The Blaus - South America and Europe

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posted by The Blaus @ 4:13 PM 1 comments

7th of November - Moscow, Russia

We took an overnight bus from Riga into Russia. We were a little nervous crossing the border as we have heard that it is common to get hassled, especially with an American passport. It didn't help that one of the guys next to us was telling this exaggerated story about "Americanskis" and how they got their passports ripped up at the border patrol. We arrived at a small frontier town and had to get off the bus and stand in a long line to get stamped and into Russia. The place looked exactly like what you would expect a former Soviet State building to look like, and was a bit nerve racking for us. We were the last ones to go through the line from our bus, and we were happy when we were told we had made it, with the guy stamping our passports saying, "Nikolai, you speak Russian?" Finally, Billy's strange middle name (Nikolai) actually got us something other than strange looks, it is a typically Russian name and helped us get through the border with no hassles.

We arrived in Moscow at 6AM, and it was cold and we were a bit tired. We wanted to take the Metro to our hostel, and ran directly into two police who immediately took us aside and asked for out passports. We have heard that police frequently check passports of foreigners trying to find a reason to levy a "fine", which is usually everything you have in your wallet. These two were scary looking, but let us go with a "thank you Nikolai", which was making us even happier about the middle name. The experience still rattled us a bit. It is strange to have to be scared of the authorities. Anyone who supports the Patriot Act should visit Russia and feel what it is like to be constantly hassled by the police for "your own safety". You feel violated in a very fundamental way, and it makes you not feel truly free. We can just imagine what it was like 15 years ago when the KGB would know everything about you and would follow you around the country. It is not a feeling that either of us would want to live with on a regular basis.

We found the Metro Station, but had all of our bags with us, and could not read a lick of Cyrillic writing (the Russian alphabet is very different from the Roman alphabet we are used to). We had to figure out a complicated route to our exit station which consisted of 3 train changes, and a lot of standing around rubbing our heads trying to read the signs. We would be able to memorize the first three letters of a stop, and that would be how we would remember it. A common one is, backwards 3 followed by the X with an extra line through it and a gamma. This after very little sleep on a bus and all our packs was difficult. We had to do all this during morning rush hour too. The Metro here is enormous, and probably a million people use it every day. There is a mass of humanity charging in all directions, and we were totally helpless with our giant packs bumping into people, all the while trying not to stick out too much in case we were to get detained again by the cops. It was a bit of a nightmare, but after about 2 hours we finally made it to the hostel, exhausted and a bit scared of the Metro.

Moscow is the largest city in Europe, and Russia is the largest country in the world in landmass. That makes this place by far the all around biggest city we have been to so far. Our hostel is about 10 miles away from the center of town, and it is still in the middle of high rises and a mass of traffic everywhere. The hostel was a bit of a disappointment, as there were cockroaches in the bathtub and the wall paper was all peeling off the walls from water damage. It was, however, one of the few affordable options in Moscow, which is very expensive. Since the fall of Soviet Union, all of the State run agencies were privatised, making a lot of people very rich, along with being the second largest oil producing nation in the world. So today there is a lot of poor people, but a lot of rich people too. More billionaires live in Moscow than any other city in the world.

The city itself looks a bit like Las Vegas. There are neon signs with flashing lights everywhere. There are casinos on every corner, and strip clubs on every other corner. The people on the street run all ranges, from the very rich looking women with all designer clothes, mink coats, and suede knee high boots, to the typical drab looking older men who all wear the same nondescript dark clothing that a Westerner would think of as Soviet style. The Metro is also a carry over from the Soviet days, and it is ground zero for Soviet kitsch lovers. There are bronze statues with people harvesting wheat with a sickle, there are fancy emblems of cosmonauts, there are equally impressive mosaics of the sickle, hammer, and wheat all together showing the unity of the workers. When the Metro was built it must have been very impressive, because it is till quite amazing, with some stops made completely out of marble and granite. We have learned the system quite well, as we have to commute everywhere we go in Moscow. We have also learned how not to get hassled by the police. That means no smiling (Russians think smiling is for the weak, or the mentally challenged), no eye contact with anyone, and no English spoken near police. We feel like we have gotten quite good at being Russian, although we don't talk to each other in public places very often.

