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Published: June 28th 2006
Gizycko, Poland
June 4, 2006
Shannon: Chances are, you’ve never heard of Gierloz, Poland or even the larger town near it, Gizycko. Today these are placid little towns in the rolling hills of the Great Masurian Lakes district. With over 2,000 lakes in the area, these days many people come here to ply the waters in sailboats and canoes or to spend their days hiking in the green forests. So it’s hard to believe, amid all this tranquility, that the heart of the Nazi war machine once beat from a 2.5 square kilometer compound nestled just outside this obscure little town.
Sean: Wolfsschanze, German for Wolf’s Lair, was the location of Hitler’s principal headquarters and residence from June 1941 to November 1944. Here, in what used to be known as East Prussia (now northeastern Poland), lies the destroyed compound that kept one of the most contemptible men of the 20th Century protected. From this location, all the policies that eventually resulted in the Nazi party’s demise were envisioned and enacted. The bunkers are truly massive and quite an eyeful. Even in their mangled state (the German army destroyed as much as possible in advance of the Soviets), it is
quite extraordinary as to the amount of concrete contained and for the biblical amount of explosives it must have taken for the retreating Nazis to rend the 9 meter thick walls apart. They didn’t want to leave much for the invading Red Army, so they exploded the colossal bunkers that served as communication dens, meeting halls and domiciles of the Nazi elite before exiting stage left.
What really keeps the tourists coming, aside from the ruins of the massive bunkers, is that this is also the location where the last attempt on Hitler’s life took place. It was July 1944 and sensing that old Adolf was taking Germany down a path to annihilation, a group of high ranking officers led by Colonel Claus Scheck Von Stauffenberg decided to do something. In the end it was decided that Stauffenberg - because he had the easiest access - would carry a briefcase bomb into a staff meeting. This was the closest anyone ever got to assassinating the leader of the Third Reich (there were other attempts but none that came so close to success) and the failure of the mission can only be accounted for by shear luck (not on our
The July Bomb Plot
Hitler is number 1. The only thing that saved him was that the bomb was moved to the other side of the heavy oak table leg. Numbers 11, 7, 4 and 3 were killed. Eleven more officers were seriously injured. Stauffenberg was number 25, before he got called away.part obviously). When Von Stauffenberg was conveniently called away from the room by a prearranged phone call, someone else moved the briefcase to the other side of the heavy oak conference table because it was in his way. By this chance, our history books don’t need to be rewritten as Hitler only received some singed clothes, a cut hand and damaged ear drums (he was well enough to give a tour of the bombed out room to Mussolini only 3 hours later). Four of his staffers weren’t so lucky and died from their wounds, while 11 others were injured.
Needless to say, he was right mad about the whole thing, and in the ensuing investigation seven thousand people were arrested with five
thousand put to death (including 150 high officers - obviously Stauffenberg was a part of this group). According to the brochure, each execution was filmed and Hitler routinely showed these tapes to guests as well as to officers and soldiers (presumably as a warning). We plan on going to Auschwitz in about a week and I just wonder how many people could’ve been saved had this plot succeeded.
Shannon: From a pure construction standpoint, the bunkers
are pretty impressive. From the rough footprint they showed in the brochure, I could make a quick estimate of the concrete used for just the
foundation of one heavy bunker (there were at least 7 of these heavy bunkers built, not to mention a city’s worth of smaller bunkers): 4,200 cubic yards. To give you an idea of how much concrete that is, the average concrete truck you see in the U.S. holds 10 cubic yards. So it would take 420 trucks to pour
one foundation. That’s a heap ‘o cement, sand and rock, let me tell you.
Today you see the bunkers in much the same way as they were left by the retreating Germans. Most of the massive concrete walls, torn apart by the explosives used to demolish them, are left askew and crumbling, while the reinforcing bars that once helped to keep it all together now dangle in the air like rusting spaghetti. Huge signs warn visitors to stay out of the rubble, but without any physical restraint, it’s almost impossible to resist. Not that we ventured very far, though - the “creepy” factor of the damp, dark corridors has not been improved with time and
we did not linger. But it was still very interesting to see.
