The Gnomes are Revolting

In the 1980s an undergraduate at Wroclaw University created a group called the Orange Alternative that mocked the current communist regime by painting pictures of gnomes over areas where the government had painted-out anti-regime graffiti. They later graduated to pranks like handing out free toilet paper and dressing entirely in red on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Today, to memorialize this, all around the city you'll find tiny bronze gnomes in the most unlikely places. You can actually purchase a "gnome map" from the tourist center. We wanted to have the fun of finding them ourselves.

After breakfast at our hotel, we started out on a "Foundations of Wroclaw" walking tour that visits most of the oldest churches and buildings.

We began by hopping on a tram to go over to the Ecclesiastical District where the tour started. Along the way we found a "green" farmers market selling all natural foods and clothing from little stalls in the squares next to a church. There were huge sunflowers and the street-sweepers were using the old-fashioned twig brooms.

 We saw a lot of churches. There weren't nearly as many tourists as Krakow, and all of the groups we saw seemed to be Polish or German (Wroclaw is known as Breslau in German). The church below is the main Wroclaw Cathedral.

Some of the interiors were very ornate (especially one Baroque church that looked like something from Italy), but we didn't take any pictures inside.

The Ecclesiastical District is on a series of islands in the Oder River, so we had to cross several bridges back and forth. This one had more locks than the Pont des Artes bridge in Paris. (Of course, now that's true of any bridge, since the Paris police removed all the locks there.)

Once we had seen all of the churches on the islands, we went back across to the center of town and visited some of the memorials there. This memorial is the victims of the Kaytn Forest massacre when Stalin ordered about 22,000 Polish officers and others who were in POW camps in Russia summarily executed.

By this time it was nearly 11:00 and it was time for some coffee. We found a chalkboard sign in front of St. Adlebert's Church beside a Vespa with a fish on its mudflap. We made our way downstairs and had coffee in the crypt. (Well, maybe just the basement.)

Revived, we continued on our trip and saw some other amazing creatures (besides the gnomes Kathy had collected.) There was a giant dragonfly on one wall...

...and another wall had a bronze or iron crocodile floating with its snout suspended by a balloon. Very fun.

By this time, it was almost 1:00 PM and time for lunch; so, we headed back to STP, which you met yesterday, to see if the food was as good the second time around.

It wasn't quite as good because we weren't as ravenous as we'd been last night. But, it was good, and worth every penny of the $7.00 we spend for the food. (As I mentioned, you pay by the kilogram. Kathy and I ate about a kilo between us. It's only fair to mention that mine weighed twice what hers did.)

After lunch, we continued on our walk. We saw the Opera, and interesting covered market built in the early 1900s and still used today, and, of course, more churches.

We saw the University of Wroclaw's library, which rivals some of the churches.

We also found interesting sculptures and other kinds of public art all over town. The city map even has the most interesting graffiti murals marked on it.

By 4:00 PM we had absorbed all we could and were happy to return to our room and veg-out over chips and some grapefruit soda. Tomorrow we might go to the zoo!

Arriving in Wroclaw

Wroclaw (pronounced vrots-wahf) is the fourth largest city in Poland and the largest city in Silesia, the south-west corner of Poland. We're stopping here for a few days before traveling south to Prague and the Czech Republic.

We don't have much to report yet. We got up and packed this morning (Tuesday) and caught the 12:30 PM train, which was a half-hour late. The train ride was a little more than 3 hours, so we didn't get in until just before 5:00. We asked about getting a train to Prague and were told that there were no direct trains, so we went looking for the bus station. We purchased two tickets for the Friday morning bus at 8:30 AM. Then, we went looking for the tram into town.

We bought a 48-hour ticket (50% senior discount, we think; the instructions were hard to understand.) We got on a tram that looked like it was going to the center of town, but soon got off when we saw some sign of old buildings. With the help of Google Maps we walked the three blocks into the Old Town square and to our hotel room a few blocks off the square.

After we checked in and got hooked up to WiFi, we went out looking for something to eat (since we'd been on the train during lunch). Lonely Planet recommended a place called STP, which stands for 'Szybko, Tanio, Pysznie' or 'Fast, Cheap, Delicious'. The food is cafeteria style. You fill up your plate and pay by weight. With drinks, dinner for both of us was less than $10. We both found it as advertised.

