Reality Bites

Carbonated Water Dispenser from Soviet Era

At first I couldn't quite grasp why Polish and Hungarian people call themeselves Central Europeans, rather than Eastern Europeans.  Now I understand; as soon as I boarded the overnight train from Budapest to Lviv, I had clearly crossed the Eastern threshold.  Suddenly, nobody spoke any English and any concept of customer service or courtesy was irritatingly lacking.  At the Ukrainian Border, the agents who boarded the train for passport control had a chuckle when they saw my American Passport.  My interpretation of his chuckle was, "why the hell would an American want to go to Ukraine?"  I started to wonder the same thing when, several hours later, I disembarked in Lviv and was smacked across the face with an arctic blast of post-Communist desolation.

In all fairness, I believe my experience to have been somewhat corrupted by the November weather.  The temperature hovered around freezing for most of my stay, with a ground-hugging fog that broke only momentarily...enough time to snap a few photos of the beautiful UNESCO-listed historic center.  Like Krakow, Lviv was spared the decimating German bombing of WWII.  I witnessed the architectural and Medieval city planning similarities between the two cities, owing mostly to the fact that both were part of the historic region of Galicia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Due to its proximity to Poland, the Ukrainian language shares much of the same vocabulary and grammar, giving me a very slight language advantage when interaction with locals was necessary. That said, local interaction was limited as most people were shuffling as quickly as possible from origin to destination to minimize exposure to the elements, which included suffocating air pollution.

Lviv Theater of Opera and Ballet

The most humorous attempted exchange was at a cemetery located on the edge of the city.  I was tooling around looking for interesting Jewish tombstones when a woman approached me.  Although we both were skilled in other languages, none were in common.  Somehow, through a mixture of Polish and Dutch (me) and Ukrainian and German (her), I learned that she was cataloguing the cemetery residents and that she worked at an aviation museum near the airport.  She became supremely annoying after a while, asking me to accompany her to the depths of the cemetery because she was scared to go by herself.  This happened to be the coldest day of the three in Lviv, so by the time I was able to disengage, I was already chilled to the bone and had quite a walk ahead of me to get back to my apartment.  To my surprise, my puffy black jacket, hat, gloves, and scarf are not sufficient deterrents to the 100% humidity of the cold air here, which is different from the dry cold that I once knew in Alaska.

Apart from the Yanivsky Cemetery noted above, which was incidentally an assimilated cemetery (Jewish, Ukrainian Orthodox, etc), I also made it a point to visit historic places of interest of the former Jewish community who thrived in Lviv for about 500 years.  Lviv actually had a larger Jewish population than Krakow, but you wouldn't know that given the relative lack of evidence.  In fact, the apparent lack of recognition of Jewish contributions to the community and the remoteness of any memorial to said community was a painful realization.  The lowlight is the story of the Old Jewish Cemetery, which can be found here.  In a nutshell, the 500-year old cemetery was destroyed by the Nazis and has since been paved over and used as the city's largest outdoor marketplace.  Although Soviet and post-Soviet authorities recognize that the marketplace is built on top of more than 25,000 Jewish bodies, no progress has been made in restoring this site.

Holocaust Monument at Entrance to Former Jewish Ghetto

In Lviv, I felt depressed.  The buildings were muted and warn, just like the downward-turned faces of the city's inhabitants.  The feeling of desperation and desolation pervaded the city's parks, churches, and monuments to Ukrainian nationalists.  Soviet-era housing blocks were just a stone's throw away from the 14th century churches and restored Baroque facades of the historic center.  I could not find a soul nor a heart in this city of 1.5 million. 

One of the challenges I am facing during this phase of my travels is that I am barely able to keep up with all the new sights, sounds, and history that I am encountering in each new place.  By the time the revelations occur to me, it's onto the next city and a whole new bag of surprises.  This is the downside of lumping my checklist of must-sees all together in one big trip.  Hopefully over time I'll manage to sort through and make sense of what I've experienced in Central and Eastern Europe; I'm hoping that this brief diary will offset my less-than stellar short-term memory.  To maximize the benefit of this adventure, I must come away from this with some conclusions or self-awareness that will stay with me for years to come.

Land of the Magyar

Hungarian Parliament

Eight days in Budapest was not enough to get an adequate introduction to all the city has to offer.  I realize that many travelers only spend a long weekend or a few days of their European mega-tour in Hungary; I must be spoiled after my 7 weeks in Krakow.  Part of the trouble is that the winter season has arrived, and with that season comes dramatically shortened days.  Coupled with my lack of discipline when it comes to waking up at a decent hour (I'm on vacation!), 2 days in Budapest in November is equal to 1 day in London, Amsterdam, or Krakow in September.

