Home ·· News Room ·· Prints ·· Licensing ·· Gallery ·· About Us ·· Contact Us ·· Articles ·· Services East Europe stock photography trip report, May 16, 2007 to June 1, 2007 Updated August 22, 2007 Page 4 of 5 Previous page   Next page
	Eastern Europe continued... It took a moment to find the correct car because this train also goes on to Warsaw and then Moscow. Don't want to make a mistake here! I didn't end up with a couchette sleeper berth this time, only with a wide backed couch. Fortunately, there was no one in the berth so I was able to lay out and get some sleep. On to Krakow. Monday, May 28, 2007 Krakow, Poland 2.9Zl = $1US, Zl is a Zlotty Poland is a beautiful countryside nation. The morning light caressed the tall, lush grasses as a man carrying a tackle box and rod slowly high stepped through the dew covered field. It was a picture perfect image and it was impossible to capture as I saw it given my limited gear and the moving train. It is something that will always be in my mind. Wonderful. I will save the reader from a more in-depth description. About 20 minutes outside of Krakow, the train passed through the allergy zone. All of the sudden my nose stuffed up and eyes watered, all the while hearing sneezing all up and down the car. It wasn't just me and that somehow made my happy for my discomfort. It passed after some time. Since I didn't have the chance to check my email before leaving, I didn't know if my English host in Krakow sent any meeting instructions. I looked wide and far and then tried to call with my two effectively worthless calling cards I'd purchased in other countries. I decided to take the direct route and follow Danielle's directions to her flat in hopes of catching her before she took off for her morning classes. After a little wandering through still sleepy Krakow and I found Danielle's flat. She's a nice young English lass studying for a year in Poland before returning to London to pursue her university work. She's studying to be a teacher in England and she shared her experience of how the English kids are beginning to go nuts and grow fat, just as Oliver of Frankfurt, Germany had shared of his German students. It looks like America isn't all by herself wiping out its next generation. Danielle shared information about dietary and psychological experiments that have "figured out" that giving kids healthy, junk free meals virtually eliminates insane behavior in mere days. Then to complete the test, the kids were allowed to consume soda 2 weeks after the experiment began and within half an hour, they were fighting and were wrecks the rest of the day. The parents in the experiment didn't look at the greasy fried chicken fingers and soda as bad, but ended up learning just what they were doing to their children. After visiting, learning and sharing stories, Danielle had to get to class and gave me directions on how to get to Auschwitz and the things to watch out for on the way. The ride to Auschwitz is done only on bus and it takes out of the bus terminal behind the train station. You pay 7 Zl ($2.40US) directly on entering the bus. The bus leaves very punctually. I made it on the bus with a whole two minutes to spare. Things are getting rather tight in my event timing. I hope not to miss anything when I'm cutting things this close. The ride to Auschwitz is 1 hour 45 minutes from Krakow to the museum parking lot. The main Auschwitz museum and Birkineau, Auschwitz II are separated by 3km by a punctual shuttle. Again, Rick Steves' Best of Eastern Europe came in very handy. The descriptions inside the book added a lot of depth to the visit and made it possible to spend my very limited time efficiently. Don't miss the shuttle bus between the locations because you will then wait half an hour for the next. The driver left after 30 seconds of the designated time. Crazy. The Auschwitz I camp sight was clean but depressing. There wasn't anything directly shocking or scary like the House of Terror in Budapest. However, the half train car load of hair clippings, mountain of reading glasses, bays full of collected luggage and such gave you an idea of how bad things were. All of this sadness is hidden inside of the buildings which are surrounded by beautiful trees, grasses and floating cotton fluff. This outside beauty is directly contrasted by walking inside the buildings and learning of the murder and brutality at this location 63 years ago. I didn't take too many photographs but rather spent my time projecting in my mind how things might have been here generations ago. The guided tour in English was totally unnecessary for me here. Birkinau or Auschwitz II is a whole different place than the original Auschwitz. It is a half mile walk from the famous train entrance to the back of the camp and the whole place is even wider than that. The size of this place can't really be grasped by just standing in the train lookout tower, staring at the vast expanse. Part of the camp is literally as far away as you can see. Walking to the back of the camp to the memorial and seeing the ruins of the crematoriums, soldier barracks and horse stables where the few prisoners who were let live for a few months is a necessity. The walk must be done so you develop a physical sense for just how big this place really is. After you walk to the back of Auschwitz II, take count of how many rows of barracks and stables there are. You will lose count. Then, try and remember how many rows of chimneys you saw looking out on the fields. There are only chimneys left of the prisoner horse stables, as they were all burned or torn down. Now, after you do this, you might have an idea of how millions of people could have been executed here. When prisoners arrived at Birkinau, a doctor sized the person up as they