Warsaw, Poland
June 6, 2006
Shannon: Warsaw, we’ve learned, is considered the ugly duckling compared to it’s sister, Krakow, further south. This is due in large part to the fact that the city was devastated during World War II, with approximately 85%!o(MISSING)f the buildings destroyed and half of its population annihilated. Those are hard facts to get your head around, at least until you see the kind of footage we witnessed in the last few days at some of Poland’s finest museums.
The Warsaw Historical Museum starts out a bit slow - and not just because it is mostly captioned in Polish. We’ve been through our share of museums in the last 8 or so months, and after that time, even I can’t drum up enthusiasm for Stone Age tools, Middle Age swords and another poorly illustrated map of the conquest of some long forgotten ruler. But things start to pick up on the 3rd floor, where they begin to describe the events leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War. As we learned back in the Baltic States, Hitler and
Nicolaus Copernicus
Famous astronomer and mathematician, his nationality is somewhat in dispute: was he a Pole or a German? Depends on who you ask, but when his ideas were controversial, no one wanted to claim him. Now that his crazy little theory of the earth revolving around the sun (and not the other way around) has been proven, each nation is jumping to make him their native son. Stalin secretly colluded in August 1939 and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which basically divvied up Poland (and many other countries) between them before anyone even knew they had designs on the place. And on September 1st, Hitler invaded Poland, the catalyst for WWII. France and Great Britain immediately declared war on Germany. Stalin, waiting in the wings, passed time until September 17th before sending the Red Army in to claim his own share of the Polish pie, justifying his violation of a non-aggression pact with Poland by saying “if there is no government in Poland anymore, there is no non-aggression pact either.” With the Soviet Union entering the fray, Poland had little choice but to capitulate and the last regular troops of the Polish Army surrendered on October 5, 1939.
And then the real horror for Poland begins. Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupy the land according to their earlier pact. And both have an interest in exterminating the Polish people. It begins with Polish leaders and troops, then progresses on to anyone else who might subvert their cause. Jews, particularly in the German occupied territory, are rounded up almost immediately and forced into ghettos, which are basically
The Cult of Personality
Pope John Paul II's visage is everywhere. The Polish people are extremely proud of their homegrown pope. segregated, secured portions of the city where they cannot leave. The Warsaw Ghetto, perhaps the most famous and largest of all the ghettos established by the Nazis, was established in 1940. 400,000 Jewish people were crammed into Warsaw’s ghetto alone, in a space of only a few blocks (though they comprised 30%!o(MISSING)f the population, the ghetto encompassed less than 2.5%!o(MISSING)f the city’s area). With a wall built around them, and completely cut off from the rest of the city - and world - many slowly starved to death (the food ration for a person in the ghetto was approximately 253 calories per day). Those who didn’t die of starvation and disease (sanitary conditions were beyond abysmal and typhoid was rampant) were packed together in the little housing available: 7 people per room was the average occupancy.
Things weren’t much better in the rest of Warsaw, either.
Sean: The Molotov-Ribbentrop act keeps turning up like the proverbial bad penny in each of the most recent countries we’ve visited. This fateful meeting of the Germans and the Russians stands as a key moment to each of the nations affected as to how their lives were determined for roughly
Bacon and Onion Pierogies
No entry is truly complete without a photo of some tasty local vittles. the next fifty years. Amazing how Stalin’s invasion of Poland on September 17th didn’t provoke the ire of the western nations as much as Hitler’s on September 1st. Make no mistake, the Polish call this usurpation of their eastern border an “invasion” every bit as much as Hitler’s advancement from the west. While the Soviets didn’t focus on the Jews in their extermination campaign, they took care of anyone not considered a “comrade” and were every bit as brutal. And while I felt that in the Baltics, they didn’t dwell too much on the Nazi invasion, instead focusing on life under the oppressive thumb of the USSR, Poland bore the scars from their horribly vicious German overlords for quite some time. As Shannon mentioned, the entire city of Warsaw was leveled. Seeing the overhead pictures really drives home this point. Every building was either completely demolished or gutted; hulks housing nothing but the debris that used to contain the stuff of multiple floors and multiple lives.
