LLWorldTour

Okay, remember what I’ve said before about it ‘being all about the journey?’ Well, forget it. I just took a 25 hour train ride from hell. Well, actually it was from Krakow, Poland to a small, practically unreachable town (maybe horse and buggy would have gotten me there faster?) in Romania. Like on a few other occasions during my trip I’ve decided to return to a place where I really met some wonderful people to just enjoy their company and hospitality and get to know them better…because I’ve learned that’s really what the trip is all about.

When I bought my ticket at the train station in Krakow, I inquired about getting a couchette (compartments on the train in which the seats fold down to form narrow beds). But, I was told there were none. None? I couldn’t believe on such a long journey including an overnight stretch there were no sleeping cars. I never heard of this. I asked again. She shook her head again. No, none–only compartments with eight seats—four on each side facing each other. This can get pretty tight and in turn pretty smelly for twenty-five hours. Ugh.

The night before my dreaded day of departure, I slept restlessly worked myself into a frenzy recalling possible truths or myths I’d heard from other travelers and on the internet regarding various thefts on overnight trains—unlucky for me the most popular routes with problems were those to and from Poland. Supposedly, unsavory characters spray some kind of gas or chloroform into your compartment knocking you out while they make off with your valuables. Of course if you could get a couchette with bunks this was much safer because you could lock the door. And even though this would be my third overnight trip in the past few weeks (none of which I had any problems—well, not unless you count sharing a car with a David-Duke-loving and Iranian-president-supporting Croatian who shared with me his beliefs that Jews were plotting to take over the world—eek), I dreamt up all kinds of things that were going to happen to me and felt like this was the one time in my trip that maybe I would not be safe…and I kind of had no choice.

The next day, I made one more attempt to make sure that there were no couchettes available and went to the travel office in town. The lady behind the glass also shook her head. No.

“Really? How can this be?” I inquired. After a couple more ‘nos.’ She actually started clacking away at her keyboard and said, ‘Oh yes, there are some’ but you’ll have to change cars in the morning at 8am as the train splits—one half heading towards Budapest and the other into Romania.’ Why hadn’t someone explained this to me before??? Of course I could do this! So during the whole night I could sleep in an actual horizontal position and in the morning I have to move to a seat?? Big deal. What could be more normal! I was annoyed at how much I had to ask people the same question until I miraculously got the answer which I thought was right. I was excited—at least I could lie down and lock the door.

And then she said, “Sorry, no sleepers or couchettes are left. All full.” Bastards!

At 10:30pm the train pulled into Krakow’s busy main station and I headed to the last car which was labeled Bucharest so I would be sure not to be on the half of the train that split of for Budapest. Well, the good news was it was way less crowded than I imagined and a young Polish guy ducked into my reserved car as I came up behind him. I thought at first maybe I would just go take an empty compartment of my own, but after chatting with him for a few minutes I surmised he wasn’t a crazed lunatic about to embark on a murderous rampage. Actually, he was getting his masters in Finance and was heading to a conference in Romania and was even wearing a fleece with the financial groups name printed on it. This was a good sign. I doubted he was in disguise as a finance geek and was really a train bandit. So I thought I’d be better off sharing the car with him as my own protection in case some undesirables came knocking in the wee hours of the night. Things were looking up. Except for the fact that it had become one of the coldest days in Krakow’s summer history and the heat was not turned on at all. We froze trying to sleep across the velvety seats that faced each other in our cold compartment and my toes turned a nice shade of purple. Since I felt safe, I actually had popped a couple sleeping pills I’d gotten from an Australian friend I’d made in Krakow. And they worked like a charm—except for the fact that during the night we were awakened several times by guards as we crossed the borders into Slovakia and Hungary. When our slow-going former Soviet train finally reached the Romanian border at some ungodly hour, we stopped in a train yard for a bit to add a string of cars to our lonely and tiny 3-car train. These included some sleeper cars (like I wanted in the first place!) with fold down beds and a sink in your own compartment, plus some more regular compartments, which now made each car have its own unique style—some seats were like pleather (that lovely fake plasticy leather), some velvety, and some old school bus green– and a pretty swanky looking dining car. Well, I guess I am using the word ‘swanky’ lightly, but in comparison to the rest of the Russian-looking, ‘stylish-less train’, it was like the Rainbow Room in New York City.