As with every other person that visits Moscow, your first stop has to be Red Square. It was quite an amazing feeling to first get there. Saint Basil's church is the symbol of the country (the giant church with the colorful bubble shaped minarets), and it is spectacular in person. The entire square is by far the most impressive square we have seen anywhere thus far. The Kremiln lines one side with Lenin's mausoleum in front of it, and there are old beautiful buildings on the other two sides, one of which is now a famous and very expensive shopping center. To top it all off, we were there during the November Nationalist holiday, and for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a military march on Red Square. We saw cadres of men and women come in dressed in different uniforms from different eras, all marching perfectly and standing to greet Vladimir Putin who was up in the Kremlin watching. Of all the things we wanted to get out of a visit to Moscow, seeing this was beyond our best case scenario.

We spent the next day going inside the Kremlin, which was another hassle in and of itself. There is nothing easy about being in Russia, and they do not cater to foreign tourists at all, in fact it seems like the system is built to discourage tourism. We tried to buy tickets to get in the Kremlin, but after waiting in a line that did not move for 30 minutes a guide came by and said in English that the Kremlin is closed, except for people that go on tours. When we asked the guy why all these people were waiting in line, he said "Russians love to wait in lines, they don't even care if the office is closed." We were skeptical, but then found out that it was really closed unless you paid 3 times the normal fee to go with a guide. That is very Russian. There are no rules that can't be changed or altered at the last minute. One day the Kremlin is open to all, the next day it is closed to people that don't pay for guides, no explanation at all. We paid the extra money and walked around all the old churches and political buildings where the head of State runs the government. It was interesting to see where Lenin and Stalin lived, what they built newly and what existed from when this was just a fort to keep the Mongol Tartars out about 900 years ago. The main attraction are the churches that are much less interesting than the politics of the Kremlin.

We decided we wanted to see the famous Moscow nightlife, so we headed out to s small neighborhood and a bar called "Vodka". The bar was brand new, and incredibly well done, all in a Soviet style with lamps that had the red star on them, mosaics of bombing raids and wheat, but also very modern and hip. It is probably the coolest place we have been thus far. We are not accustom to drinking straight vodka, and made a terrible decision to buy a bottle of vodka instead of paying for shots one at a time. It was a good decision financially, but terrible for the hangover we had the next day. We stayed there until it closed, talked to anyone who could speak English, and the DJ there was even from Chicago. When it was time to leave, the Metro was closed, and they could not get a cab out to the bar for us, so we were in some trouble. To make the matter worse, as we were trying to see if anyone from inside the bar could help us, a policeman came and started harassing us. With this situation not looking good, we jumped into the car of someone we were talking to in the bar, and rolled up the window when the cop approached us in the car. The driver fended him off, and actually drove us all the way home, which was about a 45 minute excursion because he did not know where to go, we didn't really know where to tell him to go, and we didn't speak Russian. Not only did these guys take us home, they walked us to the front door, and would not take any money from us. Russians can be very nice, and many of them have been so far. It can be unpleasant dealing with officials, as the Communist spirit in government apparatchiks dies hard, but many people have been very good to us. We just don't expect smiles from people over 50.

Eating has been one of the hardest things, as menus are all in Cyrillic, so we bought a Russian to English dictionary, and even that barely helps. Although very few people speak English, many people will help us through it, and we met one very cute girl who was a waitress and tried her best to get through the English that she knew from school to help us. She could not believe that we were here from the States, and especially San Francisco. When we told her we were from San Francisco she said, "Isn't that where people dress up in costumes and go to parties?" She invites us to come back when she was not working but it was our last day in Moscow.

Although it is difficult traveling here, we really enjoy it. We have also been blessed with great weather so far, it has been in the mid 40s every day and sunny. We hope St. Petersburg is as warm and dry.

posted by The Blaus @ 9:27 AM 1 comments

1st of November - Riga, Latvia

We had one stop in Latvia as we continued to make our way up to Russia. Riga was not in our original plan, because it would have been more direct for us to go through Belarus to Russia, skipping all of the Baltic countries. However, we learned that we needed a visa to travel through Belarus, so we saw that we could avoid Belarus by going through Riga to Moscow. We arrived in Riga by train in the afternoon and Billy said he had a bad feeling about it. His instincts were correct.

We stepped out of the train station to discover a very modern, polished, glitzy Eastern European city with price tags to match. The value of the money here is the same as the pound, so everything is super expensive, and it seems like there's a lot of cash flowing. This is a big party destination for Limeys (especially for stag parties). It's not dissimilar to our Las Vegas, complete with gambling and strip clubs.