But the destruction of Warsaw didn’t happen overnight. It first started when the Nazis invaded and the scrappy Polish resistance fought them tooth and nail until finally capitulating to the superior force. The
The Symbol of Warsaw
Legends tell different stories about how a mermaid came to be the symbol for Warsaw; they all agree, however, that she wields a sword and shield in defense of the city. This statue now stands in the Old Town square and is perhaps one of the cities most iconic emblems. Designed in 1938, sadly the model for the sculpture was killed on the first day of the Warsaw Uprising. Ghetto Uprising was the second nail in Warsaw’s coffin. In January of 1943, with perhaps 55,000 - 60,000 Jewish people remaining in the Ghetto, many had come to realize the substance of the “Final Solution”, even if they didn’t know it by name, so organized resistance began. Most knew that the outcome could not be changed, but preferred to die fighting. In April of 1943, the prisoners attacked the Nazi guards and relentlessly fought (armed with homemade explosives, Molotov cocktails and some handguns), but unfortunately were quickly subdued by the massive firepower at their oppressor’s disposal. Approximately 10,000 - 15,000 people died in the struggle, the rest were eventually sent to the Treblinka extermination camp.
The third, and most profound event concerning the destruction of the city, came during the Warsaw Uprising, similar to the Ghetto Uprising, but encompassing the entire city. In August 1944, The Polish Home Army was tasked by the Allies with an all out assault on the Germans from within the Polish borders. The Allied armies in the west - after landing in Normandy on June 6 - were already well ensconced in France and the eastern front was just about to Warsaw, so an
Warsaw After
Obliterated off the map... explosion of resistance from the city itself would all but seal the deal on Hitler’s regime. The key to the plan was that outside support would quickly materialize, mostly in the form of the Red Army. But it never came despite pleas from the US, UK and Polish leaders. Without reinforcement, and the fact that many of the fighters were isolated from each other, they had limited success against the much stronger and well-fortified Germans. Needless to say, the Home Army was forced to capitulate in October of 1944. According to some sources, the Germans (highly upset and feeling the pinch of the Allies) planned, as revenge, to turn Warsaw into a lake; not only flattening it, but completely erasing it from the map.
Shannon: The aerial photos of the city, taken after the war, are amazing. It’s not until I saw them that I realized that the buildings had not just been damaged, they had virtually been blown off the map. And, from above, you can see that any buildings left standing were just hollow shells - the façade might still be standing but the floors and roofs were gone. Incredible destruction…
Aside from the Warsaw Historical
Museum, the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising detailed all of this information very well. It’s a brand new museum and very well put together (though I had some issues with their layout). The subject matter is amazing: of all of the countries involved in WWII, Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizens: 6 million people, about half of them of Jewish descent. Interesting to note, also, that after the United States, the British, and the Soviets, Poland was 4th in terms of the number of troops they committed to fighting the Germans. It’s a sad fact that, for all of that, Poland (and the Baltic States, as well) were basically sacrificed at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Big Joe got everything he wanted and they got the privilege of being “welcomed” into the folds of Mother Russia’s sphere of influence.
I wish that instead of mumbling official words of optimism we had the judgment and the good taste to bow our heads in silence before the tragedy of a people who have been our allies, whom we have helped to save from our enemies and whom we cannot save from our friends.