I wasn’t hungry, but sat down in the dining car’s bar area just for a change of scenery and change of butt cushion (this makes a big difference after twenty hours). The windows were large and the flat golden plains of Western Romanian gave way to misty mountains way in the distance. The tall, skinny leathery-faced (or perhaps ‘pleathery-faced’) man with a mustache and friendly smile that worked behind the counter came and sat down next to me. He spoke a smattering of English with a healthy dollop of Romanian and of course, his native tongue, Hungarian. When I told him I was from Chicago he beamed at me, jumped up and grabbed his address book. He paged through the scribbled contacts and pointed to someone that lived in Chicago—actually probably five minutes from where I lived right near Wrigley Field. It was a Hungarian friend of his who’d moved there some time ago. He then said, ‘Baptist.’ I thought maybe I misunderstood him and cupped my ear making the ‘I didn’t quite hear you’ gesture. He repeated ‘Baptist.’

“She’s Baptist?” I repeated wondering why this was an interesting thing to share with me.

He nodded and pointed to me as if to ask what my religious background was. This was an odd line of questioning to just start getting to know each other but I answered ‘Jewish’ never knowing what reactions might await me—especially in Eastern Europe where it is no secret that there is still some strong Anti-Semitic sentiment floating around. He then stroked my hair, and said ‘ah, beautiful.’ Ooooookay….

I sat back down at a table and he offered me some coffee, but I explained I had brought no money with me (which was true–even so true as that I had no money really until I got off the train and to an ATM). My remaining three Polish Zloty ($1) would do me no good now anyway. I’ve gotten quite adept at spending just the right amount of cash my last few days in a country and using my credit card to even out the rest. Of course, after traveling this long, it has become a kind of game that I enjoy playing with myself. ‘Dining-car man’ had become persistent in giving me a complimentary cappuccino which I finally accepted with a smile. Perhaps this was a mistake. I thanked him and to be gracious, introduced myself and shook his hand. He shook mine and then, as you guessed, held onto it for an uncomfortably long amount of time before he reached his thin slimy lips down and kissed it and repeated to tell me I was beautiful. Ok…check please! Time for me to make my escape back to the second class carriages. Now, he wanted to know if I could visit him in Budapest. Aw, too bad for me (and him), I’d already been there. I explained that I had to go watch my bags, shook his hand again and got away back to my chilly cabin and good looking, but much less flirtations compartment partner.

To continue my amazing lucky streak of meeting helpful and friendly people, as soon as cute yet boring finance guy left—and even though the train was still quite empty–a sweet Romanian girl joined me in my compartment. We chatted a bit and then it was finally time for me to get off and change trains. Hallelujah! I was in the homestretch.

Well, I thought I was. After about 18 hours on the first train, little did I know the shorter ride in the second train would be more hellacious than the first. After waiting about two hours in the tiny station in the middle of ‘nowhereville’ Romania, I boarded the train to my final destination. It appeared to be an even clunkier vessel from Communist times and was old and creaky and reeked of urine. Mmmm. It was bursting at the seams with country folk who were smoking and chattering. This four hour journey seemed nearly as long or longer than the first ride. There was really no where to walk around so I was glued to my grotty plastic seat in an uncomfortably full compartment of friendly, non-English speaking Gypsies. But, once again, they were sweet to me and when at last I reached my stop, they helped me off the train with my suitcase and bid me a fond farewell.

Twenty-five hours after I’d left Krakow, my dreaded longest travel day was over and besides needing a good ass massage, it actually wasn’t so bad after all. And instead of being robbed or beaten by lunatics, I encountered only friendly, albeit a bit smelly, people every step of the way. And as I stepped off the train waving goodbye to my new friends, thankfully there was Mihai, Mona’s brother, standing on the other side of the tracks with a big smile on his face. I was home.

On average 5000 people, mostly Jews, were gassed and killed at Auschwitz every single day. Five thousand each day.

In the second half of 1941, the Nazis cemented their “Final Solution” and decided to literally destroy the entire Jewish race one by one. Unfortunately, the Nazis plan was absolutely working. Beginning in 1942, Auschwitz operated as a death factory. Auschwitz was the biggest, most notorious concentration camp in the Nazi system and the center for the mass extermination of the Jewish population of Europe.

Located in southern Poland, it took its name from the nearby town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German), situated about 50 kilometers west of Krakow. Ironically, the bus ride to Oswiecim was quite beautiful. Lush green hills and valleys, cute homes…I can only imagine how this was for those being carted off like cattle to the hell that awaited them.