We went to the tourist information booth inside the train station and asked for help finding accommodation. The girl working there was cagey from the start. She insisted on knowing how much we were willing to pay and she wanted a number from us. We normally look for the cheapest accommodation available, and when we told her we'd be willing to pay 40 Euro a night for a really nice apartment or a room, she said that would be next to impossible in a first class city like Riga. Then she said that she knew of one place a few blocks away, and she closed down the office to walk us there. We thought that this was incredible customer service until we realized that she was taking us to her apartment. She had an extra room with a pull out couch bed that she was hoping to rent to us for a whopping 40 Euros. We declined and she abruptly kicked us out of her place and sent us packing. This was not the usual kind of help that we receive from tourist information offices.

So, we decided to walk to the center of town to find a place to stay there. As we are ascending the stairs of the train station exit, Jen felt someone tugging on her backpack. She turned around and saw nobody there. A few seconds later she felt the same tugging and this time Billy turned to find two gypsies unzipping Jen's backpack and trying to take something out of it. Billy went running after them and when he caught up with them he realized that they were two older ladies scrounging around for food to give to their children, and we later concluded that nothing was taken. This was our only encounter with gypsies in all of Eastern Europe, and they didn't get the best of us. In the end WE gave THEM a bit of a scare. We've been on the road for so long now that we are more frightening than the gypsies.

We finally found a room in a hostel in dorm style accommodations (which we swore off after our last experience in Vienna), but there were only two of us in a 4 person dorm room, and the price was right at $37 per night. The hostel's name is Profit Camp, which isn't really appropriate for a budget hostel and must have been chosen by someone that doesn't know better. It was conveniently located down an alley above a strip club called Mademoiselles, but it was clean, not too crowded, and included breakfast and internet. It was better than the room that the tourist info office tried to sell us anyway.

Our first night in town we went to a Latvian fast food joint, then to a bar to try some of the famous Riga Black Balsam. This is the drink of choice in Riga....the king of Latvian liquors. It was invented in the middle of the 18th century by a pharmacist living in Riga. It is only produced in Riga. The traditional recipe is based on a composition of 25 ingredients such as flowers, buds, roots and berries. It's sold in ceramic jugs. It was once used as a medicinal remedy, especially aboard sailing ships. It is dark in color and looks like medicine. They serve it in a number of ways, but our drinks were hot and mixed with black currant juice, cloves and lemon with a splash of Black Balsam. This must be how the locals keep warm, as it did the trick for us.

The next day we went out sight seeing and tried not to freeze in the cold. The temperatures in Riga hovered around zero degrees Celsius during the day. We decided it was time to break down and buy Billy a jacket. Going back to California's winter will be a piece of cake after this.

We checked out most of the Art Nouveau buildings in old town (Riga is called the Paris of the East for this reason). We went on a walking tour of the city to see the castle, the city's moat, the river, the churches, the oldest stone dwellings in town called the three brothers, the House of Blackheads, the opera house (called the White House, because it looks like a giant marshmellow). We ducked into cafes to warm up every so often. We walked through the park that runs along the canal near the city's Freedom Monument (the monument is guarded by two soldiers who slowly and ceremoniously march around it all day). Latvia is a country that is proud of its recently gained independence, and it should be. It has been occupied by Germany (at two different points in history), Poland, Sweden, and most recently by Russia. As we crossed one of the bridges in the park to get from one side of the canal to the other we noticed that there were many padlocks attached to the metal bars of the footbridge. Some of the padlocks were engraved with what appeared to be couple's initials and dates. Some padlocks were elaborate and large and others were rusty and looked like they had been locked to that bridge for years. We tried to ask passersby about the significance of the locks, but nobody spoke English.

Some everyday things are a little strange in Riga. For instance, if you want information about trains at the train station, you have to pay for it. This is the first time we have had to pay for information, but in an expensive and flashy city like Riga, it's not surprising that one must pay to ask a question. Another thing that we found odd is assigned seating in movie theaters. Because it was so cold, we entertained ourselves with indoor activities and went to a movie one afternoon. When we bought our tickets we had to choose our seats, like you do when you go to a theater production or an opera. Perhaps this is the way of the future with movie going.

