CONTENTS
| Poland I | Poland II | Poland III |
27 February 2004 Budapest, Silesia & Death Camps
My holidays have certainly been lived to the full. As planned, Jon and I went to Hungary for three nights. We had a ball. Then, on Monday, I took my Japanese friend, Masaki [see the last photo of my Chinapics], to Gliwice, but we found ourselves snowed into a pub. On Tuesday we went with Waldek and Grzegorz to Krakow. It was my third trip, but I still love the feel of the place. Wednesday saw Masaki and I at the Wisla mountains, where we had quite an interesting discussion about the aftermath of WWII. Yesterday we visited a former Nazi 'resettlement' village named Oswiecim, which is twenty or so Ks from where I live and work. Perhaps this name won't mean much to all my readers, but you will all recognise the Nazi's infamous name for it: Auschwitz.
A QUICK HUNGARIAN HISTORY
Deriving it's name from the Asiatic Huns (the original nomads of Mongolia who forced the Romans out of 'Pannonia' in 451 AD under Attila), Hungary had been occupied at various times by the Celts (from around 300 BC to the Christian era), the Germanic Goths and Longobards, who followed the Huns, and then the Turkic Avars, who were eventually subdued by Charlemagne in the late 700s. A century later, the Magyars, who constitute today's Hungarian population, swept in as a fearsome nomadic horde and terrorised Europe all the way to Spain until they were eventually subdued by the Germans. A non Indo-European group, the Magyars probably originated in Siberia and share linguistic links with the Finns. Following their defeat, they settled down to become a fairly peaceful and Christian people.
In the mid-Twelfth century the Mongols sacked Hungary and killed about a third of the population of two million. Later, and three times the size that it is now [according to my Lonely Planet (5th edition, 2003)], Hungary became a strong European state, possessing Slovakia, Croatia and Transylvania, and for a long while it stood as a buffer against the Ottoman Empire. However, a Hungarian peasant revolt at the same time as the Magyars were attempting to deal with the Turks soon undermined Hungary's standing and gave the Ottoman's the edge. Disaster lead to disaster, and where eventually the Turks were expelled, Hungary soon found itself in the hands of the Austrian Habsburgs. Nevertheless, Hungary's cultural and economical standing improved under the Enlightened Despotism of the day. Sometime around 1865, she was able to reach a compromise with the Habsburgs and establish a Dual Monarchy.
With the First World War and the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Hungary endured many setbacks. World War Two saw her consorting with Germany and eventually exporting its Jewish population off to Auschwitz. She suffered reprisals by Germany in 1944, after she had tried to negotiate a separate peace with the allies, and then she suffered under the Russians when they annexed her to Sovietism. In November 1956, Russian forces left around 25 thousand dead on the streets after the tanks had been called in to subjugate an uprising.
Hungary gained her independence at the start of the 90s, following Poland's lead with the other countries of the former Soviet Block. Since then she has progressed towards having the strongest economy in Central-Eastern Europe. Before my trip, my Polish friends called the Hungarians their 'brothers who have shared the same experiences', and, in Budapest, one Hungarian I met had exactly the same to say about the Poles.
The first thing we did when we arrived in Budapest was sort out our accommodation (10 500 forint, or about $50 US [for US dollars, just take off the last two zeros and then halve]). We then shopped for basic necessities such as water, bread and beer, and we did a bit of walking around to get our bearings. Feeling relatively comfortable with things, we decided that sussing out the nightlife and finding something Hungarian to eat would take top priority. After about fifty minutes' walking, we came across a cheap little restaurant with nice Hungarian girls named something like the 'Blue Rose'. There we scoffed down cheap gulyas [said more-or-less, 'GOO-lash'], which is a rather excellent beef soup, and polished off a few beers (at 500 forint each). So far, so good.