-- George Kennan, the US charge d’affaires in Moscow
Sean: As a side note (and I’m sure you were incredibly curious. You see this blog isn’t just about our travels but there is Value Added Education involved) the “Molotov cocktail” gets its name from the above named Russian Foreign Minister - Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov - whose
A little gift from Papa Joe
Still the tallest building in Warsaw. policies shaped the invasion of Finland in the late 1930’s. At the time, the Finns, heavily outgunned by the Red Army, borrowed the idea for this incendiary device from the Spanish who had used it successfully against tanks in their own civil war (1936-1939). When Molotov had stated on the radio that the USSR was not dropping bombs on Finland, but rather food to the starving, the Finnish fighters started calling their homemade gasoline bombs “Molotov Picnic Baskets”. The name was then given a twist to reflect the customary practice of pre-dinner drinks and - presumably because of the propensity to use liquor & wine bottles - it seemed more appropriate to refer to them as cocktails.
June 7, 2006
Shannon: Aside from the incredible history that is contained in this city, Warsaw is a very pleasant place to spend your days. While much more modern than many of the other cities we’ve visited, it still has a bit of ‘historical’ charm thanks to the tireless effort that went into its rebuilding.
Sean: Being here now, you wouldn’t know the gruesome tale of the attempted elimination of this pretty city. The old town still retains the
feel of what a European city should look like…lovely architecture with wide pedestrian plazas and plenty of outdoor cafes. But, in my humble opinion, it is a smidge obvious that the city is a newer version of most old towns because it looks, well…too new. Not that I’m complaining, but it all appears a little too clean and orderly to be hundreds of years old. You’ve got to give the Poles credit on this, it’s been only 60 years and they didn’t waste any time turning their capital city into exactly what they wanted it to be: a beautiful cosmopolitan metropolis.
Shannon: The one thing that was a real disappointment to us was the Marie Curie museum. We ventured there hoping to learn more about this incredible woman - who, with her husband Pierre, discovered two elements: radium and polonium (the latter named for her home country of Poland). She is also only one of two people in the world to win a Nobel Prize in two different categories (physics and chemistry). Unfortunately, I didn’t learn much of this at the museum solely devoted to her life. I had expected, in the country and city of her birth, we
would find an excellent museum devoted to extolling her achievements. It was not to be. Pictures of the grand dame they have in abundance; information… not so much. So you might just give it a skip if you’re ever in the area.
Krakow, Poland
June 10, 2006
Sean: The next stop on our tour was to the salt mines of Wieliczka, just a short bus trip from Krakow. Long abandoned as a viable means to harvest this tasty and important table condiment, it has been fashioned into a huge cavern of carved effigies, interesting figures, and even a massive underground cathedral.
We started by walking down over 600 steps to wind up at the pleasantly cool elevation of minus 1,000 feet. Then it was a two hour walk through the subterranean passages of this tourist attraction listening to the guide rattle off the most amazing statistics…well, we’re sure they were amazing, but unless we wanted to pay more and wait around a bit longer, our only option was to join a Polish language tour. We’ve actually enjoyed quite a few sites listening to the guide speak a language we don’t understand. Sometimes the only way you’re
allowed to enter is with a group and if they don’t offer a guide in English, you’re forced to tag along, listening to another tongue. No worries. It allowed us to concentrate on determining if the whole place really was made of salt or not. Well, it’s actually pretty easy to make that determination and I didn’t waste any time licking the walls like I was at Willy Wonka’s factory.
Yep. Salty.
Shannon: The walls and floors are actually more of a black/grey color, not the white that you would automatically think they would be, so I wasn’t really sure what the story was (I’m sure the guide explained the whole thing, but my Polish just isn’t what it used to be). We were probably a good 40 minutes into the tour when I turned to Sean and asked if he had tried tasting any of it to see if it was salty. True to form, he replied with an incredulous look on his face: “Baby, I’ve been licking everything.” That’s my husband.
