Poland

I'm sorry!! I have been really busy with visitors for the last week or two so I haven't had a chance to post. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about my Poland trip.

Krakow

I mentioned how I really enjoyed this city. The market square in the center of the old town is gigantic, and there is an awesome church on the corner of it. It's my favorite church of those I've seen in Europe so far, both because of the asymmetry and because of how colorful it is inside.

The other great thing about Krakow was that we got to meet some Polish college students who are studying European Studies and taking classes on the Holocaust. The guy that I spent most of my time talking to did not speak the best English but we still managed to talk about our countries' governments. He was telling me about how Poland is run by the President and his twin. I asked him how he felt about Obama, and he said that he thinks he's "pretty good." so I asked about Bush and he said that he, too, was "pretty good." I was already confused before he added, "But neither of them are as good as Reagan or Clinton." Now that's something you would never hear from the mouth of any American.

Warsaw

I'd heard that this city was pretty boring. And for the most part, it was. But the Old Town was beautiful. It's not really Old since it was reconstructed after World War II, but it looks centuries old. Here's my favorite building (or is it 4?).

On our last night, we went to a reform Jewish dinner in an apartment-turned-synagogue. It was pretty random but probably the most surprising part of the trip. We had a really nice dinner with an American Dick Cheney-look-a-like rabbi who really should have been a character in A Mighty Wind (he talked about singing Hebrew prayers to Appalachian folk songs). And the other rabbi insisted on everyone drinking vodka. While we were there, they had a small concert, and to pretty much everyone's surprise, the concert room was packed, so we couldn't stay to watch. Today, Poland has an extremely small Jewish population, but there were dozens of people who just came to see a nice concert in this apartment/synagogue on Shabbat. It was a really interesting conclusion to a Jewish-focused Poland trip.

Auschwitz

It's really hard to sum up what I thought about Auschwitz. It's important to realize that there are two main camps, one that is relatively small with lots of barracks (Auschwitz I), and one that is unbelievably huge (Auschwitz II - Birkenau). The thing I'll remember most is just how huge Birkenau is. It's something you have to see in person. But to try to make grasp a bit of it, just imagine an open field with barracks to house 200,000 people.

Majdanek

On our last day in Poland, I went with two friend on my program to Lublin, where the Majdanek concentration/extermination camp is. It is the most intact camp, and it is also only a few miles from the city center, and there is a residential area surrounding it that shares the same name. It was pretty shocking to take a bus a few stops from the center, and see a break in the apartment buildings, and there is a massive, massive camp. Only 20% of the camp plan was every actually built, so while there aren't that many barracks, the land is huge. Seeing a intact gas chamber was absolutely terrifying, and I couldn't look at it for more than 10 seconds.

Overall it was an amazing (and very cold) trip.