Eastern Europe
3 adventures documented
PolandOf everything we saw in ten weeks across Europe, one morning stands apart. From Krakow we were driven out to Auschwitz, and what we found there was beyond anything a history book had prepared us for. This is a short, plain account of what we witnessed, and of the guide's parting words, that the world knew, and that we must stay watchful.
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PolandKrakow was the warm stop before the hard one. We talked Soviet times with a forthright Polish woman on the train, ate kielbasa for six dollars in the square, slipped into St. Mary's Church the moment a bomb scare cleared, and toasted the city with freezer vodka poured by a barkeep named Ania. The next day took us deep into the Wieliczka salt mine, hundreds of steps down to chapels, a chandelier and a Last Supper all carved from salt. That same day took us to Auschwitz, which we give a page of its own.
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PolandWe reached Warsaw on an overnight train that turned out to be a private room with bunk beds, rolling worse than any ship. Our Airbnb host Ada met us at the station and led us up five flights to a lovely flat in the Old Town, a quarter the Germans leveled in 1944 and the Poles rebuilt brick by salvaged brick. We met the Warsaw Mermaid and the story of Solidarity, and stood at the edge of the old Jewish Ghetto, a place John had carried in his head since reading John Hersey's The Wall as a young man.
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