Meanwhile, in Poland: good food, a beautiful city, and Auschwitz-Birkenau

Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a young and depressed girl. This girl loved to read and loved learning. One day, this girl found a book in the library at her school about a topic she had never heard about- the Holocaust. She knew vaguely what the two world wars were, and she knew that the Holocaust was a terrible and evil time. Beyond that, she knew nothing of any of these topics. She began to read, and became obsessed with the terrible suffering that occurred.
A few months later, it was discovered that the girl had been suffering from hyperglycemia for months and months- a condition that explained the young girl's depression. She was cured of the sadness, but her fascination continued.
And almost a decade later, the young girl now a young woman, was graced with the privilege to visit the epicenter of all of the evil she had read of.


Let me begin by saying this: Poland is a beautiful country. It may be broken and it may be depressingly desolate in areas, but Poland and the people who live there have a beautiful resilience that struck me to my core. The Polish have been walked on for centuries, and yet there was no obvious bitterness or depression. If anything, the Polish seemed so much more friendly and happy than the Viennese.

Krakow's town square at night

In the park, the beginnings of Autumn

Lindsey, Kate, Mikayla, Architecture

I love the buildings here :)

I did not expect Krakow to be this beautiful. I expected to see desolation and poverty, as one is led to believe all communist-affiliated (whether the affiliation is in the past or present) countries appear. It was very strange walking through the city and realizing it was just as beautiful as Vienna. One thing is for sure... I will definitely be going back before I die. Hopefully after mastering a Slavic language, because man is it hard to communicate with people who only speak polish.
Krakow is also the home of Herr Lannom's beloved "Georgian [the country, not the state] restaurant," where we had dinner Thursday evening. For any of you who don't know, I LOVE ethnic food and this place did not disappoint me :)

amazing cheese-covered bread (that plate is about a foot across)

The menu- specifically, what I ordered off the menu

my amazing dinner!

So funny story about that little red pepper in the lower right hand corner. That pepper is a BEAST. Kate, my wonderful, Asian friend Kate, decided to try and eat the pepper on her plate. I think she made it through maybe a third of it before she was all out balling from the heat. Meanwhile, down at the opposite end of the table, I was eyeing my own red pepper. For those of you who haven't had the joy of sitting down to a good ole Cajun meal with me, or a heaping serving of hot wings, I can handle the heat. Seriously. I have taken many a man-card because of my ability to eat more spicy food than an army of tastebudless he-men. So I took a nibble off the end of the little devil. And another. And another. And you know what? It was pretty durn tasty. Right as I stick the rest of the pepper in my mouth, I look over and see Frau and Herr Swann both staring at me with their mouths hanging open. "What?" "You...you just... how... why?!" I couldn't help from laughing at them. They were both just so confused. This was definitely my bad-donkey moment of the trip.
After dinner at the Georgian place, we went to Tribeca Coffee Co. which has the most amazingly amazing hot chocolate you will ever have. Seriously. There are some (you know who you are) who love chocolate SO MUCH that I honestly think a trip to Krakow would be worth it just to go to this place. It was that amazing.

my honey-nut frappe... for whatever reason, I haven't been drinking a lot of black coffee here

Hunter's hot chocolate, and Dr. Schwerdt creepin' on Erin

Erin and Frau Swann

Frau Swann, Erin, Dr. Schwerdt, and Hunter. And a very white mug.

Auschwitz und Birkenau.