After dinner, we walked around the square and found two of the Gnomes of Wroclaw. We also found an ice-cream shop and got two gelato cones ($2 for both) and then headed back to bed.

Aushwitz and Birkenau

Even though I was still feeling the effects of my head cold, we decided to spend our last day in Krakow visiting the memorial at Aushwitz. Instead of purchasing a tour from one of the many vendors in Krakow, we decided to go by ourselves on the bus.

We found the bus station behind the train station and bought tickets (about $3 each way). The bus we got on was a "minibus" and the seats were really small. Fortunately we found a space behind the driver's seat where I could actually fit with my knees.

The trip took about an hour and a quarter. If we had gotten on the regular bus, it would have taken a half-hour longer, because it would stop more often. When we got to Aushwitz we had planned to use our guidebook to tour. However, there are so many people there that the only way they can avert overcrowding is to require individuals to join a tour (at least between 10 AM and 3 PM).

The tour turned out to be a good idea because it was the only way to get everyone through in a timely manner. All of the participants wear headsets, and the tour guide has a little lapel mike, so you only hear the narration from your guide.

All of the tours start in the smaller camp, Aushwitz I, which was established in the early 1940s for housing mostly political prisoners. This is the part of the camp that has the famous front gate "Work Sets You Free". These prisoner's barracks and administration buildings were not destroyed in 1945 when Aushwitz was abandoned, so they house most of the museum exhibits.

It is truly sobering; you almost go into a kind of numb shock seeing just a portion of the spectacles, hair, luggage and shoes left behind by the victims. Each of the blocks now houses a particular exhibit. Block 10 was where medical experiments were done by the SS, but no one was allowed inside.

The sixteen or so prisoner's barracks were all surrounded by double walls of barbed wire and guard towers. Just outside of the barbed wire were the officer's housing, where the administrators of the camp lived with their families (including their children).

The first, very rudimentary gas chamber was constructed in Aushwitz I. The more efficient, assembly-line gas chambers that we're all familiar with were constructed in Aushwitz II/Birkenau and were destroyed by the Nazi's when they left. The original gas chamber-crematorium has been restored in Auchwitz I.

It's a strange and solemn experience to walk through it; nobody says a word.

After about two hours, the first part of the tour was finished, and everyone got on buses to go to Aushwitz II/Birkenau. This was the much larger camp that was built in 1942-43 for the extermination of the Jews. Over one and one-half million people went through Birkenau in a little over a year; over 90% of them were Jews.

You really can't understand what a big operation this was until you walk through it. This rail car was left at the point along the rail line where the selections were made. We stood at the point where the photograph at the top of this blog entry was taken. The camp stretched as far as we could see in every direction.

Walking from the main entrance (which was used in Spielberg's Shindler's List) across to the memorial was about a kilometer.  By the memorial are the remains of the five gas-chambers and crematoria that were destroyed.

All-in-all, it was a moving experience. Both of us are glad we didn't miss it. Because we were on an English-speaking tour, the participants had a lot of questions. Most of them were about why someone didn't stop this. I've always wondered what could make an entire civilized country believe the (to me) completely ludicrous racial theories that underlay the Third Reich. How could supposedly rational people turn their attention from the war effort to murdering the helpless civilians in their midst?

Wawel Hill, Kazmierz & Schindler's List

Things were looking pretty glum this morning when both Kathy and I woke up before dawn. I struggled all night with a sore throat and woke up with a full-blown head cold. Kathy woke up with a bad headache. I took some DayQuil and Kathy took some aspirin and both of us went back to bed. When we woke back up around 9:00 AM, the sun was out and we got up, ready to go.

After a nice breakfast across the street, we decided to start by walking to Wawel Hill, where a castle has stood since the 10th century. We walked past the Solidarity office next to our guesthouse,

and across the plaza containing a branch of the National Gallery, featuring works by the Young Poland movement. Admission was free on Sunday, but we had so much to do, we didn't go in.

Since we had already seen the main market square, we walked right through to St. Francis' Church, which was the church that Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) used as the Archbishop of Krakow. We started to go in, but because it was noon, the Sunday Mass was in session. We actually didn't see the inside of any of the churches we went to because it was Sunday.