I walked around aimlessly most days until my legs fell off.  I had no preconceived itineraries or must-sees as this is the beginning of my travels in unknown lands sans Lonely Planet.  I love to travel this way as you never know where the day will take you and what pocket-full of mysteries will challenge your knowledge of the world (or lack thereof).  There was so much eye candy with all the different styles of architecture, a true marriage of East and West!  In fact, I couldn't stop taking photos of all the exotic facades that I encountered on my meanderings - see Facebook photo album for the highlights.  This awakening of my unknown architectural sensibilities made me think of my Mom's reaction to Gaudi's designs during her visit to Barcelona several years ago.


Art Nouveau Facade

I stayed in a great neighborhood in Distirct VII, which is where the Jewish Quarter is located.  Unlike much of Eastern Europe during World War II, a large number of Budapest Jews survived the Holocaust, which means there is a thriving community still in existence today.  Still, there is no lack of horrors to be told in the city's memorials to the Jews who did perish in the ghetto or were deported to concentration and extermination camps.  As I was wondering through the Great Synagogue complex, which is the largest synagogue in Europe, I happened upon the Family Research Center, where I was able to scan microfilmed birth records of Jews born in Budapest in the 19th Century. 

According to my records, my great great grandmother Lena Kline was born Budapest in 1872.  Unfortunately, I was unable to locate her birth record after two hours of searching +/- 5 years of records.  It is possible that she may have been born in a village near Budapest, or maybe her age was more than 5 years off from what is shown on her death certificate, or maybe she had a different first name that wasn't anything like Lena (I looked at as many variations as I could imagine).  Despite the failure, I enjoyed the search and it did help me to confirm three things:  1) the name was definitely spelled Klein in the old country, 2) this was a VERY common name, 3) Lena's mother's name, "Saly", was very likely a short version of the common Hungarian/Jewish name "Rozalia".

Tree of Life Holocaust Memorial - Victims Names Inscribed on Leaves

Budapest was full of Vienna-style coffeehouses (kavahas) with delicious pastries and warm drinks offering refuge from the frigid Transcarpathian air.  I found a few favs, but there were many more that I would've loved to patronize had I had the time.  The intake of rich, calorie-laden delights helped make a dent in the weight loss I suffered in Paris...that is, until I got take-out from a Bangladeshi restaurant on day 5.  Big mistake, but at least I can still fit into my skinny jeans!

Let's see, what else...I spent a day at a Turkish bathhouse that was built about 5 centuries ago, took the suburban train to the picturesque Danube settlement of Szentendre with it's Serbian Orthodox churches and marzipan museum, got a haircut at the most exclusive salon in Budapest on Andrassy Street (think Champs Elysees) for $25, saw the 1000-year old right hand of Saint Stephen (the first King of Hungary) in an ornate box called a reliquary, got lost in the hills of Buda populated by wealthy villa-dwellers, and visited the American Embassy for notary services on Nov 7th, a day of jubilation for 50.7 percent of Americans.

Rudas Turkish Baths

Budapest was a beautiful city, full of surprises and delights.  I cherished my time there and can't believe that I've spent all these years unfamiliar with this jewel of the Danube.  I hope to make it back one day soon and perhaps I'll be able to share it with someone special.  I'm in Lviv, Ukraine now; the contrast between Central and Eastern Europe couldn't be any more dramatic.  More on that in the next post!

I'm Back!

Rewinding the clock back a couple of weeks to talk Paris.  Where to begin...

My 10 days in Paris began with a high-octane tourism blitz co-piloted by none other than Yuko Furugori.  Yuko and I went to University of the Pacific together back in the 90's and our friendship is one of the few from that period that has stood the test of time.  Although I have yet to make it to Japan to visit her, our paths have crossed in Long Beach, Amsterdam, and now Paris over the course of the last 15 years.  Yuko loves Paris as much as I do, which is why she invited me to hang out with her during her vacation.   

The Clock at the Musee D'Orsay

Although I've spent a lot of time in Paris over the years, I've never given in to the popular attractions to the extent I did during my first four days with Yuko.  Bottom line is I'm cheap and Paris is not, so I am typically reluctant to hand over my hard-earned dollars for the exorbitant entry fees to museums, churches, palaces, etc.  Our apartment was beautiful (and free for me!), in the 7th arrondissement a couple blocks away from the Eiffel Tower and the American University of Paris.  We visited Versailles, the Orangerie, St Denis Chapel, the Musee D'Orsay, the food hall at the Bon Marche, and Sex and the City filming locations.  We dined on steak frites, Basque cuisine, and the famous and pricey macarons of Laduree.  We packed in so much in such a short period of time; not an easy transition for me considering the relaxed pace I treated myself to in Poland.  At the end of our time together, I probably blew more cash than I spent in Krakow in a month.