That night Jon and I, and a German guy we'd met named Phillip, got initiated into Budapest's economy and received a rude awakening. First we made the mistake of hunting around for one bar only to be told that it was a 'private party' by gangster-looking bouncers who apparently didn't like the look of us. At another bar, having asked for two shots of vodka and a glass of coke, we were distraught to be charged 1450 ft straight off. Four times what it would cost in Poland, and unfamiliar with the currency, it ate into a large chunk of the night's budget. We had been stung, and the natural reaction was only for us to tighten our spending attitudes. Having lost Phillip, Jon and I then went to a fully decent bar named the 'Irish Cat', where for about 2000 ft each we were catered to for the rest of the night.
Our evenings were equally rewarding, for it was here that we got to experience the people and culture to an even greater degree. To begin each night, Jon would consume a whole 1000 ml bottle of vodka, whilst I mainly stuck to three or four beers, and then we would head down to whatever nightclub. The music was to our liking and each night had us up past 4 or 5AM. We met some good people, Hungarians and travellers alike, and Jon especially seemed to be a hit with the ladies, having a girl all over him on our last night.
On Sunday morning, feeling remarkably well (all things considered), Jon and I had a Burger King breakfast and then made for the train. Again, it was a 7.5 hour journey through the same countryside. I was happy to keep my eyes glued to the window for much of the time. I definitely think that travelling by train is the thing to do in Europe. I even had some Hungarian prostitute try to hit me up for a bit of train-sex on the way. All she could say was 'tits, tits', and 'sex, sex', but I got the message and carried out my escape posthaste.
That night, when I finally got to Mikolow, I met up with Masaki, Kasia, and my friends in Fraktal, and here began another phase of my holiday. It is right that I have seen something else of Europe now, but it is also right that I should explore Poland as well, and I think that this time I found the right balance.
When Masaki and I got there at around 2PM, it was snowing worse than I'd seen, and after a short walk we decided the only thing for it was to head to the pub. My friend Antek, who commutes to this city daily for work, joined us and we shared several beers together. This time, I got to initiate Masaki to the Polish transport system when it came time to catch our bus back. Necessarily a half-hour's drive at most, the bus was 1.5 hours' late, and then we crawled all the way home. The total travel time amounted to three hours. From there, it was straight home for some Japanese susi, care of my guest.
Our day went very well. We ate cheap Polish food at a simple restaurant and we visited the Czartoryski ('char-to-RI-skee') Museum. It was incredible to see an original painting by Leonardo da Vinci and another by Rembrandt.
Being reasonably good friends with Masaki, and with me being a real history buff, we discussed Japanese history somewhat. This of course centred around the war, in view of what we had planned for the following day.
I have read in several history books and biographies that some motivation behind dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was not necessarily out of vengeance and hate, but rather out of desperation to force Japan out of the war. With an attitude towards war that allowed for no prisoners and brought great disgrace on anyone who surrendered, the allied powers were quite rightly worried that Japan would draw the war out until the very last man, and thus destroy Japan as well as cost the Allies dearly in lives also. This will always remain controversial, but I asked Masaki what he thought, and his opinion was the same. I also asked him whether he thought, therefore, that the bombs on Japan were right or wrong, and I was rather surprised to hear him say 'right'. He went on to say that many young Japanese would share this opinion and that he thought Japan was a better place now for having lost the war.
Of course he may have been saying what he thought I wanted to hear, but conscious of this I tried to ask him open-ended questions without absolutely making clear what my opinion was. I'm confident that he understood me, because it's more-or-less my job as an English teacher. I played the Devil's advocate and denounced the Allies to some degree for their nevertheless pointless disregard for human life - people are not aware that during one night perhaps as many people died in a single bombing raid over Hamburg as died in Hiroshima, with the only difference being the quantity of bombs that were released - but Masaki maintained his stance. Personally, I agree with him and the books. The nuclear bombs over Japan were sensational and controversial, but it just might be that many more lives were saved on both sides because of this (with those who did die perhaps condemned to die either way). In either case, it is nice to get some personal perspective on what is otherwise theory and figures, and I found this conversation enlightening.
If by now you're utterly depressed, my aim is not so much to denounce these atrocities as being the heinous crimes that we already know they were, or to give yet another bunch of statistics. For me, it was a chance to get a human perspective on the matter, and it is this, along with various personal insights, that I would like to discuss.
