Poland

Well, would you believe I had this post all captioned and ready to send and lost it.  So I had to grieve the loss and build up some new strength before I could think about trying again :).

We're now settled in Budapest for a couple weeks while Mike works, but here's a glimpse at our last week of travels through Eastern Europe:

In Lithuania and northern Poland, many of the farms have these stork nest poles.  They believe storks bring harmony to the family.  Might have to find a way to build one on top of our car as we travel!

And we timed it right--almost every nest had babies in it

Still a little too much of this as we traveled :(

In Lithuania, we traveled to the coast to see a big vacation peninsula called the Curonian Spit.  Unfortunately the rain continued so we had to imagine how pretty it would be on a clear day.  There were beaches all along the coast and a couple of really cute resort towns.

Halfway down the Curonian Spit is the border between Lithuania and Russia.  Mike thought he would just ask if there was a way we could continue down the road without a Russian visa.  Gotta give him high marks for chutzpah, but the answer was still "Nyet".

Interesting geography factoid:  Between Lithuania and Poland is another separate part of Russia called Kaliningrad.  I never knew this existed until we mapped out our trip from Lithuania to Poland and realized we'd have to add another 5 hours to our travel time to go around Russia.  At a couple of spots, we were traveling right along the border.

Shortly after crossing into northern Poland, we came to this marker called TriPoints--where the borders of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia meet.

Guess which of the three borders was highly fenced in and had signs stating "no photos", "do not step near the fence".  And guess which Lanser ignored all of those.

And when the ride gets a little long, it's time for a dance party!

Our first stop in Poland was Gdansk, a city recommended by someone who used to live in Poland.  Really, how many times can I say this, but it was a beautiful old city.

Our hotel was in a former convent building

Why is it that we always seem to end up on the top floors?  But I'm proud of the girls.  They just strap on their bags and get it done!

Planning the events of the day

Climbed up a bell tower to get amazing views of the city.  Hard to know which one to choose--the views were equally beautiful on all 4 sides.  During the war, almost 90% of the old architecture in Gdansk was destroyed, but the city went about rebuilding most of it.

Just a few kilometers down the road from Gdansk was this amazing Baltic Sea beach town called Sopot.  Wide, white sand beaches that stretched as far as you could see in both directions.  And the rain and clouds are gone, so we had a perfect afternoon there.

There was also a huge walking pier

On our way south, we made one more stop to tour Malbork Castle.  The castle was built by the Teutonic Order (crusaders), completed in 1406, and is the largest castle in the world by surface area.

Our next day was spent in Lodz, Poland.  Earlier in our trip, Trina had read a book called "Yellow Star" (recommended!) about a woman who was a child survivor of the Lodz Ghetto in WWII.  Trina really wanted to visit and see some of the places she talked about in the book.  We first visited Survivors Park and then got a map to tour the old ghetto and see some buildings still standing.

One of our first stops was the Jewish Cemetery.  The cemetery was huge and most of the gravestones pre-dated the war.  The cemetery now looks like this because no family was left to care for the graves.  Also, one corner of the cemetery was used to bury over 45,000 people who died in the Lodz Ghetto.

One of the big mausoleums in the Jewish Cemetery was for a family named Poznanski.  He owned a number of weaving/textile factories which have now been renovated into a huge shopping/entertainment complex called Manufaktura.  Shops and restaurants all around and in the middle sand volleyball pits, playground, carousel.  Fun place!

This is typical of where we've been staying.  We drive up in a somewhat sketchy area and see a sketchy looking building--but then discover the inside is very nice.  The owner of this one, Igor, told us over the phone "Inner is better".  Indeed--this one was very modern and newly redecorated (but as usual, on the top floor).

Our last stop in Poland was Krakow.  We spent our evening enjoying the life in the city square, had a whirlwind tour of the city the following day, and then hit the road for Budapest.

Bad photo but I had to leave it in just for you, Ms. Leisa.  It's the Rat Lady!

The main square, Rynek Glowny, which is one of the largest squares in Europe.

Many of the castles have these to-scale models with everything labeled in Braille.  Such a cool idea!

We visited another great fellowship in Krakow.  I'm not sure this church even had a name.  Two elders are the teachers, the focus is on music/message/fellowship and a number of churches are connected through "apostleship" pairs who regularly visit and keep them accountable.

So that was mostly a lighter look at our travels through Poland.  But we also visited some important WWII sites, the most sobering being Auschwitz.

Entering the camp under the "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free) sign

One display was an entire room full of these labeled suitcases, taken from the prisoners as they were sent to the gas chambers

The Wall of Execution or death wall.  I couldn't believe how the Nazis thought through every little detail and the psychology of everything.  This building next door was a barracks so the windows were covered.  The background is made out of a material that would muffle the sound.  All so that prisoners wouldn't really know what was happening.

The double fence around the camp

After walking through Auschwitz, we were bused to Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II.  Once again, I could write paragraphs of all we learned, but that's what google is for.  We were there on an incredibly hot (90s) day.  I was SO HOT just walking through Auschwitz.  But Birkenau is probably 3 or 4 kilometers away and the camp itself is 1.2km X 4 kms.  Many prisoners would walk from Auschwitz, work building barracks at Birkenau all day, and then walk back, with basically some broth for lunch.  You wouldn't last long in that heat, but then you wouldn't last long in freezing temperatures either.  Our guide said most prisoners only lived a few days.

Just days before liberation, many things at Birkenau were blown up to get rid of evidence.  This is the remains of one of the gas chambers.  Way, way in the background you can see some of the barracks still standing.  The camp was huge.

Our final stop in Krakow was the Oskar Schindler factory (of Schindler's List fame).  This museum was so much more than I expected.  One area was devoted to his story, but the museum presented all of WWII from the Polish perspective.  I didn't know that the Poles were viewed as the lowest of the low so even many non-Jewish Poles were put in camps as "political prisoners".  

The most moving part of the museum to me was the final room called "Room of Choices".  All over the walls and on each rotating piece were regrets written in different languages--"I was told to bring them bread but I ate it all myself on the way", "I would always walk in the middle so I wouldn't be the one beaten".

The Schindler factory.  The museum included a lot of video footage from the war and also stories from some of his workers.  Very interesting.