guests galore and thanksgiving in poland! =)

guests galore and thanksgiving in poland! =) 2 dec 2002 sziasztok! what an excellent couple of weeks! brother was here since a week ago friday (nov 22nd)... and we were up and on the road by 4:30am this morning to get him all the way from my apt to the airport in time for his 7am flight back to memphis this morning!... further, dawn, a friend of risa, one of my high school friends, came over from austria for a day to visit as well... majorly fun times having guests and all already =), plus this past weekend for thanksgiving break, a whole slew of us bsmers made it to krakow, poland, for a few days and had a blast -- very untraditional thanksgiving dinner of lots and lots of pierogies and apple juice in a small polish cafe with 5 other bsm people and brother, but still a very excellent break =) paragraph by paragraph summary of the rest of this email? *meeting dawn -- yay for new friends! *budapest with brother *off to poland/riding on a train *shady accomodations =P *wawel, the polish royal castle *krakow's jewish quarter *auschwitz/birkenau *wieliczka (europe's oldest salt mine =) ) *krakow's market square sorry so long -- lots to share... no more out of town trips though for the rest of my time here, so this is probably the last novel and a half of this size you get for a long while =) the morning of the day brother flew in, dawn arrived from austria. she's been studying there all semester and we hooked up over email a couple months ago and have emailed some since but had never met one another, our only connections being memphis and our mutual friend risa... dawn was only here for a day, and i was en route to the airport for half the day to get brother, but i really enjoyed showing her around the bit i had a chance to and finally getting to meet her! yay for new friends! =) for the first weekend he was here, brother had a list of places he wanted to see around here, mostly that i'd been to already (excellent stuff for him to be up to while i'm in class!!!). however, a week ago saturday, i went with him and marianne to statue park, which i hadn't been to since my first weekend here -- it was kinda cool to be back after having a bit more knowledge of hungarian history, etc., and fun to see their reactions -- while there, brother and i also split the cost of the "best of communism -- marching songs" cd, which is... interesting... =)... other highlights? st. istvan's basilica with the holy right hand again, castle district, the zoo, etc. etc. etc... lots of fun stuff to be up to, and he also saw quite a bit on monday and wednesday when i had looooong days of class. i was impressed to see him try so many new foods (mostly he didn't understand menus so he pointed randomly and happily ate whatever turned up as a result), as standard restaurant fare for him at home is burgers or apetizer samplers =P.... that kid also took at least 11 rolls of real film plus filled up his digital camera... he'll have lots to show for his trip when he gets back later today! finally, for our thanksgiving break, arlene, amanda, brother, and i went to krakow poland -- thing is, so did pat and his girlfriend who was visiting this past week, as did jonah, jeremy, and patrick, so we had 3 separate groups of bsm folks there for sure, and one other bsm person who was supposed to be in krakow but we never ran into him!... so lots of fun.... we took a night train wednesday to get there and another night train saturday to get back... paying the extra $20 each way was very much worth it to get a sleeper car, where 2 or 3 people shared a stack of 3 bunkbeds, plus got our own closet and sink in each compartment... pretty spiffy =) on the way back, we even were given free breakfast -- champaign creme filled croissants! =) next, a note on our accomodations-- if you've ever travelled in eastern europe, generally when you get off a train several people greet you and ask if you need accomodation... they're generally renting out guest rooms in their houses and willing to play tour guide for your visit etc... i'd only stayed in hostels so far, but arlene and amanda had had a good house-stay experience when they visited romania, so that possibility wasn't out of the question-- when we arrived in poland, one older man was pretty persistent that he had nice cheap place to stay and kept lowering his prices until we finally felt bad and went along with... the place was, well.... you could say interesting, but i think bizarre works a little better -- enough on that for now, but i will say, if you get ahold of at least 2 or 3 of me, brother, amanda, and arlene together to talk about it, you're in for some pretty good stories! =) moving right along, on thursday, we visited wawel, the old polish castle... krakow was the capital of poland before warsaw was and this castle was the royal residence from around 1000ad to nearly 1800ad... we toured the state rooms and the private royal apartments. after that, we