The Grand Trianon at Versailles

After Yuko left, I went to stay with my friend Celine Battestini and her husband Olivier.  Celine is the sister of Frederique, who was a childhood friend that I met during my first ever overseas trip to Corsica when I was 14.  Celine lives in a suburb of Paris called Chatillon, a very quiet and restful place that was the perfect balance after being run ragged by Yuko.  Unfortunately, my first night in Chatillon I came down with a gastro-intestinal virus...aka the stomach flu.  The doctor said that there is an epidemic in Paris at the moment, and the subway is one of the primary breeding grounds.  By day 3 I had lost about 7 pounds and was considering upgrading the title of my malady to the Bubonic Plague.  Luckily, the involuntary discharge tapered off and I began to regain my humanity.

As soon as I was up to it, we went to see Skyfall at Bercy, weeks before it had been released in the US.  What's up with that?  We then went hunting for a new iPhone for Celine; I have never been in a household with so many Apple gadgets before.  Without the support of Celine and her husband, Apple would likely be bankrupt.  I spent my final days in Paris visiting some of my old stomping grounds:  the Marais, Montmartre, and the Ile St Louis.

Rainy Day at Montmartre

Due to my current interest in and focus on Jewish sites of interest, I also made my way to the Shoah (Holocaust) memorial and the Great Synagogue.  I also noticed for the first time a number of memorial plaques at the entry to Parisian elementary schools, in remembrance of the thousands of Jewish school children who were deported to labor and death camps during Nazi occupation.  In almost every instance, the memorials to the Jews of Paris who suffered during this period included verbiage assigning equal blame to the French government's for their complicity.

Overall, Paris was a welcome break from the challenges of being alone in foreign lands.  Spending time with friends in a familiar place, speaking a familiar language helped me to recharge my adventure batteries.  Hungary and Ukraine, here I come.

Heathenism

As the fall weather continues to astound locals and visitors alike in Krakow, I have taken the opportunity to take a closer look at some of the sites that I initially overlooked, namely those of an ecclesiastic nature.  I have been utterly astounded by the beauty contained within a number of these centuries-old palaces of monotheistic worship.  Because photography is either forbidden or requires an additional payment (hey, I'm on a budget!), I have only a few interior photos to share with you that I was able to sneak in before being reprimanded.


Famous Triptych (Closed) in St Mary's Basilica

Starry Blue Ceiling in St Mary's Basilica 



These photos are of St Mary's Basilica (Mariacki), which is the largest and most well-known of Krakow's churches.  One would never know from the massive and simple red-brick exterior that such delicate and intricate beauty resides within.  The triptych is something of a tourist attraction - it is opened every day at 11:50 by a nun in front of an audience of hundreds.  This altarpiece was created in the late 15th century by Veit Stoss and, when open, depicts 12 scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary.  It was disassembled and hidden away during WWII, but the Nazis found it and took it Nuremburg where it barely survived Allied bombing.  It was recovered, restored, and reinstalled in its proper home about 50 year ago.

 

The ceiling blew my mind.  The combination of the height, the richness of the royal blue color, the architectural/structural elements of the gothic ceiling, and the gleaming gold stars were awe-inspiring.  There was also at least one wall of stained glass in the church that had survived since the 14th century!  How is that possible?  Divine intervention, I'm sure.

Royal Cathedral at Wawel Castle

I stepped into at least a half-dozen other churches over the course of the last two weeks.  Besides St Mary's, the other one that really stood out was Wawel Cathedral.  It is here that monarchs of the days of yore were coronated and interred.  Many other prominent Polish visionaries and revolutionaries are buried here as well, including Tadeusz Kościuszko, Adam Mickiewicz, and two Polish Saints.  Wawel Cathedral was built in the 14th century, with many alterations occuring over the years that made the cathedral what it is today - a hodgepodge of towers and domes from different architectural periods.

 

I am leaving Poland in a few days, satisfied with the luxury of time that I granted myself here and the opportunity to truly absorb and reflect upon my surroundings.  I am ready to move on to my next destinations, where I can only hope to be as nourished as I've been here in my great great grandfather's homeland.  The itinerary of these future destinations is coming together in expected and unexpected ways.  Next stop, Paris.  It has been 9 years since I was there last.  Where have the years gone?  