Salt has always been an important commodity: it was needed for preservation of meats, butter, and fish; for the production of gunpowder and also
The Last Supper
Now carved in salty goodness. for the tanning of hides. In the 16th Century, salt was also touted as having many health-restoring benefits. It was believed that bathing in salt brine or ingesting it with other substances could cure such things as snake bites, ulcers, runny noses, hysteria and "failures resulting from excesses in love".
Incredibly, tourism in the Wieliczka salt mine began almost immediately; being such a precious commodity, it was first shown off to visitors of the royal court. Gradually tours were expanded to include people from all social strata. As the numbers of visitors grew, so did the attractions created for the purposes of astonishing and amusing them. Early visitors were treated to rides in horse-drawn carriages through the massive tunnels, boat trips on brine lakes, and even fireworks were displayed. One of the huge caverns left from the mining operations was turned into a ballroom, complete with salt-crystal chandeliers and a miner orchestra. Monuments, obelisks, and statues were all carved out of salt and used as decorations. In the early 20th Century another attraction was added: The Chapel of the Blessed Kinga is 33 feet high, 175 feet long and 50 feet wide. Its walls are decorated with sculpted bas-reliefs
Arbeit Macht Frei
"Work Brings Freedom". This is the entrance to Auschwitz. of scenes from the bible and, predictably, it even has a salt altar. It is definitely a sight to see. Having paid extra to take pictures (I hate that - why don’t they just wrap it up in the price of admission?) I clicked away with abandon. The only attraction that appeared to be missing was the obvious: Lot’s wife. Maybe they thought it would be cheesy…
June 11, 2006
Shannon: Today Sean and I took a pilgrimage to a place that we’ve known about all our lives, a place that conjures up images known the world over - and now, having been there, a place that you can never forget. The Polish town of Oswiecim, better known by its German name of Auschwitz, is approximately 60 km west of Krakow. We took a bus there this morning to visit the site of perhaps the most brutal and horrific ideal ever aspired to - Hitler’s Final Solution.
Somewhere between 1.5 and 2
million people died at Auschwitz. The actual number will never be known because, as the Nazi regime became more and more efficient at enacting Hitler’s demented vision, fewer records were kept and more people
went straight from the railcars to the crematoriums. The numbers are staggering, hardly even comprehensible.
We’ve all seen images of Auschwitz in some form: movies, pictures, television coverage. Human beings carted like cattle in railcars, prisoners in striped uniforms worked to death, emaciated bodies in heaps. You don’t have to actually visit the site to grasp the enormity of the tragedy or to empathize with the plight of people who lived and died in such a nightmare. But it was a place that I really wanted to visit, to see for myself that which should never be forgotten. And it will be something I will carry with me forever.
The things that struck me most weren’t even the most shocking areas - not the crematoriums or the execution yard, though those were obviously horrific places. For me, it was the giant heaps of personal belongings (representing only a small fraction of what had been collected by the Nazis for redistribution to German civilians): entire rooms full of suitcases, shoes, pots and pans, eye glasses, shaving brushes, even artificial limbs - the things people would bring with them to start a new life elsewhere (many had been told they
Auschwitz Barracks
Where the "lucky" slept. were being “resettled” in camps in the east). Some of the horror is in the very small details: amongst the heaps of discarded shoes (mostly sturdy black work shoes) you see a small child’s red leather dress shoe. The kind you would wear with your best outfit. And to concentrate on just that one object, to know that there was a person associated with it, and then multiply it by the millions of objects in front of you - it’s almost too much.
The Nazi war machine was extremely efficient, as we’ve all heard. They took away all valuables, then continued to “mine” the prisoners for every last thing that they could: women’s hair was cut and sold to factories as raw material for netting and fabric (approximately 7
tons of human hair, shaved from prisoners and the corpses of those gassed, were still packaged in bags when the Soviet army liberated the camp. That is just the amount that the Nazis had been unable to sell and send to factories before the advancement of the Allies). Gold fillings were removed and melted down into ingots, the ashes of those cremated were used as fertilizer…to treat fellow human beings
Birkenau Camp
The hundreds of chimneys that stretch as far as the eyes can see are all that remain of the hundreds of prisoner barracks in this massive city of death. as a disposable resource is just unimaginable.