This was the site of the systematic murder of over a million innocent people—90% of them Jews from every corner of Europe. Apart from the majority who were killed upon arrival to the camp, the harsh work requirements, combined with poor nutrition and hygiene, led to high death rates among the rest of the prisoners. Painful, debilitating medical experiments were also conducted on prisoners including women and children by Josef Mengele. Walking around the brick former Polish army barracks was quite surreal. We’ve seen so many images of Auschwitz on film and in photographs that it really felt like I was on a Hollywood movie set. It was so hard for my brain to accept that this was real life for all those innocent people just 50 years ago.

But, what was the most shocking to me was Auschwitz II, commonly known as Birkenau, just three kilometers down the road. It was huge and largely untouched, unlike the main Auschwitz camp which had recreated barracks, and exhibits. Birkenau was just row after row of the foundations of the former cell blocks plus the bombed out crematoriums that the Nazis tried to destroy as they fled the camp at the end of the war.

Prisoners were transported from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in daily convoys. Arrivals at the complex were separated into four groups:

• One group, about three-quarters of the total, went to the gas chambers within a few hours; this included all children, all women with children, all the elderly, and all those who appeared, on brief and superficial inspection, not to be fully fit. In the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day.
• A second group of prisoners were used as slave labor at industrial factories. At the Auschwitz complex several hundred thousand prisoners were recorded as slaves between 1940 and 1945. And a majority of them perished through executions, beatings, starvation, and sickness. Some prisoners survived through the help of Oskar Schindler, who saved about 1,100 Polish Jews by diverting them from Auschwitz to work for him, first in his factory near Kraków and later at a factory in what is now the Czech Republic.
• A third group, mostly twins and dwarfs, underwent medical experiments at the hands of doctors such as Josef Mengele, who was also known as the “Angel of Death.”
• The fourth group was composed of women who were selected to work in “Canada”, the part of Birkenau where prisoners’ belongings were sorted for use by Germans. The name “Canada” was very cynically chosen as a place of wealth.

The Nazi plan displaced millions of families from all over Europe. Their massive concentration camp system, with well over one thousand camps of various sizes, was all designed to imprison innocent humans considered sub-human by Nazi standards. Every human right was replaced by Nazi laws, rules and arbitrary decisions. Death camps, like Auschwitz, constructed for the sole purpose of mass executions by means of poison gas, shootings, starvation, disease, and torture were used by the Nazis to exterminate those fellow humans–men, women, children and infants, by design.

There are those among us, who say the Holocaust didn’t happen at all. Or maybe a few people were killed, but not millions. Historical facts have proven time and time again, that the Nazis planned and implemented their plan to rid Europe of all its Jews and others whom they considered sub-human. Accurate numbers for exactly how many humans died as a result of the Nazi plans are simply not available and never will be. Research by some of the worlds most able historians place the number of Holocaust victims to be not less than twelve million and probably more.

The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; most of the prisoners were forced on a death march west. Those too weak or sick to walk were left behind; about 7,500 prisoners were liberated by the Red Army ten days later.

A touching and ironic end to the day–as I left, groups of Israeli students were sitting on the grass for a snack break. And just under a stand of trees was a whole group of traveling Christian Monks. The Israeli kids decided to go over and join them and they all began to sing and dance and clap—a pretty uplifting moment for a place that’s unfortunately tainted with probably some of the most negative energy on the planet.

Supposedly, my hometown of Chicago has the largest ethnically Polish population outside of Poland. So for me, coming to Poland was not a great culture shock as I’d already had my fill of Pierogies and Golabki back in Chi-town. Krakow is one of the country’s oldest, best-preserved cities. It miraculously survived WWII, leaving behind beautiful medieval churches, baroque architecture, and eerily quiet synagogues.

To get a nice overview of the city, I took what was my sixth bike tour on my trip—the others being in Buenos Aires, Sydney, Melbourne, Vietnam, and Budapest. We rode around the city for a few hours exploring the famous landmark’s and some more unknown spots to tourists—which is what I love about these cycle tours. One of the prettiest spots in Krakow is what’s known as the Planty—a green park that basically forms a ring around the old town like a modern day nature wall where the former stone city fortifications used to be. Because of its location you are never too far from this great place to stroll with towering shady trees, paths lined with benches, and pigeons, lots and lots of pigeons. So many, in fact, that, according to my tour guide, the city has had ongoing debates over the last few years on how to ‘tackle the pigeon problem.’ Because, with so many pigeons, that of course means lots of pigeon… poop. So, what was their best solution? A pigeon canon, of course. No, they don’t shoot the pigeons, some Polish dude drives around the Planty in a small truck with a sort of canon that he shoots off every now and again. The loud BOOM is meant to scare the pigeons and perhaps retrain them that this is not a place they want to hang out. Instead they scatter…and shit on even more people’s heads in their fear frenzy…and then swoop back down to where they were right before the canon guy came around in the first place. Insert your Polish joke here.