Jen forced Billy to go to a chamber music concert at the small guild to hear two cellists play classical music by the likes of Vivaldi. Billy hated it (and would probably never admit that he actually attended this concert), but it was something to do indoors, and Jen was happy to sit and listen to music and take in the elegant interior of the building. The small guild had stained glass windows covering an entire wall, paintings of Baltic sister cities on the opposite wall and an extremely detailed decoratively painted ceiling with unusual lighting fixtures hanging from it.

It is funny how resourceful one can be when the goal is to save money and time is not an issue. Even in a place like Latvia, where hardly anyone speaks English, we managed to perform some miracles. For instance, we needed to repair a piece of clothing (as many of our clothes are threadbare at this point), and we were able to find a place that sold us the right accessory and then we managed to get it affixed. If faced with this task at home, we wouldn't even know where to start.

So after a few days in beautiful Riga, we were off to Moscow...the land of the hammer and sickle, and we hoped for warmer weather there.

posted by The Blaus @ 12:58 PM 0 comments

29th October - Vilnius, Lithuania

We arrived in Vilnius in the morning after a long bus ride, and realized that we had arrived in the Baltic States because of the blustery cold that greeted us when we stepped off the bus. We were tired and not quite awake when we arrived, but we quickly woke up when we stepped out into the zero degree (Celsius) weather. We quickly retreated into the bus station to escape the cold where we arranged to stay in another apartment and gathered information about our next train to Riga, Latvia.

Vilnius, and all of Lithuania, have a bit of a hippie feeling, with a wacky counter culture population. For those who remember, the Grateful Dead had some ties to Lithuania, and sponsored their very good National basketball team that won a Silver medal in the Olympics while wearing tie-dyed jerseys. One of their best players played for the Warriors in Oakland for awhile too. This culture is evident in the part of town called Uzupius (possibly meaning utopia). This part of town, that is just across the river from the main downtown district, is actually a self declared independent republic with its own bill of rights. Hippies of an older generation, squatters, artists and drunks decided to break from Lithuania, and have formed their own community. They posted the Constitution on a wall inside their borders, and some of the 41 points included things like the right to make mistakes, to idle, to love, to be unique, to die (but this is not an obligation), to not be loved (but not necessarily), to hot water, to heating in winter & to a tiled roof, to be undistinguished and unknown, to love and take care of the cat. Their independent status is humored by the rest of Lithuania. We walked around the district for awhile, and didn't see anything that really held a candle to Haight Ashbury, but it was fun anyway. The district is a bit run down, so maybe they are contemplating a reunification effort with Lithuania soon.

Lithuanians are said to be flamboyant and overly dramatic, but we only saw evidence of this in their dress. The women wore knee high boots with jeans tucked in, fur rimmed hooded jackets, wild colors, styles and fabrics.

One third of Lithuania's population was killed either during the Nazi occupation or during the Soviet occupation. The former KGB HQ and prison in Vilnius serves as a museum and memorial to Lithuanians who were shot dead or tortured and then sent to Siberia during the late 1940s. Each stone in the building's walls contains a carved name of these victims. Meanwhile just a few blocks from here is the Zaliasis Tiltas (Green Bridge) where statues of Lithuania's Red Army comrades stand in tribute to the Communist past, and because the locals love these statues, they weren't torn down like the rest of the Lenins and other famous historical figure's statues in the rest of Vilnius.

Overall Vilnius is quaint and the architectural style that reigns here is Baroque. For the Baltics, Vilnius is very well priced. We had an excellent meal in one of the numerous cafes in the old city area. It consisted of fried rye bread served with a cheesy garlic dipping sauce, Cepelinai (meat balls served inside a potato pancake with mushroom sauce), and a really good beef stew. All the food they serve everywhere is hearty, but it all tastes great and is perfect for refueling on cold days. Since we were only in town for one full day, so we did not have the time to see much more than the old town and surrounding areas. Besides the strange story behind Uzupio, it was nothing much to write home about. We were expecting more counter culture and cafes, and they really weren't there in the numbers we expected. We couldn't even find the Frank Zappa monument, which was erected by his fan club in 1995 and is the only one of its kind in the world. However, it is a cheap place to eat good food and would probably be quite pleasant along the river during summer.

posted by The Blaus @ 11:27 AM 0 comments

27th of October - Warsaw, Poland

We made a quick journey through Warsaw on our way up towards Moscow. The people in Krakow told us that Warsaw was no fun, too big, too expensive, and basically nothing compared to Krakow, so why bother going at all? It seems that there is quite a rivalry between the two cities, which we are learning is typical for two cities like Krakow and Warsaw. Krakow was the seat of royalty and the medieval capital of Poland until 1596, and now Warsaw is the political and economic heart of Poland. People in Krakow make less money and have all the fun, while people in Warsaw work harder and live more cosmopolitan lives. After dissuading words from the local Krakowians, we did not expect much from Warsaw, except for an overpopulated city with little to do. Something we have learned on our trip, and continue to learn, is that expectations can be everything when traveling. Whenever we are told something is fantastic, we are often a little disappointed, and when something is said to be totally avoidable, we usually like something about it and are glad we went. Warsaw falls into the category of glad we went, we did not expect much, but liked what we saw during our brief stay.