Masaki and I though it would be worth our while to do the full tour. As I said, it's not very far from where I live, but still Poland's wonderful buses took a total of 1.5 hours to deliver us to the town of Oswiecim [said, 'osh-VEAN-cheem'] , from where both camps were about a fifteen minute walk away. Once we arrived in the complex of Auschwitz I, we had a look around for about an hour, then watched a 17 minute movie comprising Russian footage from the day of liberation. We then met up with our guide for a three hour tour of Auschwitz I and II. Our guide was especially worth the 22 zl ($6 US) investment that we each made. We had her all to ourselves and she pointed out certain details which we couldn't possibly have appreciated on our own.
We were shown inside the one remaining gas chamber. Contrary to what some people say, there was no strange smell, and our guide confirmed that it's not there during the heat of summer either. It's just burning oil from oil lamps. We toured the Museum, which was housed throughout the barracks of the original camp. Here we saw the shoes, the glasses, the toothbrushes, the two remaining tonnes of human hair, and the Zylkon B (or hydrogen cyanide) canisters. The Nazis wasted nothing. All of this, less the canisters, were to be shipped off to the Reich.
We saw the wall where people were routinely shot after a kangaroo court. We saw the Gestapo torture chambers, with the 'suffocation' room and 'starvation' room for failed escapees, their families and their collaborators; or the 'standing' cells (which were so small as to inhibit one's ability to lie down), where three to five people were housed for a minimum of three nights, and where insanity eventually drove many towards cannibalism. In another couple of rooms, male and female victims condemned to be shot were ordered to promptly undress themselves.
According to our guide, this same barrack was visited by the Red Cross during the time. They had given three months' notice and only wanted to check on the conditions of the German prisoners. We also saw the photos in the Museum of the scenes of genocide smuggled out by inmates, or of the complex from the air taken by reconnaissance aircraft. These the Allies chose to ignore, and they were to do absolutely nothing about Auschwitz. They were happy to bomb German civilians, whilst ignoring key munitions', tanks', and ball-bearings' factories, etc, but a simple mission couldn't be directed over the Auschwitz camps to destroy the facilities. It's not just the Germans who are guilty for the horrors that happened. It wasn't only their citizens who 'stood by and let it happen'.
Finally, we caught a quick cab ride to Birkenau (a German name derived from the birch trees that still stand nearby). As I said, this is where most of the killings happened. The place was probably ten times bigger that Auschwitz I, and, ominously, a hundred times more efficient. Our guide showed us inside the main guard tower at the front of the entrance. We could see the platform where people were offloaded straight from the train, to be directed with a simple left-or-right gesture by the Nazi doctor who merely glanced at them. This direction would decide who would march straight to the gas chambers (right) or who was considered fit for hard labour (left). Woman and children were here separated from their men, and when the man was shown to his barracks a prisoner would approach to frankly tell him that his family was 'up the chimney'. Here, the Nazis were quite happy if one were to throw himself onto the electric fence nearby.
There is a lot more to know of course about the goings on here. We can learn about the Shit Group, who were privileged enough to work out of the elements and who, being covered in filth, could generally avoid physical abuse by the German guards. Or we can learn about those who were commissioned to direct fellow prisoners through to the chambers, or to go through their possessions, or to incinerate them, whilst counting the days until their three months were up and the same would happen to them. There are many such examples and I think I've said enough. I toured the barracks and saw where they slept and shat. Here is the time for me to comment on my feelings throughout the whole experience.
I am not going to conform to the supposed rule whereby we at the very least pretend to be solemn, as if we spent the whole tour on the verge of tears, and as if we were afterwards unable to sleep for several weeks. Accepting that some people are genuine, for everyone to say this does not gel with the majority, whom I saw walking around quite contentedly and laughing over lighthearted matters. But I don't mean to chastise them now. As my guide agreed, it is right that we should feel pleased that it wasn't us. We should live our lives. Even to those for whom the ordeal was a reality, it was often a natural defencive reaction for them to find humour within the madness. It's the mind's way of dealing with things and of maintaining hope.