checked out the cathedral located in the whole big castle complex. this has to be the most unique cathedral i've been in in all of europe... each cathedral i've been in is very stylistically distinct, and each is very ornate, however, it was a first in my experience to see a cathedral that had the tombs of their kings everywhere instead of multiple altars or something of that sort... this is the place where the polish monarchs are both coronated and buried... in fact, one king who was killed in the church has his silver coffin located on top of one of the altars! you can also go under the church and see the crypts of all the polish kings who aren't just in tombs around the main chapel, which are pretty impressive, but a little spoky if, like me, you're not a very big fan of coffins in general,.... and finally, you can pay extra to climb up into the bell tower of the cathedral where the bells are huge Huge HUGE enough that you could fit like 6 people inside with room to spare! very steep narrow staircase like you're living in hunchback of notre dame or something... and very very cool! =) thursday afternoon, we got a tour of krakow's jewish quarter... our tour guide, chris, was probably one of the best tour guides i've had in europe (or ever!), mostly because his tour was more of a conversation with us than a recitation of facts... we learned lots and visited krakow's jewish cemetary and a couple of their syngagogues... new culture fact of the day: in jewish cemetaries you see a lot of stones on top of tombstones -- this puzzled me in prague, but here we learned that jews don't believe in sacrificing something living to show respect for the dead, so placing stones is an alternate way of showing respect -- now it makes sooo much more sense! the other cool thing about this tour was that schindler's list was by and large filmed in this old jewish quarter so we were practically walking through some famous movie scenes as well... krakow used to have a thriving jewish population several thousand members strong, but since most were deported, murdered, etc. during WWII, the current jewish population is down to only 150-200... very sad, but also lots to learn on the tour... friday, we took an hour and a half bus to oswiecim, which you know better as auschwitz... admission is free and it pretty much speaks for itself, but we opted for an english guide as well... words can't really explain this place... just by virtue of mass media, i know every single one of you has some mental image of it without actually having been there. walking through it is sooo surreal as you can walk through and point and say "yeah, i saw a movie where someone was shot right there at that wall" or walk through the "work makes you free" gate knowing you've seen it lots of times before.... but to actually be in the middle of it really really drives it home... displays include lots of pictures of camp life in 1940-45, but several blocks (buildings) are also dedicated to other purposes... one is just halls full of pictures and pictures of prisoners, and another has a whole room of women's hair cut from corpses to be used for textiles, another full of suitcases, another case with a huge pile of eyeglasses, anther room of shoes, another of artificial limbs -- seeing the stacks upon stacks of personal items brings the numbers involved into focus... our guide kept reminding us in these parts: "remember, each of these items represents an individual life that was extinguished here, a first name, a last name, a personality that is no more..." ... another part that spooked me out quite a bit was when we entered the only crematorium that isn't in ruins now and our guide led us into an unmarked room, then after a moment of silence explained we were in the middle of a gas chamber where 750 people would be killed at once... then we were led to stand less than a foot or two away from the crematorium ovens-- very very creepy... at birkenau (the 2nd part of the auschwitz camp about 3km away from the first), there are 4 tombstones that read "to the one and a half million jews whose ashes lie in this place, may they rest in peace" in polish, english, hebrew, and yiddish... and at the back of birkenau is the huge international moument to the victims of auschwitz... its text is concise and to the point in the 20 languages of the victims plus english "let this place forever be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity......" words aren't really enough to describe the effect of being actually there, and i don't think it's a place that anyone should have to or need to visit twice, but the immensity of actually visiting auschwitz in person is quite powerful and well worth doing... it really makes you think: about how messed up humanity can be, about how many things you actually do have to be thankful for, and a lot about just how horrifically sad this place is and was.... and i'm going to just leave it at this for now because me rambling isn't