First meeting of our Ecological Engineering and Sustainable Development class today! It's supposed to be a 2.5 hour class but we went way over time today and it was fantastic. We're going to get to design a wetland later in the semester! The prof (Włodzimierz Wojcik - lovely Polish name) is really nice and great at fostering discussion in the class. I guess there won't be a ton of that once we get into the more hardcore engineering material, but it was great today when we were doing an overview of sustainable development, sustainability, and why it's all necessary. We also have our first homework assignment, a collaborative short paper and 10 minute powerpoint presentation due next Tuesday, that I'm ridiculously excited about. It's been about 9.5 weeks since I was in a real class so YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!
And now I need to stop goofing around on the internet and start reviewing my language exam on Thursday and culture exam on Friday...exams are fun!
(friends who are still in school...please don't kill me after reading this post, kthxbai)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
A bit of bookishness
Fantastic lecture today in our culture class on undergound culture in Poland under Communist rule. The professor who lectured today and will also lecture tomorrow is mom and dad's age, so grew up, studied, and began her career under Communism. Most of her father's family was murdered during the Holocaust and most of the survivors fled to Israel. She remembers the letters her father would receive from them once a year or so, and the hiding places where they were secreted because possession of letters corresponding with the West could lead to imprisonment or death. As a literature student, her only access to real literature, East or West, was through illegal underground publications. She still has some of those formerly illegal copies, which she brings into class for us to take a look at. It's incredible to learn about twentieth century Poland from people who actually experienced it and can deliver it to us in such a hands-on way. She also brings in samples of socialist realist art and "literature," all basically straight up propaganda. I now have an incredibly long reading list and, as always, not enough time in which to read!
Also, learning about censorship and underground publications in Poland during the twentieth century led into what promised to be an exciting conversation about modern-day censorship in the US but then we left that tangent and got back to the topic of discussion. Yay for focused classes but I really want to discuss differences in censorship with somebody now (ie. censorship from the top-down acting prior to publication as in Communist Poland, and censorship acting after publication with bottom-up elements as we have in the US. At least, that's how I boil it down into points.).
The one book I've managed to finish since I got here (besides some Jane Austen books I picked up during my Germany tour to while the times spent by myself on trains and in hostels late at night) is a short historical survey of eastern Europe from 1740-1985. It was a good read, more interesting and less dry than history books often are, but all I got out of it was an idea of the overall trends in eastern and central Europe during the time period covered and the realization (kind of an obvious one) that I know absolutely nothing about European history in general and eastern and central Europe in particular. Also nothing about Russia and Turkey, which were/are both major players in the European arena. Nothing like reading to make you realize how ignorant you really are.
The book I'm currently in the middle of is The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz. Read it. It's fascinating. From the back of the book: "Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it." Miłosz was a Polish emigre who lived in California until the end of Communist rule in Poland. I think he's primarily a poet, and came back to Poland in the 1990s to live in Krakow until his death within the last few years. Krakow is really proud of him because there was a period of a decade or so when he was one of two Nobel laureates for poetry living in Krakow. The other is a woman (yay!) named Wisława Szymborska. Haven't read any of her work yet, but I intend to...thank goodness for the English language bookstore downtown!
Okay, so I posted what I have so far but then I couldn't resist adding a little bit of Szymborska's poetry now that I'm thinking about it. All I've read of her so far is 2 poems that our literature professor gave us in a handout in the first day of class 3 weeks ago. Here's the one that really grabbed me, pretty obviously fitting in with peace-studies Me.
The End and the Beginning by Wisława Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
Also, learning about censorship and underground publications in Poland during the twentieth century led into what promised to be an exciting conversation about modern-day censorship in the US but then we left that tangent and got back to the topic of discussion. Yay for focused classes but I really want to discuss differences in censorship with somebody now (ie. censorship from the top-down acting prior to publication as in Communist Poland, and censorship acting after publication with bottom-up elements as we have in the US. At least, that's how I boil it down into points.).
The one book I've managed to finish since I got here (besides some Jane Austen books I picked up during my Germany tour to while the times spent by myself on trains and in hostels late at night) is a short historical survey of eastern Europe from 1740-1985. It was a good read, more interesting and less dry than history books often are, but all I got out of it was an idea of the overall trends in eastern and central Europe during the time period covered and the realization (kind of an obvious one) that I know absolutely nothing about European history in general and eastern and central Europe in particular. Also nothing about Russia and Turkey, which were/are both major players in the European arena. Nothing like reading to make you realize how ignorant you really are.