I told our guide that although I could comprehend the scale of things rationally - to say I could appreciate the statistics and the stories, and that I could feel considerable emotion when I consciously thought it - I did not feel it inside. I could not comprehend instinctively (where surely our true emotions dwell) the extent of what had taken place here. Would I walk around Mikolow, consider the likely atrocities that had taken place there over time (if to a lesser extent), and feel depressed the whole time simply for living in Poland? This, we simply do not do, and so I could not pretend to feel this even in Oswiecim. To me, there was no aura of doom and death, and there were no ghost calls beneath the wind. It was still unreal to me, and it was only the pictures or the evidence, rather than the place itself, that had an effect. I can't feel God in a temple any more than I can in the outside world, but at least I am motivated to think about Him. In the same way, I couldn't feel Death around me, but the atmosphere was right for me to think about it, and it has borne this essay as a result.
My guide told me that my feelings were good and natural. It was also unreal to those who were there at the time, so why should it be any more real for us. She works there every day, and she has lived in the Oswiecim township since she was a child, but she enjoys her job and still goes about her life. "Some people have a need to imagine the smells, the chilling feel about the place, and the ghosts", she told me. "Personally, I don't relate to the young Jews who now come from Israel and then cry out loud for two hours at a time".
This was not to be insensitive to their feelings, but in my mind such behaviour is more a matter of ritual than it is of pure emotion. Each to their own, I guess. Perhaps it's a real for you as you choose to make it. Much to my surprise, my guide told me that there were still former inmates living in the barracks today, helping to take care of the place, etc, but they weren't living their lives in doom and gloom. I think that what I will take from Auschwitz is still more intellectual than it is emotional - it is still more a consciousness awareness than an instinctive sorrow - but this is not a bad thing. To be there still drummed it into me that all this did indeed happen, and with the reflections and insight I shall derive from this, my sensitivity towards such matters is sure to mature. May such things as Auschwitz soon be foreign to the world.
18 March 2004 Spring Comes, I Go
From a letter to my parents (with minor adaptions):
Presently, I'm looking for work throughout other European countries. Ideally, I'll go straight to Germany, but it's very difficult to even get a reply when I apply for work there. I do have something arranged for September that should very likely go ahead, but the question is what to do before then.
Another nice possibility would be to find work in a summer camp and then go to Germany as planned. I am looking for such work in Greece, Italy, Spain and England. I think England looks most likely, which could mean that I'll get to see my little sister, who's living there now.
Otherwise, I'll just have to go wherever the wind takes me, which could even include Russia. I have another contact offering me work over there for September, but I think I'll go with Germany because it's much better pay and it's more central within Europe. This will allow me to see more of the surrounding area. I have also had a long fascination for Germany, and it would be my dream to learn German if I could find good work for several years.
Here ends the letter
I have made a habit of commenting on the snow here in Mikolow. It's fun for us Kiwis who are not accustomed to such climates. Today was approaching 15 degrees, and so with spring now upon us I don't think I'll have opportunity to mention the snow again.
Firstly, it's the longest snow experience I've ever had. Barring perhaps ten days of thaw, the ground lay covered from the first week of December until this Monday (the 15th), when it really started to melt. Yesterday, snow only remained where it had been shovelled into piles, or in sheltered areas where it lay undisturbed. Today, with a shockingly high temperature, pretty much the last of it was gone. As I have commented on before, dog turd is everywhere - particularly where snow piles had formerly been. In fact, the town is quite filthy for now, as all the cigarette-butts and rubbish that's been thrown down over the last three months has finally come to the surface. The grit that was thrown down to provide traction for pedestrians also remains. It will stay like this until the council is sure that spring is here to stay, at which point people will undoubtedly be sent out to clean the place up. I look forward to a green and pleasant season.
