Days 56-58, August 7-8, 2014 Opole, Poland

Day 56, August 7 

For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE

While we were viising Auschwitz, we stayed in an AirBnb outside of Katowice.  Our host was an lovely young woman who lived in an flat above her grandparents home.  Magda has recently returned from studies and work abroad (England and South America) in theater and making movies for the last ten years, to her native Poland where she is now involved in some projects that she hopes will create a livelyjood closer to home.

We had a wonderful relaxing evening and breakfast with Magda and her family before leaving for a SERVAS home visit just outside of Opole.  Unlike most of our destinations, we had no sightseeing agenda.  Our agenda was simply to stay and meet a family.  Our SERVAS family included a mom, dad, and two sons ages 11 and 13.  Lucilla is an accomplished artist and teaches English through art, Pawel is a sales representative for road-line making equipment.  Because both of our hosts work during the week, their children served as our guides an daytime hosts.  They did a great job.  

Russ and I introduced the boys to geocaching as a way to see the area.  We started our tour of the area late morning, and made one short stop to visit Lucilla in her art workshop in Opole.  Our geo map indicated 80 caches in the immediate and surrounding area of Opole.  The boys were so excited about geocaching that after the first one was discovered, they were eager to find more.  So our entire day became a geocaching marathon... 10 in all and we hiked several miles throughout the city to find them.  What fun we all had!  It is certainly the most geocaches we have found in one day.  We also ate Polish pancakes for lunch, ate cookies, and ice cream.

In the early evening, Lucilla joined us at the Philharmonic Music School for a chamber piano concert by graduate students.  It was a short 1 hour program filled with gifted young people perforrming Bach, Berkowitz, and Chopin.  Afterwards we took a night walk through Opole, "Eastern European Venice", and the park and an outdoor cafe which the boys and we had visited earlier in the day for some refreshments.  Lucilla had contacted another SERVAS host to join us.  Anna had invited us to stay with here after we already had our arrangements made with Lucilla and her family, but we wanted to the opportunity to say hello and Lucilla made the arrangements to meet her and nine month old baby Mija.  

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted, but still had some quiet time with Lucilla and Pawel for a glass of wine and music, while the boys practically crawled up the stairs to go to bed.  I think we wore them out.

Day 57. August 8, 2014

We enjoyed a liesurely morning with garden breakfast with the whole family.  This visit was much too short, and we hated to leave, but now have some scheduled commitments for the next week, so we needed to be on our way.  With fond memories and promises to keep in touch, we are now on the road to Wroclaw, where we will spend three more nights with 2 more SERVAS families before leaving for Czech Republic by bus on Monday.

All is Well With the Worrall Travel R's in Poland

Day 55 - Auschwitz Evil

Gas chamber
For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE

Auschwitz is not something one really wants to see, but it something one needs to see in order to remind ourselves of how we must work to educate and cultivate the best characteristics of human kind (empathy, understanding, generosity, tolerance, respect, dignity...) and suppress those negative characteritics we possess (fanaticism, violence, hate, greed, prejudice, revenge, deceit...), so that evil of this magnitude can be prevented or deterred from happening again.

Five thousand people a day were being murdered in Auschwitz in the gas chambers and then incinerated. Heinous and sickening.

It is beyond our comprehension how Hitler could infect his sociopathy on a nation and create the evil empire of hate and murder that he did.

Worrall Travel R's are saddened today in Poland

Day 54, August 4, 2014 - Wieliczka Salt Mine

First a correction to Day 52 - Left out and important zero.  There were approximately 300,000-400,000 densly packed Jews in 3.3 square kilometers.  Not 30,000.  250-300,000 were killed.  

For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE

It is late in the afternoon on August 4.  Russ and I are sitting in a little bar/cafe in the old Jewish sector of Krakow.  The afternoon storm is right overhead, so we are taking a time out for some coffee and apple pie with ice cream as we catch up on email, trip planning, and blogging.

We took a tour of the salt mine this morning.  The tour was wonderful and the mine caverns with history, sculptures, cathedral, chapels, lakes, cinema, multi media, and underground markets are amazingly big and beautiful.  No longer an operating mine, the mine still employs three hundred miners to convert sections into tourist attractions.  Sorry, since I can only post one photo when I email in my blogs, I will post some photos of the mine and old town Krakow at a later date.  Check the actual blog for the photos.

Tomorrow is another sober day, as we will be going to Auschwitz, and Katowice, Poland.