stepped off the box car. The people who looked like they could work were pointed in one direction and those to be executed immediately were pointed in the opposite direction. Those to be immediately executed were told to hang their clothes and carefully place their belongings to make the victims think they would be back momentarily. This helped prevent a possible mass riot that might have broken out should the people on the trains learned was their true fate was to be in a few hours. The immediate kill victims were then directed to a concrete bunker with fake shower nozzles installed in the ceiling. The door was then slammed shut and many canisters of Zyklon-B (hydrogen cyanide) gas were dropped inside of the bunkers through ports in the roof. Those ports were then closed shut. After a few minutes, the screaming ended and the 4,400 people a day were extracted from the bunkers and their bodies were picked over. Gold teeth, glasses or anything else of value were removed from the bodies. Those bodies were then hauled toward the incinerators. There were greasy, wet pools where thousands of tons of ash from the incinerated bodies were dumped. The poor unlucky people who were not executed were directed to endless rows of horse stables. The people slept in hay and on rough cut wood. Sometimes the soldiers would take a person out, remove their shoes and make them stand barefoot in the snow until the person's feet froze. Sometimes, they were beaten to death. Ultimately, people were only allowed to live a few months to insure that no underground operations could efficiently develop to fight back against the Nazis. Even as I write this, I am stunned at the factory efficiency of the operation and the scale of the operation. Actually being there and seeing the place brought home the horror of the place, something no aerial photograph and comparative scale of the place has ever done for me. I arrived back in Krakow just in time to walk over to the massive, 6 foot tall bronze head at one corner of the city square to meet Danielle for dinner with a whole 5 minutes to spare before being late. Good thing she made our meeting time 6:30pm otherwise I never would have made it. We sat and had a delightfully tasty vodka apple drink which went down smooth and easy. We chatted a while before her friend Jo, an Irish girl living in Krakow for school, met up with us. They took me over to an impossible-for-a-tourist-to-find incredible Polish eat place. Funny thing is that the Polish eat supper much earlier than everyone else I've seen in Europe. After convincing the girls that I really had no idea what to order and that I fully trusted their suggestion of traditional Polish fare, they chose a hearty stew in a Sheppard bread bowl with a little lid and even a bread handle on top of that lid. It was a nice finishing touch. We enjoyed our meals and Danielle graciously shared a bite of her meal to give me some variety without having to eat more than one meal. The tables were huge hunks of trees, expertly cut and polished. We were the last to leave the darkly lit basement located restaurant. My two British Isles guides took me over to the old Jewish Quarter to a little brick and iron courtyard café and we ordered a wonderful bottle of French Cote du Rhone wine. (100Zl / $34). It was worth every Zlotty and I was quite impressed. Listening to English and Irish girls talk back and forth in a mix of Irish and English lingo at a snappy speed was a funny experience. I had to interrupt them on occasion just to figure out what they were saying. There were so many words I'd never heard of that it made it a total experience in learning English. Danielle was handy at using a second American English word following her British English word just so I could follow along. We chatted the night away. During the conversation, Jo related, with some glee, that she was attacked at night a few months ago. She gleefully recounted the story of how, once she had repelled her attacker with Irish ferocity, had gone over to Danielle's flat to show off her black eye. Jo seemed to be quite proud of receiving the blemish and making it through the experience none the worse for wear. Both women were quite calm about it and laughed while telling the story. After several other stories, I concluded people from the British Isles seemed to remain much calmer and accepting of their circumstances than Americans. As the night finally grew late, Danielle and I took our leave of pleasant Irish Jo at midnight. Back at Danielle's flat, her flatmate Anne (a French girl) was drinking, chatting and smoking the night away in the kitchen with three other French students. They shared their bottle of California Blossom Hill red with Danielle and I. It was a terrible bottle after such a wonderful French Cote du Rhone. The irony of the situation, peoples and drinks was not lost on me. They offered to take us out to a bar and drink the night away until thoroughly drunk. Though tempting, I can only handle so many 4 hour sleep nights in a row, without getting sick or ill. The French students understood so they shared a good, tasty spiced vodka shot with Danielle and I and were off into the night. It was funny to hear Anne speak English because it had that deep, throaty accent that you might hear in a movie or cartoon. That, along with eyelashes at least as long as mine, helped me understand how guys can be so attracted to French women. Funny! Tuesday, May 29, 2007 Danielle took me to a quaint book store doubling as a coffee and bagel shop. This is what I had in mind while touring Europe rather than sitting at a Starbucks inside a Barnes and Noble at home. The experience of the two places is literally a world apart. We sight on our slightly creaky, thick plank chairs and table, with