going to wrap this paragraph up any better.... finally, on saturday, we did something more life-affirming, and visited wieliczka, the oldest still active salt mine in europe -- this was very cool because not only do you learn about how salt is mined (after climbing down about 30 stories worth of stairs!), but also the salt miners have carved some really really cool statues into the place detailing historical figures, legends, and just cool stuff in general -- the mine contains 3 cathedrals/chapels all carved out of salt and two salt lakes, saturated in salt to the same point as the dead sea... the whole place has over 2000 caves covering over 300km of walking distance (much too much for a tourist visit)... but the tour lets you see quite a bit and gets you as low as 136 meters (cerca 450 feet) below ground... at the end you can send mail from an underground post office, buy salt from the mine, or even play basketball down there -- it's a pretty spiffy set up =)... saturday afternoon, we spent quite a bit of time back in krakow's main market square, which was totally decked out for christmas... enjoyed roasted nuts, warmed wine, more pierogies, etc., and checked out every single booth there a million and one times --- i finally have my first spiffy non-winter just-for-fun hat that i like ever! =) all in all a most enjoyable time... finally spent the last evening in a really fun cafe called the pink elephant playing chess with other bsmers until they (the restaurant) kicked us out for closing time... and that ends our poland trip -- major party in a box, both for the majorly big learning experiences and for the lots of fun... yay for this... end of essay, onward =) things lara has learned this week ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *my advice to brother *not* to speak loudly at people in english while he's here and assume they understand was good advice -- if only he'd have taken it! coming back to my apt from the airport friday he accidentally hit his large suitcase into someone in the subway station, he loudly said "sorry!" and the guy turned around and yelled "baaaaaa!" (seriously, like an angry sheep... it was slightly frightening!)... sunday he saw a guy drop a 500 forint bill and ran after him yelling "sir sir!" and wondered why he didn't turn around! *i can unknowingly scare people... poor jonah has been trying all semester to come up with an original place to travel... in august, he went to vienna with a friend... however, without comparing plans, a group of friends and i were on the same train the same weekend both ways... his next trip was prague in october -- same thing! now krakow, and yet again -- everywhere he goes, i'm somehow already there too -- i'd be frustrated if i was trying to be original and kept unwittingly running into me too! quotes of the week ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ um, yeah, lara has problems with high fives in moderation... i could have told you that ~brother (song that sounds like 'i'm a soul man' comes on as the background music for a rap at the coffee house we were at friday before last) marianne: i wonder what they're saying in hungarian... maybe 'i'm a soul man' too... that would be funny... how would you say that? all i can think of involving 'man' in hungarian is ferfi fodraszat (men's hairdresser) and kis zold ferfiak (little green men)... hmmm... (wonderful, the eclectic vocab you pick up in 3 months) =) me: hey, eric, guess what happens in 1,602 minutes!!! eric: gee... i have absolutely no clue... hey, i have a new game for you me: ? eric: for every minute til your brother gets here you need to let me know if the number of minutes left is a prime or not (to the tune of 'oh you can't put Jesus' love in a box') me: oh you can't put brother's nose in a box.... brother: dat's right... because it's attached to brother! i have dead hungarian snails in my pocket... this makes me incredibly happy. ~brother brother: oh look! you can see the moon from here -- it looks really really big though me: um, yeah, that's not the moon, that's the hot air balloon over west end brother: oh.... hello and welcome to the wieliczka salt mine.... i'm your tour guide today, and i will speak in english because, well,... mostly because they make me... it's my job and they pay me to speak to you in english, but i must warn you that polish is my favorite language so forgive me that and we can move onward! ~salt mine tour guide =) ...and i must warn you, although legend says if you throw money to the dwarves here, all your dreams will come true, please don't do it because i've tried many many times and it's all a lie! ~salt mine tour guide again lara, i want you to just live in hungary for ever and ever, because you write the most interesting and VISUAL emails i have ever read. ~shannon vanderford (live in hungary for ever and ever?.... i wouldn't mind =P ) happy week to all... hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving! lara =)