Although I am fully impressed with Poland's youth, I am starting to form something of a poor opinion regarding the majority of those who are above their forties. Of course I have met some thoroughly decent individuals, such as Kasia's parents, but I'm wondering whether the majority have not been somewhat spoiled from communist times. This first struck me when I had incredible difficulties with my first Polish employer, who didn't seem capable of demanding from me anything less than total subordination. At the time, I felt as if the rights I was used to expecting as an employee were completely beyond my employer's comprehension. A friend explained that in my employer's time, one just did as they were told, and to me this became another example of the legacy of communist backwardness that I had experienced in China.
This time, it is that I am made to feel like I'm on a school camp in my own home. When I took my flat I was forced to agree that the grandmother of the boy whom I rented the flat from would want to visit the flat occasionally. I could see that this invited problems, and so we agreed that she would only come on certain days, or I would have a day's notice of her coming. Also, I said it would be completely unacceptable for her to enter my bedroom at any point, and so she agreed not to.
Well, cutting a long story short, here are the kind of complaints that I received yesterday:
What a bunch of petty, nosey and interfering gossipmongers.
28 March 2004 Job Hunting
Very little to add this time.
I'm still desperately searching for something in Germany. I can only hope that I don't end up jobless in Europe, as there aren't so many jobs going at the moment. The fact that I don't have an EU passport puts most employers off. If worse comes to worse, I will simply have to find something else in Poland, where I do have working papers.
I have had one (phone) interview with a German company in Nuremberg, and I think it went rather well. It looks like very reasonable conditions to me and I would be happy to work for one or two years if they wanted me. I would be a Business English Teacher, which adds to the credentials. After several years there, I would have enough money saved to complete my Cambridge DELTA, and then I would be fairly much employable wherever I wanted to go. I'm told that for now I'm on the short-list, and I look forward to hearing from them on Tuesday. Touch wood.
Otherwise, life in Poland's fairly uneventful. I'm only drinking about once a week now, but these occasions tend to be quite enough. Also, I have made quite a few recent additions to my Web site, as can be viewed in 'Latest Site Additions' below.
01 April 2004 Where Next?
Happy Birthday Kasia
The German thing fell through. The problem was getting a visa. The German Embassy wants me to have a work contract before they'll approve a visa, and the schools want me to have a visa before they'll offer me a job. It's a catch-twenty-two - whatever that means (?).
It all looked good initially. Apparently New Zealanders are allowed to travel to Germany for three months on a holiday visa and look for work whilst there. The problem is that I'm not allowed to commence work until the visa's been approved, and then I must be employed on a permanent contract. Because they don't approve visas for freelance work, the school above couldn't hire me.
All is not dim however. There are a few other schools displaying considerable interest in me, and I won't need a visa to enter their respective countries. Further, each school can employ me on a temporary contract whilst my working visa is being approved. Still, because I'm becoming superstitious about saying too much before solid agreements are reached, I shall refrain for the moment from mentioning either the schools or the countries by name. I will say only that both schools look very good and I would be happy to live in either of these countries for some while. Both are for Business English teaching positions.
04 April 2004 Pope John Paul II
Cardinal Karol Wojtyla [said, 'Voy-TIH-wah'], former Archbishop of Krakow, and now known as Pope John Paul II, truly deserves to be a living icon. To some, he is the Man of the Century, and what a century he lived. I am certainly not a Catholic - I am not even a Christian - but I feel compelled to tell something of this man's story. I will focus on what he did for Poland.
Karol Wojtyla was born in 1920 in a small town called Wadowice [said 'var-do-VEE-tse', and near to where I live]. Having lost everyone in his family by the time he was twenty, he speaks of having had an unhappy childhood. In his early years, he was passionate about religion, poetry and theatre. Later, at Jagiellonian University, he studied literature and philosophy. After the Nazi invasion, he worked in a quarry to escape deportation and imprisonment, and then went on to study in an underground seminary and to continue with theology courses at university. He eventually earned two masters degrees and a doctorate, and became an assistant pastor in 1949.