Daytrippin'

Tarnow Train Station

Tarnów – This small town is located about 50 miles east of Kraków, making it a prime candidate for a daytrip via train. Almost as exciting as the destination was the voyage via a decrepit 1935, Poland-built train running on decrepit tracks. Chugging along at a snail’s pace, it took a whopping 90 minutes to cover such a short distance, making the Amtrak trip between LA and San Diego that I’ve used on occasion to visit my folks feel like the TGV. The town was very interesting because, similar to Krakow, much of its medieval center was spared the bombing and razing that have occurred in this part of the world over the centuries by the Swedes, the Tatars, the Germans, and others.

It was practically a ghost town - I was definitely the only American tourist there. The striking thing about Tarnów was that, due to its small size, the Jewish history of the town was much more in-your-face. There were memorial plaques, monuments, and evidence around every corner of how integral Jews were to the Tarnów community. Before the war, they numbered close to 40,000 and made up half the population. An interesting fact about the town is that it was the origin of the first transport of prisoners to Auschwitz.

Ruins of 17th-Century Synagogue

Zakopane – Most Poles rave about the beauty of the Tatra Mountains, which are located along the Polish-Slovakian border to the south of Kraków. This is a sub-range of the Carpathian Mountains. After spending a month in the urban flatlands, I decided it would do me some good to see snow-capped peaks and breathe the fresh mountain air. The bus ride to Zakopane, the main alpine village/jumping off point for outdoor adventures was filled with spectacular vistas as the bus ambled up and across the foothills to reach an elevation of about 2,500 feet. In the wintertime, people come here to ski; during the off-season there is hiking and trekking. All year around, people come here to drink the śliwowica (plum brandy/moonshine), which is more or less lethal with an alcohol content of between 70 and 80 percent.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to secure accommodation. After my unpleasant hostel experience in Amsterdam, I was trying to avoid another hostel so I roamed all over town knocking on doors asking for single rooms. None to be had. One of the pitfalls of traveling solo is that most lodging options are geared towards double-occupancy. So I ended up at the local hostel and it was WORSE than my previous experience. My 6-bed dorm was really an 11-bed dorm, as it was two interconnected rooms sharing the same door and the same bathroom. I just can’t catch a break with these dumps. Oh yeah, and the hostel was at-capacity because it is off-season and the other two Zakopane hostels are shut down until winter.

The Only Photo Evidence of My Presence in Zakopane

I hated all the snoring, stinky, know-it-all, in-your-business foreigners in residence with one exception. I met a really nice kid from Warsaw named Tomasz who was there killing time before starting his new job in November. He knows the town very well because he is there about a dozen times a year. Apparently there is a bus from Warsaw that, if booked far enough in advance, costs only 2 zloty, which is less than $1. And it's an 8-hour trip! You couldn't pay me to sit on a bus for 8 hours. Anyow, we hit it off and afound all kinds of trouble to get into surfing the local bars and sampling all the beers/vodkas/etc. that Poland has to offer. My plan to go for a hike and take photos of the refreshing mountain scenery the next day was shot to hell when I woke up with a sore throat and a hangover. I high-tailed it out of there on the first bus so that I could get back to the comfort of my own bed in Kraków and the cold meds/vitamins that I imported from home!

Deflated in Southern Poland

A few days ago I went to Auschwitz, or as it's known here in Poland, Ocweicim. It took me a day to recover from the experience and now I'm ready to write about it. To add to the mood, please listen to the haunting music of Lana del Rey as you read this...

I have no photos to share, as I purposely did not take any and I was sickened watching other visitors to the camp take videos and snap photos of barbed wire, camp signage, ovens, and human ash pits. It is wrong to do this on so many levels. What are you going to do, go home to Korea/Norway/Germany and assemble all your favorite Auschwitz photos into an album so that you can cherish it forever and show your grandkids photos of your visit to one of the most heart-breaking places on the planet?

Well, that was my reaction on Monday, but today I've calmed down a little bit and am feeling less judgey. This is just what we've been trained to do - when we see something interesting, take a picture. I didn't want any pictorial evidence of my experience. It was more than enough for me to be there and to feel what I needed to feel and then leave.

Yes, I was moved.  Yes, I was disgusted.  Yes, I was devastated.  All of these sentiments are typical and to be expected when putting one foot in front of the other in the footsteps of tragedy, especially one of such abhorrent and calculated inhumanity.  Perhaps it is more meaningful for someone, like myself, who has a personal connection to the events that culminated with the near complete extermination of generations of European Jewry.

