly good.

When I got back to the hostel I quickly fell asleep.

Nail Biting

Day 219
I was up early, not only did I have a lot to do and little time to do it in, but I had gone to sleep really early the night before.

The first place I wanted to see was the Independence Museum. I walked in just fine but it kinda looked like there was work going on. After several phone calls the security guard told me that it was closed. You would think he would know these things.

I had an hour to kill before the next museum I wanted to see opened so I headed to an area that used to be a textile factory but is now a mall and activity center. There is also a museum here about the factory.

The girl I bought my ticket from was very bubbly and spoke really good English. She asked me how good my English was and I told her that I'm from the States. She said that was perfect. Apparently some of the board members from their sister museum in the UK somewhere were coming for a tour that afternoon. She asked if she could give me the tour and if I would mind correcting her English. It seemed great to me. I love Poland, the people here are fabulous.

Most of the factory complex was built between 1872 and 1914 by a guy named Isreal Poznanski. They produced low quality fabrics. When it was first built it was groundbreaking and received an award from the 1878 Paris world exhibit. I just don't understand how they got the whole factory over there for viewing.

About 12,000 people worked here at any given time. Apparently it was for a pretty good wage as well. There is a rumor that at the end of the day Poznanski would climb up to the main clock and knock it back 15 minutes to make everyone work just a bit longer. Initially all of the workers were male, but after WWII this changed. Magda's grandmother had worked here and lost a couple of fingers in an accident. Perhaps this is why she was really passionate about the place.

By the end of WWII most of the machines had been used for other things or simply scratched. They were quite antiquated at this point anyway. The factory chugged through communism but couldn't survive the switch back to capitalism and was closed in 1997.

Magda turned on 2 of the 4 looms for me. They were incredibly loud, but it was really cool to see them in action. She also pointed out an old medical chest to me. Magda had thought it would be nice to fill it with period items and asked a woman who had been a nurse there what it had contained. Apparently it was always just about empty so they decided to leave it that way.

I thanked Magda for the fabulous tour and she thanked me for helping with her English. She really didn't need much help though so I think I got the better end of the deal.

My next museum was the Lodz History Museum. I don't know why they call it that though. It was located in Israel Poznanski's former house. Most of it was on his family, old furnishings and such, but some of the rooms were dedicated to other important Lodz figures. There wasn't much explanation and without being allowed to take pictures I got board quickly.

I tried to ask if the building was original but just got blank stares. I said thank you and went into the next room. I could here the women in the hallway saying thank you and laughing. Buttheads.

I then followed part of the ghetto history tour that I had picked up at the tourist office. Lodz looks pretty bad, I don't think that most of the building here have been painted since 1920. This goes doubly for the area of the former ghetto, the largest one in Europe. I was told to be careful with my camera and took extra care every time that I took it out.

Eventually I found a memorial and then a few minutes away the largest Jewish cemetery in Poland, and if not, it is certainly the most populous. Few people were about and I had to remind myself that dead people don't tend to come back to life. Parts of the cemetery were in better repair than others.

I started by walking left. On the wall there were plaques that were pretty recently installed by families from all over the world who lost relatives in the Holocaust. Many of them were by Americans. Also along the wall were grass covered pits. These had been dug as mass graves but were never used. They were left in testament. One section, called the ghetto field, held the mass graves of 43,527 ghetto victims.

Not wanting to head further back, it was creepy, I went right. I then came to a section that was being completely reclaimed by the trees. I could only see a couple of rows back. The Poznanski family tomb was massive and I wanted a picture. The thing was that I wasn't really meant to be taking pictures and there were a lot of people about, so I just didn't do it.

After the cemetery I gook a tram back to the center of town and got some really yummy pirogies for lunch. I was actually running a little ahead of schedule.

Back at the hostel I grabbed my things and headed out. On the train I met a girl named Lidia who was from Warsaw. We chatted all the way there. I wasn't stopping at Warsaw though, I was headed to Lublin.

Once I was on the train to Lublin I got more and more nervous as the hours ticked by. There are two places to stay here and both close at 10pm. When I got to the train station I had to wait about 40 minutes for the right bus, luckily there were people around to help. On the bus asked the girl sitting next to me if she spoke any English. She understood a bit and told me that she lived just a few blocks from where I was going and could walk me there. Because of her I managed to check in right before 10pm.

I was ravenous because I hadn't had anything since the pirogies. I went to the city center (about 3 minutes walk) and found a falafel place. It was the best falafel ever. When I was walking back it started to pour and I ducked into a pub, I didn't want to get wet. This is where I met Anne, the bartender. She spoke good English and we chatted as she worked. After one drink I was falling asleep though and the rain had stopped. We made tentative plans for me to meet her there the next night and said goodbye.