KRAKOW – I am going to focus on the more cheerful elements of our Krakow visit. We visited the old Jewish neighborhood, the remaining section of the ghetto wall, memorials to the victims of WWII, and several amazing museums. However, there is more to Poland than WWII and Communism…so that is what I feel like sharing!

Let’s focus on eating and drinking for a bit!! We thought our days of European Christmas markets were finished last month, so we were super excited that the market in Krakow was still open!! Krakow’s Old Town is so beautiful, and we enjoyed wandering around eating pierogies and drinking mulled wine!

Speaking of pierogies, one order arrived like this:

Sadly, we didn’t sample the “bread plate”, as it was literally as hard as a real plate. The pierogies were pretty tasty though…obviously:

Karkow’s Old Town is where we rang in 2014! We got a preview of the concert and festivity preparations a few days in advance.

Actual New Year’s Eve was quite interesting. I’m not going to lie: I’m looking forward to returning to the States, where most firework shows are carried out by professionals. There is something about hundreds of thousands of drunk people standing shoulder to shoulder, roman candles, and bottle rockets that just scream ‘danger’! We returned home unscathed, but I’m not sure about some of our fellow partiers! The concert consisted of Polish pop stars performing their own versions of American songs. It felt like the theme should have been “Polish Karaoke Night 2014!”

At the end of our visit in Krakow, we were lucky enough to meet up with the current Olmsted Scholar living in Krakow and her family. They took us on a great tour of Krakow’s funky bar scene! While everyone else was chasing their vodka shots with beer, this “non-hops fan” was following vodka with more vodka. This is what most of the evening looked like from my perspective:

Of course, I’m exaggerating here…however, I can’t exaggerate about how much fun we had getting to know another member of the Olmsted crowd and drinking our way around Krakow. Thank you for sharing your “family time” with us!

ZAKOPANE – Last stop, Zakopane: Poland’s “Winter Wonderland”! Our plan was to explore the Gubałówka Mountains via snowmobile. Due to the extraordinarily warm winter we are having here in Europe, there was not enough snow in Zakopane to snowmobile. So, our adventure was changed to an ATV trip. Unfortunately, as we were driving to the base of the mountain, we found out that our ATV tour was cancelled for no given reason. Although disappointed and frustrated, this change of fate probably saved our lives: we were lost and had already spun out several times, as well as slid backwards down a hill covered in ice with our super-stellar (read: horrifically awful) rental car. Lack of snow does not mean lack of ice in “winter wonderland”!

Plan B: Kasprowy Wierch mountain range in the Tatra National Park! We took two funiculars to the top, which had plenty of the white stuff!

We still enjoyed a beautiful “winter” day, even without the snowmobiles!!

We were finally able to hit up the last of the nine countries that surround Germany: Poland! In fact, we covered it border to border: from the Baltic Sea to the Tatra Mountains!

GDANSK – Right on the Baltic Sea, Gdansk was our first stop in Poland. We got to see and learn so much during our visit, thanks to our gracious hosts, the current Olmsted Scholar and his wife who live there. At this time of year the sun sets in Poland in the 3:00pm hour, which was fine by us, because Gdansk was still outfitted in beautiful holiday décor!

During the daylight hours we visited Westerplatte, the site where WWII began on September 1, 1939. Hilter viewed Poland as a key starting point for expanding Nazi Germany and conquering Eastern Europe. Poland unfortunately never had a chance against the Third Reich and seven days later Nazi forces had already advanced to Warsaw. Ultimately, this date marks the start of an oppressive 20^th century for Poland. The monument at Westerplatte stands in memory to the Polish soldiers who died defending Gdansk, but simultaneously serves as evidence of the heavy hand of communism. It reminded Joe and I of the Karl Marx statue in Chemnitz, Germany – residual evidence of communism in East Germany.

Westerplatte Memorial to Polish Soldiers

Gdansk is also were Solidarity, one of the initial (and  key)  anti-communism civilian social movements, originated. We visited the Gdansk Shipyard, where a strike of thousands of ship workers in August of 1980 marked the first successful civil resistance against the communist dictatorship. The 21 demands made by strikers still hang above the gates of the shipyard.

WARSAW – We took our first long-distance bus from Gdansk to Warsaw and arrived a comfortable five hours later! There was a super nasty burning car + truck accident about five cars ahead of us, which closed the “highway” and had me thinking that our five hour journey would turn into ten or fifteen. However, the locals used it as a cigarette break and we were on our way again in no time. Maybe this happens on Polish highways more often than we would dread to think (Yikes!).

Warsaw is the city of brave uprisings. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising occurred in April of 1943 and was the largest revolt of Jewish people against the Third Reich during the war. As the SS was making plans to evacuate the ghetto and deport all the residents to the Treblinka concentration camp, several hundred Jews were collecting anything that could be used as ammunition against the Nazis. Sadly, they were not successful and tens of thousands of ghetto residents died during the uprising. The remaining residents were deported. They knew they wouldn’t be successful, but how could they just sit around and wait to die? I found a really moving quote about the ghetto uprising inside the museum at Auschwitz. It was made by Marek Edelman, the last living member of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Leadership, and helped me to understand the mindset of the uprisers: “The point was not to let them butcher us when they came for us next. It was a matter of choosing how to die.”

This event is not to be confused with the Warsaw Uprising, which started on August 1, 1944 and was carried out by the Polish Home Army. For 63 days, Polish fighters held the Nazi forces at bay. More than 40 thousand Polish soldiers and 180 thousand civilians were killed or wounded during the uprising, which was carried out with little support from Allied troops. Unfortunately, this uprising was also not successful and the Nazi forces eventually took over the city. Warsaw was looted, destroyed, burned, and ultimately razed to the ground.

The Kotwica (the ‘P’ and ‘W’ that look to form an anchor) is a symbol for polish resistance fighters and Poland’s struggle for independence. It can be seen all over Warsaw – on memorials, on buildings, on/in museums. Its presence throughout the city feels like a constant reminder of Warsaw’s courageous attempts to free itself from oppression. Warsaw has had a tough go over the decades.

Warsaw Uprising Memorial

Nearly 90% of Warsaw was destroyed during WWII, and then rebuilt under the communist regime starting in the 1950s. The city is a weird mix of new architecture meant to look original, original buildings which survived the war, and Eastern Bloc architecture, which is exactly what you know/think it to be. We learned a lot about the Palace of Culture and Science, a gift to Poland from the Soviet Union, during our Communist-themed walking tour. It is satirically viewed as an homage to Stalin’s manhood, because there are numerous versions of this building all around the former communist countries of eastern Europe, providing an ugly reminder of the communist regime to many. Personally, I don’t think the Palace is hideous at all, but I guess I don’t associate it with memories from the toughest century in Poland’s history.

Palace of Culture and Science