Visiting the museum today you actually visit two camps: the original pre-war barracks in Oswiecim (modified into the Auschwitz I concentration camp in 1940) and a second camp (Auschwitz II or Birkenau) which was built in 1941 after the original camp could no longer “accommodate” the large numbers of prisoners arriving. There was a third camp, Monowice or Auschwitz III, built in 1942 (as well as a number of satellite camps scattered in the area) but the museum only covers Auschwitz I and II.
Sean: Auschwitz I - the flagship camp in a network of prisons - was the first large camp that the Nazis used to house their human chattel. Birkenau itself though was constructed solely for the purpose of exterminating people.
Birkenau’s train yard is where the horror began for the majority of those killed by Hitler’s maniacal dream of a Jew-free Europe. Standing there is pretty powerful. When the trains rolled in and dumped their human cargo, Nazi doctors would be waiting to segregate the herd into those fit for work and those for gassing. Usually only about 25 to 30%!o(MISSING)f those exiting the trains would
Birkenau Train Yard
The end of the line. be sent to work, most would be gassed. (
Shannon: If there was no need for workers, the trains would not even stop for the “sorting” procedure and instead drop their cargo off directly outside the crematoriums/gas chambers). Not that work was any better. The filthy living and sanitary conditions of the barracks as well as the paltry diet and onerous work environment didn’t delay anyone’s eventual visit to the ovens for very long. The two options were: being gassed immediately or being worked to death.
Those marched straight to the gas chamber were actually told they’d be taking showers so were sent into a long underground room where they left their clothes and belongings. Then they walked into another large room fitted with shower heads (though they were never tied into the plumbing system) and then the pellets of Zyclon B were dropped in from roof top openings. About twenty minutes later the workers would enter and take the bodies upstairs to the ovens where their ashes wound up in one of the many ponds in the camp. I felt a bit in awe at this point. These few small watering holes, complete with resting birds and bleating frogs
The Last Steps into the Abyss
This is the room where the unknowingly condemned left their personal belongings before heading into the gas chamber. jumping about, are where the ashes of over 1 million people lie.
Unfathomable.
This place has more death per square foot than just about anywhere else on the planet. You wouldn’t think twice if you didn’t know what was in these tiny lakes scattered about, but knowing…really knowing…drives this horrific history home.
All four of the crematoriums were destroyed, but because the two main rooms (the undressing and gassing chambers) were underground, these final steps of the murdered are plainly visible. The above ground ovens themselves were fairly well obliterated to cover the German complicity in preparation for the advancing Soviet troops. They destroyed three of them with the fourth’s destruction credited to a prisoner rebellion. In October 1944, the oven workers of crematorium III evidently decided that they had to do something. Their daily task was to collect the dead from the gas chamber, remove their valuables, and then burn their bodies in the huge ovens. These were prisoners themselves and they were tasked with erasing lives - that had to play hell with their psyche. So on this particular day (the details are fuzzy) they rose up and burned the building down. Their much ill
Innocuous Watering Hole
The remains of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people are in this pond. fated revolt, while crippling one instrument of death, unfortunately also expedited (of course) their own forced exit from this world.
Birkenau is also where Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) carried out his gruesome experiments. Some of his scientifically dubious undertakings included submerging people in boiling or freezing water to see how long they would take to die, many hack-job sterilization procedures, and even the injection of chemicals into children’s eyes to see if he could change the color. Truly sick stuff.