All is well with the Worrall Travel R's still waiting for the rain to subside in Krakow

Day 53, Travel to Krakow, August 3, 2014

  

For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE

We awoke on Sunday morning, August 3, to a beautiful day.  After packing, and sharing breakfast with Hanna and Jacek, we bid them a heartfelt farewell and thank you for their hospitality.  We enjoyed our stay with them in the rural suburbs and the rebuilt old town of Warsaw.  In the photo above, all the buildings in the town square have been painstakingly rebuilt after the War to resemble that which one stood.

The ride through the countryside was filled with rolling hills, forests, and harvesting of grasses and grains. By the time we reached Krakow late in the afternoon, the sky darkened with heavy rain clouds.  We stopped at a grocery and made it to our AirBnB before the thunder, lightning, and rain became a torrent.  In a few hours the afternoon storm had passed.  

We went down to the kitchen and fixed ourselves some ham and cheese sandwiches with fresh tomatoes for dinner.  Tomorrow we are off to the World Heritage designated salt mines just out of Krakow in Wiekiczyka.

All is Well with the Worrall Travel R's

Day 52, August 2, 2014 - Jewish Ghettos of Warsaw

It has been a couple of sobering days here in Warsaw.

For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE

In 1943, the Jewish Resistance rose up against the German occupation of Poland. The Germans required the Polish Jews to wall themselves off with a two meter high brick wall In 1940. Jews from other parts were brought into the walled ghetto which served as a concentration camp until the Jews were shipped off to gas chambers, There were approximately 300,000-400,000 densly packed Jews in 3.3 square kilometers.   Food was scarce and the people were hungry and dying from typhoid.

It is my understanding, that the uprising resulted in a self-induced suicide as the resistance had little to fight with but figured they had nothing to lose and they could at least die with dignity (250-300,000) met their deaths, here. Today in Warsaw, there are few remnants and artifacts of the Jewish ghettoes. We could hve wondered through the streets not even knowing that we were once in the walled off sector.

Fortunately, we had made contact with a SERVAS day host, Ewa, retired economist and public servant. She guided us through the ghettos, showing us places where monuments, markers, and new buildings now stood where the ghettos used to exist. Ewa, is not Jewish, but had considerable historical knowledge. She also shared her own family's personal Polish tragedy during the German Nazi regime, where her father was a POW at the end of the war and escaped to ultimately be reunited with his wife, His wife Ewa's mother as a young wife was basically thrown by the Nazis into the streets with a three month old baby when here husband was taken as a POW.

She wandered looking for food and shelter to no avail. The baby, died. Eva's mother relates stories of how the civilian Poles were massacred and buildings set on fire by the Nazis. Women and children jumped from the burning buildings to their deaths. Apartment buildings on contoured hills in the old ghetto area have been built on the ashes 0f the original buildings. It is too poignant reminder of the death and destruction that war brings. All very tragic.

After our walking tour of Warsaw, we took the metro back to our home stay SERVAS hostsHanna and Jacek. We stopped at a nearby store and picked up enough ice cream to share with them and their extended family. We sat in the backyard on a warm summer evening enjoying our last evening together. Tomorrow we leave for Krakow.

All is well with the Worrall Travel R's

Day 51 -August 1, 2014, Remembrance Day 1944, Warsaw

For photo album of 2014 Poland, Click HERE

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 when the Polish Resistance Home Army of Warsaw tried to rise up against the German occupation and were brutally cut down. Timed to coincide with and urged on by the advancing Russians on the opposite side of the river, the Poles were led to believe that the Russians would assist them with the battle. Stalin however decided to hold off and let the Germans do the dirty work by not giving any assistance. The battle raged for 61 days and 150-200,000 Poles, mostly unarmed citizens were torn from their homes, executed in mass, and buildings burned. By January 1945, 85% of the city had been destroyed. '

This 1944 uprising came a year after the Jewish resistance of 1943 against the Germans. Since 1940, the Jewish Sector of the city known as the Ghetto had been walled off to contain and control the Jews. Eventually over 30,000 Warsaw Jews were loaded into cattle cars to die in extermination camps.

Early in the day we visited the Chopin Museum, then later strolled through the old city of
Warsaw. Girl and Boy Scouts were uniformed from all over Poland handing out information about the 5:00 pm commemoration. We made our way to the central square. Church bells began to chime along with loud sirens. Flares were burned and smoke hovered over the silent citizens who had come to remember this horrible day and for the people who had lost their lives.
It was quite moving and absolutely unfathomable how we as humans treat one another. Unfortunately, we seemed destined to keep hating and destroying those who are different from the "in" group.

All is well with the Worrall Travel R's, happy to be here today and empathizing with Poles for their tragic losses