Across the street was the Archbishop's residence where the Wojtyla lived and stayed even after he became Pope (whenever he came back to Poland.) When he was in residence (it is said), he would come to the window over the entrance and talk to the people in the street about football and anything else on their minds. There is now just a picture of him in the window.

Further down Grodzka Street we came to the original market square of Krakow, now named Mary Magdalene Square, lined with yet more churches. Kathy liked this door-knocker on one of the buildings.

Krakow has more Catholic churches per square mile than any city in Europe, except for Rome. Here's a picture of Krakow's first Baroque church, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, facing the square.

Once past the square we walked by several Cardinal's residences (you can tell because there is a Cardinal's hat carved into the stone over the doorway), and came to Wawel Hill at the very end of the old town. This is the most visited site in Poland, and today, with the wonderful weather, was no exception.

It's a long, huffing-and-puffing walk to the top of the hill. When you get there, it's surprising how big it is. I had wanted to go into Wawel Cathedral (the building on the left), but it also was closed for services. Past the Cathedral, we walked through the Renaissance passage ...

into the huge inner courtyard of the castle itself. Notice the three floors. The nobles at court lived on the bottom floor. The King lived on the middle floor, while the top floor, which is taller, was used for the public and ceremonial rooms.

The back wall is actually just that - a wall - with no building behind it. When visiting dignitaries from other countries would come visit, these windows would be draped, to give the impression that the King's palace was larger than it actually was.

According to European Theosophical tradition, the inner corner of this courtyard is one of the earth's seven Chakra points (along with New Delhi, Mecca, Delphi, Rome, Velehrad, Jerusalem). Tourists line up to touch the Chakra spot, while a disapproving guard prevents things from getting out of hand. The guards are actually prohibited from talking about it at all. You can see the hand-prints from everyone who touches the wall.

Of course this being the Internet age, I had to check my facts using Google. It looks like since the 1930s the seven points have moved again. One is now at Mt. Shasta.

The open area on the top of the hill is huge, so we had to walk all the way around it. On the south side you can look out over the Vistula. What a long river it is; here we are in the south and we saw it in Warsaw and also in Torun, in the north of Poland. All around the grounds, the chestnut trees are dropping their nuts, and families were out gathering them.

After our castle tour, we decided to head over to the old Jewish quarter called Kazmierz. This is not the Ghetto area during the war, but the pre-war Jewish quarter.

We stopped by the market square (Plac Nowy) and I had a zapiekanki, a toasted baguette with cheese and other toppings. Even though it was only around 3:00 pm, all of the market stalls were closing.

As long as we were outside the city walls, I asked Kathy if she was willing to walk over to the Oscar Schindler factory, made famous in Steven Speilberg's Shindler's List, which is now a museum. It took us about a half-hour to walk to the factory, along the way we saw the Ghetto Hero's square memorializing the Krakow Ghetto that was built here in the area called Podgorze. The empty chairs symbolize the fact that the Jews of Kazmierz had to carry everything, including their furniture, when they were expelled from Krakow.

The Schindler factory is a couple blocks away from the square, and houses a permanent exhibit called Krakow Under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945.

Like the History of the Jews in Poland exhibit in Warsaw, it is slick and well done, with both Polish and English explanations as you go along. Often, though, I found myself wondering what I was looking at, or how it fit into the overall story. I think a little additional narrative direction would have helped us a lot.

We watched a half-hour movie that was interesting, with actual survivors from the Schindler factory. That could have used some narrative work as well. If I hadn't seen the Spielberg movie, I really wouldn't have been able to follow what was going on. The highlight for me was standing behind Oscar Schindler's desk and seeing the pictures of those he had saved.

After the museum we had the long walk back to the Old Town to look forward to. The sun was just going down as we crossed the river.

We looked through our guidebooks and found a nice Polish-Italian fusion restaurant, and made a feast of four different starter plates: pierogi, golabki (stuffed cabbage rolls), potato pancakes with mushroom sauce, and some lasagna Bolonese.

It was more than enough food for us, so we felt no need to order a "main" plate.

Cold Waters

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. Proverbs 25:25

It continued to rain in Krakow on Saturday; all day with no let-up. The rain wasn't that heavy, though, so we could walk around with umbrellas. We were set to meet the Wilks family, Calvary Chapel missionaries who have been serving here in Poland for about ten years. Because of all the rain (and construction on the roads between where they live and Krakow), we didn't get together until around noon.