We were able to have the Tourist Info booth at the train station call around town and find us a good deal on an apartment to rent. They gave us perfect directions on how to take the bus and then which little alleys in the old town to wind down and find the apartment rental office. We ended up with a great place looking over the old walled city, a fantastic view in a fully equipped apartment. We got in at night, and went shopping for food and could not find any good markets in the old town. We were then sent out by some locals to Carrefour, which is a European supermarket mega store (a lot like Wal Mart). We were totally overwhelmed trying to shop there, and it took us almost 2 hours trying to get food for 4 meals. After we finally found where the food was, a map was required to find the wine section and then the check out counter. It was way more than we signed up for when we went to get some groceries. We then walked home with all of our groceries, freezing cold, and exhausted from the effort of Wal Mart style shopping. It occurred to us that part of the shock of going back to the States will be reintroduction to huge retail stores like Costco and other shopping centers, as we have not been conventional consumers at places like these very frequently over the past 10 months.

That night we made the specialties that Agi taught us to cook in Budapest, and we made hot spiced wine, another trick we have picked up along the way. The next morning we explored almost all of Warsaw. It has a very nice old town, which just about every European city has, but this one is different because it was completely devastated during WWII, so it has been almost totally restored from rubble to look exactly the way it did before the war. Warsaw was under siege for much of WWII, and the Jewish ghetto was the largest and worst in Europe. There are monuments and statues to the Polish resistance efforts and the Jewish Ghetto, but not much more than that. There are few museums, because they were all totally destroyed, with the exception of the Pawiak Prison Museum. A small portion of the prison still stands where the Gestapo killed tens of thousands of Polish people, and it is now a museum. After the Jewish ghetto uprising, the entire place was bombed and burnt down, literally leveled. It once was the most beautiful old city in Europe, and that is what they have recreated in Warsaw today, from memory.

At the location of the Warsaw Resistance Monument, there were some very interesting facts and different takes on the eventual liberation of Warsaw at the end of the war. All the writings they have posted at this monument tell how the Red Army advanced to sit just 1 mile outside of Warsaw, but they waited for 4 critical nights before they came to the rescue of the quickly diminishing number of Polish resistance fighters. It was not said, but very strongly implied, that the Red Army sat out the final days of the resistance so that when they finally came to liberate Warsaw, they would have a much easier time occupying the land because the Nazis would have killed off the Polish resistance fighters, so there were less people able to resist their occupation. That made the subsequent years of Soviet occupation much easier, and the Poles are clearly still very disillusioned about it. It is hard to say who they hate more, the Nazis or the Russians.

We also found some beautiful parks that were covered in bright yellows and reds with the fallen leaves of the changing colors of the trees. Although it was chilly, the colors created a warm feeling, and the parks and squares were beautiful with all the fall colors on the trees and on the ground. We made a bus journey to the Poster Museum, which was in the former royal stables in Wilanow Park to see some of Poland's famous poster art. The country's graphic designers have made a name for themselves with edgy and creative concepts for advertising posters for French theater and Japanese art.

Our journey in Poland ended the next day at the bus/train station where we were taking an overnight bus to Lithuania. The train/bus station was very seedy, and not a place we felt comfortable for very long. Our safest bet was to spend our last Zlotys on one hour of internet away from the strange characters lurking in the station, but next to the strange vodka drenched characters perusing porn sites next to us. We made the bus and slept all the way to Lithuania.

posted by The Blaus @ 10:50 AM 0 comments

23rd of October - Aushwitz & Birkenau, Poland

Billy's dad asked us in Berlin whether we had ever thought about how the Jews sent to concentration camps must have felt...and we have been haunted by that question ever since. As a Jewish man who lost family members to the Holocaust and escaped the same fate because his father immigrated to the States, I suppose that he thinks about this more often than most people do today. Truly, we have been having nightmares since we visited Aushwitz. The whole day we spent between Aushwitz and Birkenau was horrifically overwhelming. I think we both were on the verge of crying most of the time we were there. It's difficult to even put into words. We knew all the facts and had seen some of the photos, films and documentaries that recreate the historic events of the Holocaust, but it is another thing to go to this place where millions of people suffered and were killed. 1.5 to 2 million people were murdered at these two concentration camps. They do not have an exact number of deaths, as many people didn't survive long enough to be registered in the records, but 90 percent of the victims were Jewish and were brought to Poland from countries as far as Italy and the Netherlands.