Having devoted himself well, he became cardinal in 1967. His appointment was welcomed by the Polish government, as he had not made an overt habit of opposing communism, as had some of the old-school Catholic hard-liners. However, he was merely being shrewd, and he soon found ways to help Polish people use Catholicism as an outlet to the oppression experienced under the regime. One example of this came when an unofficial lecture on "Orwell's 1984 and Poland Today", which was being staged by some university students, was broken up by the police. The cardinal promptly ordered the lecture to be given throughout his churches, where the police dared not intervene [Ash, p. 23]. It is in this way that during harsh times under foreign communist rule, Catholicism seems to have become an expression of the Polish national character; and this certainly explains why the country remains so devout today.
When the cardinal was elected Pope in October of 1978, "Yuri Andropov, leader of the Soviet Union's KGB intelligence agency, warned the Politburo that there could be trouble ahead" [CNN], and he was quite right. The Pope returned to Poland in June of 1979 and conducted a pilgrimage across the country that seriously undermined communism by the Pope's "sheer force of personality and his support for human rights" [Davies, p. 1079]. He advocated the "inalienable rights of man, the inalienable rights of dignity" [as quoted by Ash, p. 31]. He spoke highly of the wartime sacrifice of Jews and Russians. According to all accounts, his pilgrimage throughout Poland united the people on the streets, wiped the drunks and the police (voluntarily) from the streets, and for nine days left the State powerless to do anything except censor the media. As Ash neatly summed up, "Everyone saw that Poland is not a communist country - just a communist state" [p. 32], and although communism would clamber back up before the referee had finished the ten-count, this was arguably the blow that knocked him senseless and guaranteed his ultimate defeat. Certainly, the later protests by the Gdansk shipyard workers of the Solidarity movement - which would eventually lead Poland and the Soviet Block to break away from the Soviet Union - followed the Pope's example of peaceful and sober integrity.
The Pope is still alive and loved by tens of millions. In his life he has acknowledged the value of other religions, such as Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. Indeed, as the first Pope ever to visit a Jewish Synagogue, he was to call the Jews "My older brothers..." [Frontline]). He survived an assassination attempt [1981], and he has done much towards the cause of defending human rights. He is now in his 84th year, and since the public announcement in 2001 (by one of his doctors) that he suffers from Parkinson's disease, his Papal duties have been somewhat reduced. Still, before I came to Poland I took him just to be some exaggerated ceremonial religious figure, but now I know just how great a man he is. With all the bad press that the Catholic Church receives these days, his story has done much in my mind to raise his religion's prestige, and having researched the matter, I can finally see why he means so much to all of my Polish friends.
Links & References
Budapest was brilliant. Jon and I set out early on Thursday morning and caught our train ($90 US) with no incident but some exasperation (thanks to a terrible Polish train system which doesn't believe in signs). We talked freely and happily during the 7.5 hours as we passed through Silesia (my province in Poland), Czech Republic, Slovakia and then finally on to Hungary.
The two days that we had to properly explore Buda and Pest went beautifully. On the first of these days, we went across the Danube river to the castle district in Buda and explored Castle Hill. From there, the view of Budapest with all it's grand old architecture was beyond the words of a humble Kiwi; suffice it to say that Budapest was formerly an Imperial City and that every possible vantage point testified to this. On the second day, we walked about Pest a lot and found ourselves at Heroes' Square, which had been constructed in 1896 to commemorate the Magyar conquest of the Carpathian Basin (or Hungary) a thousand years before. We were particularly lucky during all this walking that the Heavens had rewarded us with a virtual summer (by comparison to Poland) and sunny weather at around 5C. It meant that we were able to get a better look at this ancient capital and culture.
Gliwice [said, 'glee-VEE-tsa'] really wasn't the best place for me to take Masaki on his first day, but we woke up so late that there wasn't much else for us to do. Historically, when this city was part of Germany's fledgling Third Reich, Hitler used it as a place to stage the farce that provided him with an excuse to attack Poland. He had his SS round up a hundred or so German prisoners, dress them up as soldiers, and then gun them down near a German radio station. At the same time, Polish slogans, etc, were broadcast across the airwaves and when the German police got there it was thought that the Polish army had initiated an offensive. Soon after, the tanks began rolling over Polish borders, with Hitler claiming self-defence and the need to liberate the 'oppressed' German minority living on Polish soil.