The book I'm currently in the middle of is The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz. Read it. It's fascinating. From the back of the book: "Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it." Miłosz was a Polish emigre who lived in California until the end of Communist rule in Poland. I think he's primarily a poet, and came back to Poland in the 1990s to live in Krakow until his death within the last few years. Krakow is really proud of him because there was a period of a decade or so when he was one of two Nobel laureates for poetry living in Krakow. The other is a woman (yay!) named Wisława Szymborska. Haven't read any of her work yet, but I intend to...thank goodness for the English language bookstore downtown!
Okay, so I posted what I have so far but then I couldn't resist adding a little bit of Szymborska's poetry now that I'm thinking about it. All I've read of her so far is 2 poems that our literature professor gave us in a handout in the first day of class 3 weeks ago. Here's the one that really grabbed me, pretty obviously fitting in with peace-studies Me.
The End and the Beginning by Wisława Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.
From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
We spent this weekend in Zakopane, a ski resort in the Tatra mountains (the highest peaks in the Carpathians) a few hours south of Krakow. We had to catch an early bus on Saturday that involved leaving our dorm a little before 8 and managed to catch the bus after a mad dash from the tram stop to the station. Jagiellonian University had arranged the trip for Rachel, Brad, and me as part of our February orientation program. Brad's suitemate, Viktoria, came along at the last minute which was great because the more people the better! The bus ride took a little over 2 hours because of the snow on the roads, but we got there safely. It was a bit of an adventure to walk around in Zakopane because they never actually clear the sidewalks of snow in the winter. They clear a little bit away and then just pack the rest down so you're walking on several inches of super-packed snow made icy by all of the traffic. We also didn't see a single stroller even though there were kids everywhere because all the parents had little wooden or plastic wagons and just pulled the kids along behind.
So Saturday we got to the hotel too early to check in but left our bags there for the afternoon. We walked down the main streets looking at all of the tourist shops and food stands - Zakopane is the most tourist-y place I've ever been. There are enough stalls selling fairly authentic wool, wood, leather, and fur things that we felt justified to be shopping, and we spent most of the afternoon doing that and sampling the various hot drinks offered everywhere. Lunch was particularly excellent in a tavern sort of place. I had a delicious sour soup with eggs and sausage in it, traditional Polish fare. We crashed around 4:30 due to the early start and the extreme cold in the mountains, so we took a long nap at the hotel before dinner.
It took us a really long time to find the restaurant where we wanted to eat dinner, a place Viktora remembered as really good from eating there with her family 3 years ago. It was a typical mountain lodge with animal heads and skins on the walls and everything made out of wood. The food was really good and there was a live folk group playing in one corner. We stayed there for about 3 hours because the atmosphere was so pleasant and it was fun to watch people dancing to the folk music. We finally left around 11:30 and called it a night after a brief visit to a pub on the main street of town. So a pretty quiet Saturday night, but we were all exhausted!
Our big activity today was a train ride up one of the mountains surrounding Zakopane and a walk along the mountain ridge. Beautiful views everywhere and I went a little crazy with my camera since real mountains are a bit unusual near the Chesapeake. :) It was sunny today and MUCH warmer than yesterday, although we were all ready for a hot lunch by 3 pm. I had a heaping plate full of Polish cabbage and beet salads.
Winnie-the-Pooh in Zakopane!
An old-fashioned mountain rescue St. Bernard dog.
Getting hot chocolate and mulled wine because it was COLD and we'd been wandering for hours.
Puppies for sale! Viktoria wanted to buy one for her grandparents but we couldn't figure out a way to get it back to Krakow since we had to take the bus.
One of the horse-drawn sleighs on Saturday night. Viktoria is asking the driver how to get to the restaurant where we wanted to eat, but we didn't know the name or roughly where it was and could only describe the atmosphere...needless to say, we didn't get very good directions.
There's actually a car under there. How come we don't get this kind of snow in MD/PA??? So awesome.
This monkey was really good at the piano.
