Several of my fellow Fulbrighters decided to gather in Krakow for a workshop on "Green English" (or, teaching environmental responsibility in English classes). Obviously, there could not have been a better location. Krakow is a gorgeous city (one of the few cities in Poland to survive the war without major destruction). It is large, expansive, beautiful, and literally spills history with each step you take. I do not exaggerate when I say the past has soaked into the ground like rainwater in dried soil. It felt part fairy-tale and part horror story when you consider the pristine, ancient loveliness of the city combined with its gruesome recent history. Beauty and tragic existing side-by-side is becoming a recurring theme, I'm discovering. More on that later, however.
Let's start with arrival.
Picture it: Poznan train station. Thursday.
Corinne and I walk up to the ticket counter:
Me: 2 billety Krakov?
Woman: Something in Polish. God knows what. *holds up a schedule indicating a train at 14:40 that doesn't arrive until 22:56.*
Corinne and I exchange looks of concern and terror.
Me: 2 billety Warsawa?
Woman: Speaks in Polish. The word problem is recognized. We assume she's saying "No."
Corinne and I end up on an 8 hour train ride from Poznan to Krakow. This fate could have been avoided if we could have been sold the tickets to Warsaw and then taken a train from Warsaw to Krakow. The trip would have been 2.5 hours shorter. However, had that happened, we would not have made a new friend known as "Gas man."
Gas man might call to mind someone with IBS or a kindly gentleman who you call when the gas in your house is off. Or, as I now know, it can mean a sketch-ass mofo who runs into your train carriage and sits in an empty seat. The room immediately smells like gasoline (or maybe paint thinner). The gentleman begins opening and closing the door to the carriage while peaking his head out. He then amuses himself by doing the same thing with the curtains. Meanwhile, the carriage quickly fills with the smell of gasoline (which we suspect he was carrying in a large plastic bottle that he shoved into his dirty hoodie pocket). Eyes immediately begin to water. No one can really breathe and yet here is gas man just doing his thing.
My immediate thoughts were along the "Jesus take the wheel" line. Who IS this person? Who?
Fortunately, after he decided to hop from carriage to carriage and hide in the bathroom, gas man was thrown off the train at the next stop and the world rejoiced.
We arrived in Krakow and discovered that the quiet nighttime streets of Poznan are deceptive. This place was party central. The music and shouting from the streets outside of the hostel continued well past midnight. I'm not entirely sure what they were talking about but I hope they had a good time while some of us were busy not sleeping.
The next couple of days consisted of Fulbright bonding and wandering around Krakow.
Photos follow.
It's 11pm. Do you know what statues your children are taking pictures of?
Turns out I don't really either. I'm not sure who this is a statue of, but the dramatic shadow was too much to ignore.
Statue of a saint outside of St. Peter and Paul Church. It might not be a saint. In my defense, there are lots of statues of old white men here. I can't keep up.
This is from the Dragon's Den under Wawel castle. Apparently legend has it that a dragon lived under the castle.
No. Really. This is an artist's rendering of what the dragon may look like. See the peasant? He's DONE with that dragon and those sheep. He literally can't even.
Whatevs. Enemies of the heir beware.
This is St. Mary's Basilica. I didn't go inside. However, this is the place where the trumpeter of Krakow plays the Hejnał Mariack on a daily basis to commemorate the sentry who signaled a Mongol invasion and allowed the city time to shut the gates and thus prevent an ambush. He was shot in the throat before he could finish and so the song stops abruptly in compliance with this Grimmsian saga.
Wawel Cathedral
Swans. Terrifying, violent swans.
The inside of the beautiful Wawel castle and...
Some Jew holding bags of money and pennies! See how happy they are?
Wait. What?
Yeah. This little tidbit caught my eye while we were visiting a gift shop inside the castle. I'm not totally sure what to make of this. Casual antisemitism is alive and well. Just look at how cuddly these things are. It's like if Wallace and Gromit had a quirky Jewish neighbor who liked to count his money and charge interest on loans.
Honestly, I'm still processing this one. Antisemitism is bad enough. Repackaging antisemitism so that it seems cute is even worse. This image sat on my stomach the entire day. I really, REALLY wish I hadn't seen this.
We ended the evening in the Jewish quarter of Krakow which is now synonymous with nightlife and trendy bars. We encountered one such bar in an alleyway that was featured in Schindler's List.
This is the alley as it looks today.
The alley as seen in the film.
I kept most of my internal conflict internal during this time. However, I found it difficult to concentrate by this point in the evening. The combination of the magnets and the realities of being in the area where Krakow's Jews lived before they were evicted and sent to the ghetto weighed a lot on my mind. When we were standing in the center of the Market Square in Kazimierz, I literally couldn't look at anything without thinking about the catastrophic loss that occurred not only in Krakow, but in Poland in general. I looked at the windows and saw tombstones staring back. I looked around at people walking through the streets and began playing a righteous gentiles game in my mind. I clearly pictured the most disturbing scene in Schindler's List when the German soldier puts down his gun and plays Bach on the piano while the sounds of machine gun fire and the destruction of the Krakow ghetto is heard in the background. The sophistication of European art and music is dropped disturbingly in middle of savage and inhuman destruction. Then I thought back to the magnets in the store and the beehive of thought came to a boil.
Simply put, I placed too much trust in my emotional distance from events that happened 70 years ago. I've studied the Holocaust in books since I was in 4th grade. I did major college research projects on the NS period in Germany and antisemitism in Europe. However, the page failed to transmit the conflict of thought that exists when something is tangible and no longer existing sole in academic terms. I've walked through Yad Vashem. I've seen the pictures and home movies of a culture and people ripped out of the planet by the roots. Yet I could barely walk down a street that I would not have recognized without a few pictures on a wall in an alleyway.
Simply put, I placed too much trust in my emotional distance from events that happened 70 years ago. I've studied the Holocaust in books since I was in 4th grade. I did major college research projects on the NS period in Germany and antisemitism in Europe. However, the page failed to transmit the conflict of thought that exists when something is tangible and no longer existing sole in academic terms. I've walked through Yad Vashem. I've seen the pictures and home movies of a culture and people ripped out of the planet by the roots. Yet I could barely walk down a street that I would not have recognized without a few pictures on a wall in an alleyway.
I'm not quite sure what else I can say on the matter. I'm still working my way through a bit of a shock in terms of confronting the actualities of contemporary history. It is one thing to read about something. It is quite another to stand where it happened. Yet it seemed almost impossible to be solemn. Music blared from colorful bars. People (myself included) spent lovely evenings with friends sipping drinks and having some laughs in this area that seemed almost haunted. This is only the beginning. My research will include visits to concentration camps and visits to countless museums about genocide education. However, these places tend to be frozen in time. There is an intellectual stability that comes with these places. They are designed to inform rather than illicit emotion. They focus exclusively on what once was. There is no accounting for progress and healing. There no accounting for plump little Jewish figurines smiling blankly into the glare of a coin in their hands sold alongside postcards of Krakow, cobalt china, and floral-print aprons. It goes back to the beautiful and the perverse sitting on the same stoop. The inevitable occurs. Life continues but memory and history remain like persistent green plants growing in sidewalk cracks.
I'm working harder to check where I'm walking.
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