light filtering though the store front window while a short burst of rain fell outside. The music of the water splashing off the cobblestone was foreign to my ears. The sound of how the rain echoed off the hard cobblestone and bouncing around the narrow alleyway is completely different than hearing rain on an open asphalt street. This only added to the Old World experience, along with sitting with an English woman inside of a Polish book and coffee store. Only through Couchsurfing could this have been possible for me. I learned that I enjoy beginning my days this way, enjoying a bagel, tea and chatting with someone in a street café. This was very similar how I began nearly ever day when I visited Paris several years ago. There is just something about this that I like. But comparing this to grinding a hour in a car through traffic rushing to a cubicle farm is idiotic at best, foolish at worst. Krakow was beginning to grow on me. Today I didn't feel like hauling around a guide book of the city. I wanted to be freer in my approach and thinking. But, I did need something so I wouldn't become totally lost when I had a schedule to keep. As Danielle and I were walking past the oft-American visited Sheraton, I walked in and got a map from the concierge. Danielle was a little surprised at this maneuver but she saw it was easy to do. She said only Americans could afford to stay at such a hotel. Using the map as a guide, she suggested that I visit the castle, market hall, front defense bastion and the old Jewish cemetery. She left me to return to her class essay writings and I thanked her for her guidance. Right at the base of the city side entrance of Krakow castle is a picturesque cobblestone street, quite popular on the postcards. The light right now didn't have the right character for something interesting, however. Another time might yield something better. Construction of Krakow / Crakovia castle began 700 years ago. The castle is built on a large hill and has a commanding view of the city. It was fabled to even once have its own dragon, known to routinely kill off virgins. Purchasing a ticket to the castle jewel and armor exhibit afforded me a chance to look around the grounds before it was time to enter the museums. Every room and building costs money to get in here, so I only went with the 15 Zl armor museum. Though it's not much, I guessed that there really wasn't much to see and certainly not much I could read. Bright puffy clouds in the clear blue rain washed sky provided a great background for the castle cathedral and other buildings. I was even able to send off a few postcards, something I had missed doing in Prague. The armor exhibit was pretty good and had a respectable selection of war instruments from the 12th century and younger. The most impressive items were the German 16th century double handed swords. These things were 5 to 6 feet long. How in the world would one effectively wield such a weapon? People must have been much more hearty back then. The other rooms held a decent collection of things and fairly justified the time and expense. Walking back down from the castle, I meandered over to the city square and, on the way, purchased a spicy and tasty kebab sandwich to ward off hunger. This one of the better kebab / dooner sandwiches I've had the entire trip. St. Mary's Basilica, at a corner of the square, was immense in size. Although the building is not as wide as other cathedrals I have been to, the ceiling is incredibly high and the craftsmanship inside is tough to match. It is interesting that you have to pay admission to visit and an additional cost to take photos and even more to take videos. Some people didn't care and took their digisnaps out to take a few photos, but I couldn't exactly hide my hulking SLR camera. It's an extra 5Zl ($1.75) but it was easier to just purchase the sticker than be constantly trying to sneak around and work inefficiently in stealth mode. The front fortification of the city was under construction and inaccessible. I opted to wander around outside of the garden, following the path of the original city wall. There are markers where every tower stood and a plaque explaining which guild was responsible for maintaining the tower. This maintenance scheme seemed to insure that every group of people living inside the city also had a direct hand in the defense and upkeep. Examining the map, I concluded that the lateness of the day and the significant walking distance to the old Jewish cemetery was not a good combination given my dwindling time. I instead opted to wander back behind the city castle and check out the dragon statue and cave. The Krakow dragon is the most entertaining kinetic sculpture I have ever seen. Every 1 to 5 minutes, unpredictably, the statue actually breathes fire from its mouth for a few moments. I stood with wrapped fascination, testing different capture modes with my camera and just watching, enjoying the entertaining spectacle. It was fun and well worth the time to go find. Finally, I returned to Danielle's flat in plenty of time to shower, email and download pictures so I wasn't in such a general rush. I actually left myself a moment or two just to enjoy the place. Danielle was plowing through her studies, so I left her alone as I prepared to move on. On the way to school for Danielle and the train station for me, my couchsurfing host took me to a Georgian (country, not the state) restaurant just off the city square. The food was great! It especially tasted very good because I knew I wouldn't have a significant meal for 14 hours after leaving her flat, as I was traveling to Berlin next. The spiced chicken and French fries were tasty and filling, both something I needed. 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