Dodging children, tourists, and more pigeons, we pedaled our way into Rynek Glowny, what is said to be the biggest square in medieval Europe. It’s ringed with dozens of cafes frequented mostly by tourists…and the pigeons of course. The huge St. Mary’s Church overlooks the square and marks the center of Kraków. One of the coolest things I’ve seen (and heard) was its unique hourly tradition. From one of the church’s towers (actually the city’s watchtower), a bugle boy plays half a tune at the top of each hour. As the story goes, during an invasion, a watchman in the tower saw the enemy approaching and played his bugle to sound the alarm. Before he could finish the tune, an arrow pierced his throat — which is why today, the music abruptly stops short partway through the song. Today’s buglers are firemen, serving as fire lookouts first and musicians second. Pretty nifty tradition and even from my hotel room I could make out the faint live sound every hour all through the night.

We biked our way through Kazimierz, the historic center of Jewish Kraków. After King Kazimierz the Great encouraged Jews to come to Poland in the 14th century, a large Jewish community settled in and around Kraków. By the start of World War II, 65,000 Jews lived in Kraków (mostly in Kazimierz), making up more than a quarter of the city’s population. Only 6,000 Kraków Jews survived the war. Today’s Kraków has only about 200 Jewish residents. Kazimierz still has an empty feeling, but the neighborhood has enjoyed a Renaissance of Jewish culture following the popularity of Schindler’s List (which was filmed partly in Kazimierz and is where Oskar Schindler’s factory still stands today). Just across the river from here is what became the ‘new’ Jewish Ghtetto during the war. Nazis forced Jews to leave their homes to move here and live crammed inside the boundaries which increasingly became smaller as time went on. The train tracks conveniently ran right through here making it easy for the Nazis to transport thousands of Jews to Auschwitz just an hour away (Auschwitz blog entry forthcoming).

While in Krakow, I took a day trip to the Wieliczka (vee-ul-leech-ka) Salt Mine and explored the subterranean world of labyrinth passages, giant caverns, underground lakes and chapels complete with sculptures carved right from the salt rock. The Mine has been worked for 900 years. It used to be one of the world’s biggest and most profitable industrial establishments when common salt was commercially a medieval equivalent of today’s oil. We walked underground for about 2,000 meters in the oldest part of the salt mine to see some amazing carvings and chapels made only from salt. Nine centuries of mining in Wieliczka produced a total of some 200 kilometers of passages as well as 2,040 caverns of varied size. The tourist route starts 64 m deep and ends 135 m below the earth surface, where the world’s biggest museum of mining is located with the unique centuries-old equipment among its exhibits. UNESCO has entered the Wieliczka Salt Mine in its World Heritage Register.

Back above ground, one thing I’ve noticed in increasing numbers in Eastern Europe and especially Krakow—Brits, more specifically drunk male Brits here celebrating stag (bachelor) parties. For an American like me beers are as cheap as $2 here…so for folks from the UK, it’s only one pound. No wonder they are coming here to party. There is so much debauchery and overall lack of respect for the local country that the British government has actually begun a “know before you go” campaign promoting responsible tourism. Apparently there are tour packages geared just for these stag and hen parties with everything included. But according to some reports by the British and foreign commonwealth office (FCO) a quarter of the people coming here for these parties have encountered or caused problems like losing their passports. Last year there were a reported 455, 000 British visitors in Poland. Of those, 50 were detained, 8 hospitalized and 97 reported lost of stolen passports. In this ‘partying’ vein, I celebrated my birthday in Krakow with a cool couple from Philadelphia that I’d met on the bicycle tour. We found some cool local bars in Kazimierz, met some partying locals and drank and danced the night away. Luckily I don’t think we wreaked as much havoc as some of the London guys on their stag parties and no one got arrested or even vomited on the fabulous medieval cobblestone lanes.