[Beauty and Sadness/Mourning in Poland]

In my internship contract, I was given two days off for each full working month. Now that it’s July, I’ll be leaving before the month is out, which, aside from being hard to believe, means there’s less time for potential trips across borders. Luckily for me, my boss is super enthusiastic about world traveling, so she gave me another day off this week when I mentioned my plans to visit Poland. I spent the long weekend in Kraków with my roommate, Rorie, and I’m happy to say it was one of my favorite things I’ve done so far, and probably one of the most unforgettable trips of my lifetime. Kraków is a beautiful city, in a much different way than I was expecting. It’s full of historic buildings showcasing over a thousand years worth of artistic and architectural evolution, and the old town square was full of life and music throughout the day—even into the wee hours of the morning, which Rorie and I rather unfortunately found out when our night train back to Berlin was 7 hours late. So it goes. It ended well though, we just slept the whole ride back. Also, I can now say with confidence: if ever you have worried about the possible lack of 24/7 pierogi shops in Kraków, worry no longer. Przystanek Pierogarnia is the place for you.

Like Vienna, there were old churches all over the city, complete with jaw-dropping interior design and the warm aroma of hundreds of votive candles. Among others, we went inside Marienbasiliker [St. Mary’s Basilica], which was right in the middle of the town square. Every hour on the hour, the Hejnalista [horn player] would sound a bugle from the highest church tower. According to a plaque outside, the reason the melody is cut short each time is in memoriam to the 13th century Hejnalista who was shot in the throat while alerting the city to a Mongol invasion. I was surprised at how old the church was, but the place we went next had buildings even older! Wawel Castle sits above the Vistula River, and some of its buildings originate in the late 900s. Not nineteen. Nine. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned that. The castle itself was a mix of styles, from medieval to renaissance to baroque and beyond, and now it has been turned into museum. It was amazing to see so much Eastern European and Turkish art with baroque and classical influences, something I’ve seen very little of (if at all) in my lifetime. 

There is a town about an hour outside of Kraków whose name holds a much more ominous quality. We were originally planning to visit just this town, my roommate and I, before we decided we’d lengthen the trip and stay in the much larger city nearby. Oświęcim, spelled in German as Auschwitz, is where the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum is located. It is not a place I had ever consciously intended to visit, but after Rorie took Pitt’s class US and the Holocaust (RELGST 0283), she decided one of her goals for the summer was to visit this memorial. She did not, however, wish to go alone, and I was glad to accompany her. We applied for the 6 hour study tour, which may sound like a long time, but considering how much we learned and how utterly irreplicable that experience was, I would choose that tour again in a heartbeat. I would not, on the other hand, want to go back for a long, long time. If ever. It was unlike any place I’ve ever been, and while I would say our visit was incredibly meaningful and rewarding, it was also uniquely draining and emotional. Being there was heavy enough; being there while considering domestic current events was haunting. This is a place dedicated to the preservation of memory and the insistence that we cannot let something like it happen again. Even after only eighty years—less than one human lifetime—it seems too many people are ready to forget. This is a place which wills people to remember with undeniable intensity.

I don’t believe I would benefit from writing more on the subject, as the topic is just a bit too personal for me to feel comfortable writing about here. That being said, I was very grateful that Rorie had the idea, and that we were able to stay in Kraków for one more night after our visit to Oświęcim. Coming back to the lively city center, with its accordions and trumpeters and banduras, proved to me once again that music is the medicine of the soul. Also, the Kraków Cloth Hall was surrounded by pigeons, and (even better) people feeding them! Nothing makes me happy quite like a city that loves its pigeons. Another thing I grew to love about Kraków in our relatively short time there was the fact that I did not speak Polish (despite wishing that I did). Everywhere I’ve been in the world, I’ve had some grasp of the language. In London there was English. I have a basic understanding of German for Berlin and Vienna, and the Dutch in Amsterdam may not have looked familiar to me, but it sounded like the lovechild of German and English. It was interesting to visit a country where I truly did not know where to begin with the language, and even the currency was vastly different, with the złoty instead of the dollar or euro. 

Knowing this, it’s pretty unsurprising that the communication differences in Poland were much more drastic for me than in Germany. Still, I’ve learned a lot about the untaught aspects of the German language, things that can only be learned by living and working amongst German speakers rather than only practicing in a classroom. For instance, there are so many more ways to say and respond to the phrase “Thank you!” than I thought, and it’s the same deal with greetings and partings. Not only this, but I’ve learned that German really does have a word for everything. Often, my coworkers will the describe the most niche concept asking for an English translation, and I have to inform them that what they just described in English was, in fact, the English translation. They will then happily inform me of the German word for it, which usually sounds like a sentence. Because of my German comprehension skills and my coworkers’ skills in English, we don’t face many miscommunication challenges, although there was one recently that was slightly concerning. My boss came up to the library looking distressed and said, “There was a shooting downstairs.” I was horrified until she continued, saying that she wasn’t expecting so many cameras, and she felt bad for interrupting the student filmmakers. I was thinking of a different definition; meanwhile, it turns out my boss had never heard the English “shooting” in that context. As always, the easiest way to clear up miscommunication confusion is to ask questions, which people at work seem to appreciate a lot more than I expected. There is high value placed on clarity here, and I often find myself wishing more English speakers were as straightforward and pragmatic as the people I’ve met at HfS Ernst Busch.