Krakow

Yesterday it hit me. I went to a concerto at this gorgeous little church across from the Wawel castle, but looking around at my fellow fogart-ish audience goers, I realized that I really am boring. Have I ever been to the Warped Tour? No. Have I seen an O.A.R. gig? No. Not even a wimpy Coldplay concert. But Vivaldi & Friends? Let's go!

I really do enjoy this stuff, though. Walking through a park atop the bluffs of Kyiv and hearing Rachmaninoff drifting my way, I rescheduled my afternoon to listen to the Ukraine Philharmonic's afternoon practice. Marvelous.

All that aside, this is a neat town. Unscathed in World War II, Krakow sports a great little medieval center, and ten minutes south, the Wawel castle. It's all beautiful, though I have yet to see the Screen-door submarines, the piles of rejected "W's" outside M&M factories, or any of the other fabled examples of Polish intuition. And despite what The Sun might have you believe, there are no Normandy-worthy massings of plumbers and electricians preparing their landing in Western Europe.

Perhaps the one major downside I see, now that Poland is in the Big, Happy, EU family, is the huge number of us tourists in this city. Being such a small town in relative terms (Chicago is the second largest Polish "city"), their presence is easily felt. For example, I'm sitting in a small XIV century cellar, now an internet cafe with ten computers. Four of the screens display Hotmail compositions with "Greetings from Krakow" in the subject lines. No joke.

But it gets wierder. My hostel is smack in the middle of Kazimierz, the historical Jewish quarter. I say historical, because what was a thriving population of 70,000 Jews, before WWII, now hovers around 100. But it seems a huge percentage of my fellow guests, at least at my hostel, are German. I know, 'gather the lessons from history and eschew the prejudices', but it's still just a titch odd.

Perhaps I wouldn't have thought much of this if it weren't for the realities of Krakow travel. Most of the tourists that come through here, me included, use this city as a jumping-off point for excursions to a small town to the West, Oswiecim. I hadn't heard of the Polish name when I came, but I had certainly heard it's German transliteration: Auschwitz.

So that was my day yesterday, touring Auschwitz-Birkenau with a bunch of German backpackers. It didn't help, though, that I was the only blonde, blue-eyed person in the whole group of 30+ tourists. I was tipped off to this fact by the many sharp glances thrown my way during the tour-guide's simmering accounts of Nazi "Master Race" ideals.

The world today is, thankfully, pretty much free of the "but Pa says it ain't really happen" idiots, so I'll spare the era's background. The camp itself, though, is made up of two sites, Auschwitz and Birkenau, separated by about four kilometers. A third site, and forty smaller sub-camps, also originally existed. Auschwitz, sometimes referred to as Auschwitz I, was originally Polish army barracks before being adapted by the Nazis to their purposes. The camp is smallish, yet terrifying, with an execution wall, 1meter x 1meter chambers where four prisoners were kept at a time, "dark rooms" which had just enough ventilation to maximize the suffering of those who suffocated, and a gas chamber. The gas chambers were, after Birkenau's construction, converted into ammo storage, so they escaped destruction by the fleeing Nazis. The Ovens were also rebuilt from original materials.

Birkenau, 4km down the road, seems to take a very different approach as a museum. Rather than converting old buildings into exhibitions and display, it stands just as it did at liberation, save a memorial to those who died. Auschwitz II, as it is sometimes known, was built solely for elimination. Compared to Auschwitz I, Birkenau is enormous, with train tracks running right into the center of the camp. The ruins of the huge gas chambers and crematorium stand off at the far end, by the memorial.



I waited to make an update so I could process what I saw, but I still can't make up my mind. Obviously, it's an emotionally charged place. Still, I couldn't help but cringe at the large, movie-style posters advertising the museum. "Site of the worst Murders the world has ever seen. Open 10am-8pm." The exploitation was a bit shocking. I also couldn't help but think of the largely ignored Soviet genocides, which only carried a few sentences in the Russian and Ukrainian museums I've visited. Of course, liberal guilt then got to me for not immediately also thinking of the tragedies in Sudan, Timor, Rwanda, the Balkans, and elsewhere.

But the most disturbing thing about Auschwitz-Berkinau is the direct human involvement in the killing. When Stalin wanted to crush Ukrainian nationalism in the 1930's, he just engineered a famine that killed nearly eight million. He placed unrealistic quotas on grain production, and simply shut off food supplies until those quotas were met. Simply, Soviet beuracracy. Impersonal death. But Auschwitz? What was going through the mind of the bricklayer building the ovens? The man operating the electric lifts for corpses? I guess the thought of this shocking 'efficiency' was what got to me.

But I can't close with such morbid impressions. If you're willing to stick with me as I retreat back into trivial matters, the tourist-scene does have one other advantage; restaurants. Whereas I was so disappointed by their rarity in Ukraine and Russia, there seem to be a large number of cheerful, inexpensive restaurants serving Polish food to hungry 'packers. The pierogi are fan-TAS-tic, as we all knew they would be. But ahh, to find such treasures as 'nalesniki', little pancakes filled with fruits or cottage cheese, and covered in (no, not sour cream like it's fellow slavic dishes) sweet yogurt, or obwarzanki, ring-shaped donuts hawked by the old ladies with street carts! This is joy. It's great to just stumble upon a neat restaurant, and stumble upon a neat dish. I think my new favorite is Czulent (pr. Choulent), a Jewish dish traditionally served on the Sabbath. It looks rather scary, like pulled pork and baked beans put in a blender, but it is indeed the tastiest mixture of meat, beans, and veggies you'll ever want to try.

So I think that's it for now. Time to get out and explore some more of these museums (see? a Bore born and bred). I'll probably hop up to Warsaw tonight. More from there.