I told my mom that this was going to be the most memorable point of my stay in Europe. Years from now, when I'm reminiscing to my kids or grandkids about the time I spent in Europe before I was barely even grown, I'll probably mention my favorite cafe. I'll tell them about Shakespeare and Co., about Rome and Paris and riding the Strassenbahn. But I won't go on about these things like I'll go on about my visit to the concentration and death camps. Is this a wee bit morbid? Maybe. Do I care if it is a wee bit morbid? Not a bit.
Most people have probably read about Auschwitz, the sadistic Josef Mengele, the Stars of David sewn onto coats. Certainly we've heard of Anne Frank and the ghettos. As I explained, I've been fascinated with the whole affair since I was too young to understand the horror of it all. What you don't see in books and documentaries are things like mountains of spectacles and shoes, taken from people right before they're marched to their death. Baby clothes that were stripped from newly-dead infants. Suitcases with names on the outside. In many ways these things are worse than the pictures of emaciated men and women minutes or hours or days or, if they're lucky, months from extermination and an unmarked grave.
What struck me the most was the hair. Most of the barracks at Auschwitz (apparently it had been a military base before it was a concentration camp) had been converted into museum-style buildings on the inside. I think it was the second or third exhibit we went into... up until this point I had let myself begin to think that maybe I would be alright through the day, that maybe I would get away from the place without having a physical reaction. And then we rounded the corner and there, lining a wall at least twenty feet long, was a five or six foot deep case filled with mounds of human hair. In here is what we believe to be hair from over 40,000 people, mostly women, to be sent for textile production... I felt the bile rise up and I had to watch my feet for the next few minutes to avoid tearing up or vomiting. Human hair. For "textile production;" for making fabric! It is so inconceivable to me that human life became so meaningless to the Nazis that they couldn't even leave the corpses with their hair.

"Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free)

The barracks

barbed wire and beauty... such a contradiction

the one and only crematorium at Auschwitz

After seeing the mounds of hair, I had to fight to not choke on the sorrow of the place. And what made it so much worse was that Auschwitz is so strikingly beautiful- not at all what I thought it would look like. To me it seems as if the earth is trying to purge out the despair and suffering that has seeped into the very soil. I was constantly oscillating back and forth between noticing the beauty of the area and the hair standing up on the back of my neck, especially when looking at the crematorium.

But Auschwitz was no where near as shocking as Birkenau. Auschwitz did not have the fields of crematoria chimneys. Auschwtiz did not have the literal end-of-the-line railroad tracks. Auschwitz did not have the gas chambers.

a barrack... that was obviously once a stable

field of chimneys

the end of the line

Can you even imagine what it would have been like to live here? It breaks my heart so much to realize that someone had enough hatefulness and ego to cause this to happen. The road that our group is walking on next to the train tracks is the road that men and women would walk on towards the gas chambers, to their death. It struck me later on, while I was reflecting on it all, how I got to walk back on a road that so many didn't. I was able to walk away from the woods, away from where the chambers were.

About one and a half million individuals died here. One and a half million lives, dramas, sets of love affairs and hatreds and joys and cares and sorrows. It just hurts my soul. I knew this trip was going to be difficult for me spiritually. What I didn't expect was that it made me feel closer to God… or to at least feel like I understand Him better. I think I might actually be mentally and emotionally built for the “grim acceptance” style of faith. I think so many people like to sugar coat God and how he acts, and they overlook the fact that he indirectly created all of the sorrow we deal with- that he allowed us to have free will, which has led to the existence of evil. That he continues to allow evil to exist. And I think that’s one of his greatest kindnesses that he gave us something to contrast with the absolute joy we can experience. When we left Birkenau, I'm pretty sure everyone fell asleep on the bus. I felt less emotional strain and more like I could sleep for years and years and still not have had enough.
That evening, a group of us had a wonderful dinner with the Swanns and Herr Lannom and Dr. Schwerdt at this little Italian bistro. The meal must've lasted at least three hours. It had that community and family feel that Thanksgiving dinner has. I think in many ways that meal helped me heal a bit of the ache that had taken root in my heart.

Erin and her raviolis 

My linguine

Okay, strange expression on Herr Lannom's face

Emily being silly

I am so thankful for our Vienna family. Honestly, I am just thankful, period. I had time to go into St. Mary's, the beautiful Cathedral in Krakow, and pray and get a lot of this off my chest. I would not have been able to do that under different circumstances. And I doubt few would've dealt with that in the same manner that Kate and Lindsey and Mikayla did.

St. Mary's

Mikayla, Lindsey, and me being goofy in the bubbles

Until next time...