However, I did not feel the pain as deeply as I wanted to, as strange as that my sound.  You can't imagine how many people get shuttled through Auschwitz on any given day...and those crowds detract for sure. Especially when the guides seem to be wholly concerned with butting up against the tour group ahead or being rammed by the one behind. It turns the experience into more of an exercise of timing and crowd control than an opportunity to contemplate what is there.

The constant encounters with other tour groups were troubling for another reason. You see, it is compulsory for grade-schoolers from many European countries to take the tour of Auschwitz. While it makes sense in theory, I got the impression that these kids were not mature enough to contextualize what they saw. Many were simply there because they had to be there, and they were more focused on being kids and being on a school trip with their classmates than they were on the subject matter. For someone like me, who was there because I wanted and needed to be there, it was difficult to coexist in this social environment. I found it to be disrespectful to the memory of those who had such a heinous "existence" here and were ultimately murdered. God damnit, there were still bone fragments in the soil from the incinerators!

Wow, I guess I am still trying to make sense of what I saw two days ago. I still feel raw - it's so draining to be pounded for four hours nonstop by shattering and devastating revelation after revelation. It is not digestable like the bit-by-bit history we learn about in school or in documentaries/Hollywood dramas. I feel sorry for the Poles who have to live with this on their soil; their country will always be known by many first and foremost for this hideous three or four years of history.

Krakow, Galicia

Autumn Sun

Krakow has been many things to me in the two weeks that I've been embraced by its midieval charms.  It has been a place of rest - sleeping in until 9am or later is a luxury that had evaded me for at least a decade.  It has been a place of new understandings - life 20 years after the fall of Communism is something that you can read about in a book, but cannot comprehend until you witness it firsthand.  And finally, it has been a place of self-awareness - with each passing day I get closer to the truth of what brought me here and what I need to accomplish during these precious months that I have away from home.

Tomorrow I move into an apartment in the center of Krakow for one month.  Finally, I can ditch the perpetual state of transience, unpack my suitcase, and pretend that I actually live somewhere.  I spent my first week here at an Airbnb listing in the center of town with a hostess who goes by the name Goga.  Her place was more like a hostel in that there were several rooms occupied by short-term visitors from all over the world all sharing one toilet and shower.  Week 2 I moved to another Airbnb property a bit outside the center in a neighborhood caled Podgorze.  That's where I am now.  I'm in the bedroom of a one-bedroom apartment; the host is sleeping in the living room on the sofa.  In both cases, the hosts have been great about giving me tips for visiting and local insights into Krakow life.

The Old Cemetery @ Remuh Synagoge

The main focus of my explorations so far has been Jewish history, and there is no lack of it here in the heart of Southern Poland, which was once known as Galicia.  Apart from the obvious emotions one would expect from seeing centeries-old synagogues and cemeteries, and more contemporary WWII relics, I cannot help but feel a hollowness among these sites.  I know that they were at one time functional and full of life/death, but today they are only museums and memorials.  With little to no modern day community here, these places feel almost like a movie set.  It is an overwhelming disappointment to feel this way, as I do yearn to feel a stronger emotional connection with these places, names, graves, memorial plaques, etc.  After all, this is the general area where my 2x great grandfather Rosenblum came from, so I imagine that some of my distant relatives experienced a Jewish existence here.

Last Surviving Segment of Ghetto Wall

Since I've bought myself another month here, I haven't hit all the major tourist sites yet.  I'm saving Auschwitz for a cold, damp, grey day more befitting of the place.  I can't say that I'm in a hurry to get there.  I went to the Wielizcka Salt Mine a couple days back, which is about 40 minutes SE of Krakow and is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It has been in operation for 700+ years and its vast labyrinth of tunnels and chambers hundreds of feet below the ground were impressive.  The highlight was the salt cathedral, where even the chandeliers were made of rock salt.  Unfortunately, I didn't snap any photos because I spent so much on the entrance ticket that I couldn't afford to pay an extra $3 for the privelege of operating a camera.  Now THAT'S Jewish heritage for you!

So now it's time to settle in and get a daily routine established.  I can go grocery shopping, entertain guests, hole-up on a dreary day with a good book and a cup of tea, and go to a gym.  I'll also be planning my trip to the Ukraine, which I expect will happen at the end of October, and trying to figure out how the other places (Budapest, Israel, ?) fit into the grand scheme of my travels.  One thing is set in stone already - Istanbul for Christmas, can't wait!

Thanks to those of you who have been prodding me to update the blog.  With Facebook, email, and Skype, I've got a lot of communications going on so it's harder to juggle than I had imagined.  BTW, I have so many photos and cannot share them all here...so they're on Facebook.