In the mountainy-hunting lodgey restaurant for dinner Saturday night. We found after walking around in the cold for about 45 minutes and it was worth the time. The food was good - I had a cream barszcz (beet soup) with potatos in it, and Rachel and I shared some pear slices with whipped cream and chocolate for dessert - and there was live folksy music.
Bells hanging from the ceiling of the restaurant.
Being philosophical? Or something. Anyway, they both look weird. :)
The restaurant was beautiful outside since it's built of wood and looks like an over-sized cabin. It was down a short drive from the road and completely surrounded by huge pine trees. It was also about a 10-15 minute walk from the super crowded downtown area in a residential part of the town.
These pictures taken at night with increased exposure time, which is why the colors look weird. I like them, though.
Sunday afternoon in the tourist trap! This whole long row of stalls just sells mountain cheese. I liked it a lot for the hearty taste although it could be very salty and the fried cheese was a little rubbery and squeaked when we bit into it.
The cheeses!
On the top of Gubałówka mountain. We took a train up to the top then walked 3 km along the ridge and took a chair lift down.
Rachel trying on one of the awesome wool sweaters on sale everywhere. We did most of our snooping in the stalls down in the valley but of course we had to spend some time looking in the shops on top of the mountain as well.
Snowmobiles for rent! I definitely wanted to do this but went with the "it's too expensive and I don't have the right clothes with me" reasoning. I was wearing jeans and my long black city coat. *sigh* It was tempting, though!
Another bin of puppies on the top of the mountain. This was so unfair because how on earth do you say goodbye to that fuzzy face?
On the chair lift coming down. Brad and Viktoria are in the one coming down in the picture although you can't really see them.
Ok, you can kind of see them behind us in this one. Not the best picture of me and check out tha massive sunglasses I bought because I left mine in Krakow!
Views from the chair lift.
Now some views from the valley as we walked to the bus to leave Zakopane.
So Saturday we got to the hotel too early to check in but left our bags there for the afternoon. We walked down the main streets looking at all of the tourist shops and food stands - Zakopane is the most tourist-y place I've ever been. There are enough stalls selling fairly authentic wool, wood, leather, and fur things that we felt justified to be shopping, and we spent most of the afternoon doing that and sampling the various hot drinks offered everywhere. Lunch was particularly excellent in a tavern sort of place. I had a delicious sour soup with eggs and sausage in it, traditional Polish fare. We crashed around 4:30 due to the early start and the extreme cold in the mountains, so we took a long nap at the hotel before dinner.
It took us a really long time to find the restaurant where we wanted to eat dinner, a place Viktora remembered as really good from eating there with her family 3 years ago. It was a typical mountain lodge with animal heads and skins on the walls and everything made out of wood. The food was really good and there was a live folk group playing in one corner. We stayed there for about 3 hours because the atmosphere was so pleasant and it was fun to watch people dancing to the folk music. We finally left around 11:30 and called it a night after a brief visit to a pub on the main street of town. So a pretty quiet Saturday night, but we were all exhausted!
Our big activity today was a train ride up one of the mountains surrounding Zakopane and a walk along the mountain ridge. Beautiful views everywhere and I went a little crazy with my camera since real mountains are a bit unusual near the Chesapeake. :) It was sunny today and MUCH warmer than yesterday, although we were all ready for a hot lunch by 3 pm. I had a heaping plate full of Polish cabbage and beet salads.
Winnie-the-Pooh in Zakopane!
An old-fashioned mountain rescue St. Bernard dog.
Getting hot chocolate and mulled wine because it was COLD and we'd been wandering for hours.
Puppies for sale! Viktoria wanted to buy one for her grandparents but we couldn't figure out a way to get it back to Krakow since we had to take the bus.
One of the horse-drawn sleighs on Saturday night. Viktoria is asking the driver how to get to the restaurant where we wanted to eat, but we didn't know the name or roughly where it was and could only describe the atmosphere...needless to say, we didn't get very good directions.
There's actually a car under there. How come we don't get this kind of snow in MD/PA??? So awesome.
This monkey was really good at the piano.
In the mountainy-hunting lodgey restaurant for dinner Saturday night. We found after walking around in the cold for about 45 minutes and it was worth the time. The food was good - I had a cream barszcz (beet soup) with potatos in it, and Rachel and I shared some pear slices with whipped cream and chocolate for dessert - and there was live folksy music.