The most intense parts of the museum at Aushwitz were the films, the photos, and the rooms that they labeled "material evidence of crimes." In these rooms were displayed personal affects that were either taken from the people when they arrived at the camps or belongings that were surrendered as they disrobed just before they stepped into the gas chambers. There were thousands of pairs of shoes all piled up behind glass in these rooms, piles of combs, shaving brushes, shoe polish tins, baby clothes, tons of human hair, pots and pans. The Germans were so disgustingly clever and greedy about every detail of this genocide. They found a way to profit off of the murders in every possible way. They sold all of these valuables that were taken from the Jews...even hair that they shaved off of the women's heads was sold in the German textile industry and gold teeth were extracted after the victims were gassed and before the bodies were incinerated. We walked around in a daze wondering how Hitler and his henchmen came up with this plan and if it was all premeditated or if each step of the process just coincidentally happened to lead up to this maniacal and systematic mass murder of a people. It all seemed to work into a carefully crafted masterplan. How could people be so frighteningly cruel and inhumane?

First the Jews were branded with armbands, then they were moved into the ghettos where they were unable to work and earn money, so they started to starve and become ill because they were living in poverty and filth. Then they were so weak when they were "relocated" to the concentration camps that some didn't survive the trip there (as they were crammed into trains like animals, standing sometimes for 10 days if they were being transported far distances and without food or water). They were always given false hope, so there were rarely revolts or uprisings except on a handful of occasions in the ghettos and in the camps. They were told that if they volunteered to be relocated (by paying a fee and cooperating) that they would be given work and the means to lead normal lives again. When they arrived at these concentration camps they were separated by physicians into two groups: healthy and unfit for work. The unfit were sent directly to the gas chambers, but they were told they were going to be showering in these rooms that looked like showers and even had dummy showerheads mounted to the ceiling, so they went quietly to their deaths. Can you imagine the terror they must have felt during the last moments of their lifes when they realized that they were being poisoned?

The film we saw at Aushwitz was a post WWII Soviet film about Soviet troops liberating the Jews from Aushwitz and arriving there to find emaciated, frozen, naked bodies lying dead in the snow, sets of twins that were barely alive because they were used in biological experiments, men who were sterilized or exposed to diseases and chemicals in other experiments. Some of the women and men that survived the camps were so thin and weak that they couldn't even walk out of the gates when they were finally freed. Birkenau was so expansive that it was difficult to cover the grounds by foot in the 2 to 3 hours we spent there. Being there really made us understand the scale of the atrocity. The strangest thing about Birkenau is that its setting is so peaceful. The camp is located in a serene, natural setting and as we walked around the grounds we couldn't help but comment on the incongruousness of the physical beauty of the green grass, clusters of trees, afternoon sunlight and the quiet isolation of a place that was engineered to torture and murder people.

There was a somber feeling despite the fact that there were crowds of visitors. Many groups of young kids who must have been visiting as part of a school field trip and many other groups of tourists were crowded into the museum, which was distracting, but we felt that it was a positive sign that the site of these crimes is now used as an educational tool. There was one German guy in the museum that we felt sorry for. We could tell that he felt pained by and guilty about the crimes his country committed.

We went to the records office and asked about Nandor's wife and two children (members of the Blau family) who were most likely sent to one of these concentration camps, but we needed to have a date of birth to search the archives effectively because their names are commonly found in the records. The administrators in the records department said that in many cases the only records they have are of names, sometimes there is information about age, and sometimes country of origin. She apologetically told us that if a woman arrived at the camp with two young children, they most likely would have been sent directly to their deaths.