Krakow ['KRA-koov'] was definitely a better place for us to visit. At 9AM we met up with Waldek and Grzegorz, bused to Katowice and then caught the train to what is perhaps Poland's most beautiful city. (Friends tell me that "it's a distant third to Budapest", which in turn follows as "a close second to Prague", but then I wouldn't really know. I'm sure I'll met others who will put forward contrary opinions.)
On the train, under the shocking influence of Waldek (the MA philosopher who shakes without alcohol), we each drank a litre of beer. Once there, we made straight for the centre square, where I finally heard the famous bugle call from the top of St Mary's Church. Its five notes sound every hour, on the hour, and breaks off half way through the last note, symbolising when a Tatar arrow supposedly pierced the bugler's throat during a thirteenth century raid. From what I gather, this call has been a tradition since the middle ages.
Later, I split up with the others for about an hour while they visited places I'd already seen and I explored the place for something new. We met in one of Krakow's typical basement pubs where we enjoyed another couple of beers. Then it was more beers on the train back home; but it's all part of the fun of living in Poland. We went to our local for dinner so that Masaki could try some more Polish food, and then he got out the 'sake' for everyone to try. Being perhaps the first Asian person ever in Mikolow, and a rarity throughout the area of Silesia, none of my friends have ever met anyone from Japan and Masaki is quite the craze. I am happy that my friends are extremely friendly to him and have treated him as much as their guest as he is mine.
The Wisla ['VEES-wa'] Mountains are a really nice place to go. There's not so much for me to say about them however. It's a good place to go skiing, which we couldn't do because we were too late and we had no skis. We would also have liked to catch a chairlift up to the top of the mountain, but with no signs at the train-station to announce where we were, we missed the necessary stop and ended up in the township itself. Never mind, it was a perfectly nice town. After a leisurely walk around we found something to eat (deep-fried cheese and chips) and then settled into a cosy pub for a few beers.
Auschwitz was, to say the least, an experience. I know that I don't need to introduce its history. It's the place where Nazi death factories eliminated somewhere around 1.5 to two million people, some ninety per cent of whom were Jews. The thing that many people might not know is that most of the killings took place nearby in Birkenau (or Auschwitz II), which could hold 200 000 people in 300 prison barracks at one time. Each of four huge and scientifically designed gas chambers could kill 2000 people in one go and then incinerate the bodies in time for them to start another batch shortly after. They could kill tens of thousands of people in a single day.
Well, I only have about two weeks left with my school in Poland. I resigned a few weeks ago on the grounds that they weren't giving me the agreed amount of hours. Also, I have pretty much been here for six months now and I'd like to move on and see something
different. Nevertheless, my experience was very positive and enjoyable, even if I didn't make very much money. I will miss the incredible people that I've met here.
My time here in Poland has been incredible. As I've just said, I will really miss my friends, and even saying goodbye to some of my students will be a touch emotional.
I must not use the fold-out couch in the lounge as a bed.
Because they can't speak English, and I can't speak Polish, they phoned Kasia and they gave her a right earful. I am quite annoyed that they are bothering and abusing my friend about this. They have no right to make any of these demands. Meanwhile, I know that she has been in my room and she has long since forgotten to notify me of when she will be coming around. Sometimes, she just lets herself in without even ringing the doorbell. I have also been told that the elderly people in the apartment across from my block of flats have been peering into my windows. They are wondering who I am and what I'm doing in my place - as if it's their business and as if I should somehow feel that I'm doing something wrong.
I must not leave my shoes under the piano.
I must leave the curtains hanging in a 'nice manner'.
I must not take the lamp-shades off the lamps [which is despite the poor lighting in my house].
03.04.2005: Precisely 363 days after posting this essay, Karol Wojtyla passed away. The world mourns, as does Poland especially. Kasia wrote to me on this day with the following words... [click here].
From here, proceed to Poland III