Chris, whose grandparents both emigrated from Poland, works alongside a Polish national non-denominational church organization called Christian Fellowship of Sandomierz. Chris and his wife Sandi live in a town south of Sandomierz called Tarnobrzg, and have been ministering and starting home fellowships in the area. Their five children have gone to Polish schools; their oldest daughter is in her third year of college in Virginia, and their son is working on computers for the US Air Force in Korea.

Since it was lunch time (and raining), we decided to find a place where we could eat and fellowship. The three girls wanted to eat at Bob's Burgers, so we got a table and spent three hours talking about the work in Poland. Chris and Sandi really have a heart for the people of Poland, and it was a blessing to hear what God is doing here. The time just flew by. Please pray for them.

Since they had an evening meeting they had to get back for, they left around 3:30. We really appreciate their driving all that way just to see us. Afterwards, Kathy and I walked around the Planta (the old wall and moat, now a garden, that surrounds the old city) toward the castle. We stopped at a used bookstore that specialized in English-language books, browsed for a bit and had a coffee.

Then, we walked on toward the Wawel Castle where we had dinner.

In the States we're used to having a bread basket placed on the table before our meal. This is what they do in Poland (at least at the restaurant we ate at). That's a pickle and sauerkraut.

After a nice meal, we headed back to the room, wet but at least full.

Krakow in the Rain

Krakow, the old Polish capitol, lies about three hours south of Warsaw by the express train. We left our hotel about 10 AM. There were a few anxious minutes when my SchoolsFirst credit card was declined when I went to settle our bill. Fortunately, I had another card which worked. (I also made sure I had enough cash in case that didn't work.)

On the way to the train, we stopped by the Plus store because it seemed we had drained all of the credit on Kathy's phone. We made very few calls, but they charge you for messaging as well, even if you use the iPhone Messenger app over WiFi. We put another 100 PLN (about $25) on the chip and picked up our train.

In the train we were seated in front of each other in a row of single seats along the side of the car. Since the train was mostly empty, though, we moved over and sat side-by-side. When the conductor came through to collect our tickets, she said that was fine.

We got to Krakow a little after one. I had a good map, but it seems like I always get turned around and go left when I should go right. Thank heavens for Google Maps! It showed us where we were and we made our way across town to the Globtroter (yes, it really is spelled that way) Guest House where we are staying.

To quote Rick Steves, the Globtroer consists of 27 "rustic rooms" a block off the main square. They certainly are rustic compared to the nicer places we stayed in Berlin and Warsaw, but the room is also less expensive and it has its charms.

Once we got to our room, I phoned SchoolsFirst to see what was up with my card. I had 20 PLN on my little phone, and used it up in the middle of talking to the representative. Fortunately, when I called back on Kathy's phone, I got right through (instead of waiting on hold). Apparently, before leaving when I had gone in to the bank to put a travel alert on our card, they had only written Germany on the Visa Card. I hope I got it all straightened out.

After we unpacked, we went out for a first walk through the town and a late-lunch/dinner (it was 3:30 PM). The rain was a little heavier now so we had to use our umbrellas as we walked through the main market square (the largest in medieval Europe).

On the market square, a folk troupe was singing on a stage at one end, and people were buying sausages and pork knuckles from vending stalls set up all over the square (see the picture at the top of this post). Krakow is definitely crowded; it is the main tourist destination in Poland. There are a lot of packaged tours from England as well.

After lunch (a great pizza along with a chicken-asparagus dish) we found our own little stall and looked out the windows over the square. The coffee really didn't affect me at all. Back in our room, I scrolled through the channels on the TV (all Polish, no CNN or BBC), nodding off between channels. I gave it up and turned out the lights at 7:00 PM, while Kathy stayed up reading.

On Saturday morning, I woke up before Kathy and went out looking for something I could bring back to the room for breakfast. Nothing opened before 8:00 am except for the McCafe a block off the square. I picked up a pair of blueberry muffins, and headed back to the room to update the blog.

We're going to meet the Wilks, a missionary family in Poland, at about 10:00 am, so I'd better go get ready.