The worst part of it is that all of the surviving family members of these victims of the Holocaust have nowhere to grieve and because the records that the Germans kept are so poor and many of the Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers without even being registered, there is no way to know exactly what happened to many people. People brought flowers and placed them in the gas chambers and crematoria or at the wall where many of the victims were executed. There was a feeling of unresolved anger and incomprehensible sadness among the visitors at Aushwitz.

posted by The Blaus @ 4:23 PM 0 comments

22nd of October - Krakow, Poland

We arrived in Krakow by train from Berlin and we were somewhat concerned about theft and personal safety on the train because our guide book warns of cases of train passengers on this route being gassed and robbed while sleeping in their compartments on overnight trains. For this reason we didn't want to let our backpacks out of our sight, so when there wasn't enough space for our bags on the luggage rack above our heads, we put them in the seat behind us instead of in a storage area in the next car. For nine hours on this train, every time someone new boarded and tried to sit in the seats behind us a Polish woman across the aisle from us fended them off. It was obvious that we didn't speak Polish, so she did all the talking for us. She smiled and winked at us each time and was so kind to help us.

The attendant came around with the refreshment cart to offer drinks or sweets and we declined as we always do because treats on the train are too expensive, but he insisted that we take something and then whispered that it was free of charge. He must have sized us up and known exactly the type of backpackers that we are...he spoke our language.

When we arrived in Krakow we took a taxi to our hostel and tried to negotiate the fare from 15 zlotys to 10. The taxi driver insisted on his price and we were freezing outside the station in the dark so we settled on it. When we arrived at the hostel he only asked for 10 zlotys. This was a true gesture of generosity and honesty, and in months of traveling we have never had an exchange like this one with a taxi driver. The time we spent in Krakow showed us that Polish people are some of the kindest that we have encountered in Europe.

Krakow is a beautiful city that was completely spared by the destruction of WWII that reduced Warsaw to rubble, so the old town looks very much like it has for hundreds of years. Krakow dates back to the 7th century. It boasts the largest medieval town square in all of Europe, which is surrounded by interestingly designed buildings that make for a unique skyline, a clock tower and spires of churches. Krakow similar to Prague, but there are very few tourists and there is a presence of an underground artist community in dark and tucked away jazz clubs, cafes and bars that we poked our heads into. Krakow seems to be the hipper, more cultured little sister to Warsaw. Wawel Castle is one of the main attractions of the city and it sits atop a small hill near a bend in the river.

We spent a day walking around Kazimierez (the old Jewish quarter) and visited synagogues, museums, and cafes there. The Jewish community in Krakow were forced out of the city and relegated to Kazimierez long before WWII. Then during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the Jewish ghettos of Krakow were set up in this area. The movie Schindler's List was filmed here, and this part of Krakow has become a popular center for tourism and education about Jewish culture and the Holocaust. It makes sense that this historic area functions this way because of its proximity to Aushwitz. We went into a Jewish museum housed in the oldest synagogue in Poland to learn about traditions, rituals, customs, holidays, sects and the history of the Jewish population in Krakow. We went to a synagogue that was screening documentary films of life in the ghettos in Krakow and in Warsaw. The films were created from footage recorded by the occupying German forces. The most moving film we saw was called Requiem for 500,000. It was difficult to watch. We went to a traditional Jewish restaurant and ate chicken knedly, farfala, latkes, and sabbath soup for lunch and then had coffee and a yummy cookie that was flat, chewy and made with nuts, toffee, chocolate...Billy's mom makes these, but we can't remember what they're called.

On Saturday it was sunny and warm, so we spent the day outside getting lost in the backstreets away from the square. Most of the action takes place on this square, where restaurants and cafes set up outdoor seating and locals hang out in the sun. We walked into bakeries to take a whiff of all the fresh baked goods, popped into cafes and bars in search of the perfect pierogi, wandered around parks crowded with people and bright with fall colored leaves in the trees and green grass all around. We saw two weddings taking place at two different churches around town. One was a very traditional event with some attendees in traditional peasant dress. There were baskets of flowers and fruit and a very elegantly dressed bride in a white fur coat and a 40s style hat with netting. The bridesmaids were wearing crimson, floor length dresses and the flowers were rich fall colors.

On the train leaving Krakow for Warsaw we had difficulty again finding a place to store our luggage, and this train was so cramped and crowded that it was almost impossible to maneuver around inside the cars with our huge backpacks. Luckily the compartment next door was full of nuns without any baggage. They looked trustworthy enough to watch over our backpacks for the short trip to Warsaw.

posted by The Blaus @ 4:24 AM 0 comments