The two camps together comprise some of the worst real estate in the world, where the eradication of human beings became a banal routine. Something that Adolf Eichmann’s trial elicited was his apparent nonchalance about his role as the head of prisoner movement. He claimed he was only following orders but it was his efficient manipulations of European public rail transport that facilitated the extermination of so many people. He knew, too EXACTLY where the road led for his charges, but he wasn’t deemed psychopathic…that might actually be the most disturbing thing; a seemingly ordinary guy doing a seemingly ordinary job.
As an aside: both Mengele and Eichmann escaped to South America, but had two
Where the Final Solution of Rudolf Hoss Took Place
Rudolf Hoss was the first director of Auschwitz and after his Nuremburg trial, he was brought back to Auschwitz one last time. different outcomes for their lives. Eichmann was captured by Israeli operatives in Buenos Aires in 1960, ferried to Jerusalem where he was tried and eventually hung. Mengele on the other hand escaped detection and died, in 1979, from a stroke in Brazil.
June 12, 2006
Sean: Leaving all this heavy history for more positive trip recounts, I must say that Krakow is very high on my list of favorite cities. It helps that the weather has been excellent (beautifully sunny, bright blue skies) and there are people everywhere enjoying themselves. The large old portion of town is very much given over to pedestrians and it is entirely ringed by parks. You have to walk through tree lined paths to get to this part of the city and as you exit these trails you are in one of the most picturesque spots on earth. With the beautiful weather comes the ubiquitous cafes and restaurants set up on the malls where we’ve whiled away numerous mornings, afternoons and evenings sipping coffee and local ales. This is what life should be about…good ale, good conversation and plenty of happy people waltzing about having a fun time.
Krakow claims to
have the largest main square of any European city, and this is one superlative I’d have to agree with. It is a
huge expanse completely lined with the awnings of all the cafes and restaurants that are located in this part of the city. Sitting here, just chilling really, has been a lot of fun as a great antidote to the grave past of Auschwitz. To see the tourists and locals thoroughly enjoying life and taking advantage of the weather contrasts with the bleak history just a few miles away.
Shannon: Our time in Poland has been extremely interesting. Of course, a good portion of this blog has been given over to the more historical aspects of its culture, but we don’t mean to leave you without mentioning some of the other things we’ve enjoyed. As Sean mentioned, many of the cities we’ve visited here (and in other parts of Europe, as well) have a wonderful café culture. With the first warm rays of sun, the tables and chairs are set out, umbrellas erected and the citizens emerge to enjoy and celebrate the warm weather ahead. That’s not something we do as well in America. Sure, I can mention
plenty of cafes in New Orleans that had outdoor seating, but no particular area where there you could find one restaurant’s seating flowing into the next, and the next, and the next. We just don’t have the same sort of pedestrian friendly town squares that are the norm here. So Sean and I are taking full advantage. Our sightseeing days begin with a caffeine jolt amongst the other happy patrons and usually end with the rousing cheers of those celebrating their particular team’s World Cup victory (Which has been another fun thing: about 80% of the world is crazy mad about soccer; thus, being in Europe during the World Cup is like joining in on a great party. Everyone’s watching the games, so we are too. We might lose all interest in a month, but for now we’ve got our favorite teams, players and the whole nine yards.)
With less than 2 weeks to go before we depart Europe for Asia, we’ve decided to head on from Poland into the Czech Republic so that we can see some of the fabled Bohemian towns and the city of Prague prior to our departure. I would have liked to spend more
time here, as Poland seems to be a wonderful place to visit, and perhaps we will return on our Next Big Adventure. But until then, this is Sean and Shannon saying “Goodnight, Gracie”.
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Alexis
non-member comment
Thanks
Thanks for your detailed blogging regarding Auschwitz, its history, and your experiences touring it. I have learned a lot about Auschwitz in school and via the media, of course, but I hadn't heard a firsthand account of visiting it in modernity. I appreciate the time you took to describe your visit. Reading about the history in context with what you saw there made the entry very enriching.