Bells hanging from the ceiling of the restaurant.
Being philosophical? Or something. Anyway, they both look weird. :)
The restaurant was beautiful outside since it's built of wood and looks like an over-sized cabin. It was down a short drive from the road and completely surrounded by huge pine trees. It was also about a 10-15 minute walk from the super crowded downtown area in a residential part of the town.
These pictures taken at night with increased exposure time, which is why the colors look weird. I like them, though.
Sunday afternoon in the tourist trap! This whole long row of stalls just sells mountain cheese. I liked it a lot for the hearty taste although it could be very salty and the fried cheese was a little rubbery and squeaked when we bit into it.
The cheeses!
On the top of Gubałówka mountain. We took a train up to the top then walked 3 km along the ridge and took a chair lift down.
Rachel trying on one of the awesome wool sweaters on sale everywhere. We did most of our snooping in the stalls down in the valley but of course we had to spend some time looking in the shops on top of the mountain as well.
Snowmobiles for rent! I definitely wanted to do this but went with the "it's too expensive and I don't have the right clothes with me" reasoning. I was wearing jeans and my long black city coat. *sigh* It was tempting, though!
Another bin of puppies on the top of the mountain. This was so unfair because how on earth do you say goodbye to that fuzzy face?
On the chair lift coming down. Brad and Viktoria are in the one coming down in the picture although you can't really see them.
Ok, you can kind of see them behind us in this one. Not the best picture of me and check out tha massive sunglasses I bought because I left mine in Krakow!
Views from the chair lift.
Now some views from the valley as we walked to the bus to leave Zakopane.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Julie made me do it
So I've been told to post more often because it helps Julie procrastinate and really that's one of my most important duties as a friend: helping other friends not do important things like studying, passing exams, and etc.
Last night we went out with Matt and Maggie, the two Americans we've met also studying here, and Viktoria and Gerard. It was Gerard's last night in Krakow before heading back to Vienna at 7 am today, so there was a lot of dancing and picture-taking in celebration. We went to a pretty classy place for the first part of the evening (we had to pay a cover charge!) that was full of people in business suits. When we first walked in the waitress told us to be sure to dance since there was small and empty dance floor in front of the stage where the live musicians were playing. We didn't dance at first but went up about a half hour after we got there and started dancing on the still-empty floor. It was a little awkward since it was just Gerard and the four girls (Brad and Matt stayed at the table with the coats) but we were having fun and the band loved having us up there. After a little while a bunch of the business suits joined in and there was a whole crowd out on the floor! But we got bored eventually and decided to go someplace else, and by the time we'd gotten our coats and were headed to the door all the business suits had sat down again. So we totally brought the party....and then took it away again. I don't get though why all those men and women were out at 10-12 pm in business suits! It was weird.
I'm getting totally excited for classes to start on Monday! The Polish attitude towards scheduling is really laidback. We met all of our professors almost two weeks ago at a coffee-tea shindig and asked when our classes we're going to be meeting. The professors all said that it was very flexible and we should tell them when we wanted to have class. So then we asked when their other classes for the semester are scheduled, so we could try to pick times that would work for them. Their response: "we don't know when our other classes we'll be, they're not scheduled yet." That was almost two weeks before the start of classes. Brad, Rachel, and I sat down on Wednesday to plan when we wanted to have our classes - half a week before classes are supposed to start. We sent each professor a time suggestion of when we would like to have class, and they all emailed back: "we'll get back to you, that time is ok for now but our other classes are still not scheduled!" So we have most of our classes set up for the first week starting on Monday, but they're all conditional and will probably change over the next couple of weeks as people START scheduling things! It's so so so so so different from the US. One of the professors teaching us our Polish History and Culture course this month said that this mindset about scheduling is a symptom of the general Polish mindset that developed as a result of communism. He says that under communism there was no reason to ever think of the future, that the past was glorified and the present was thought of as polluted so there was no long-term planning or thinking about tomorrow. It was pretty cool to have a lecture on this during our first week here and then to see it for real now. It makes sense to see this in our professors because all them are my parent's age and grew up under communist rule.
Now I'm going to enjoy drinking my cup of mint tea and watch an episode of The Office with Brad and Rachel. We're having a lazy Friday evening because we have to get up at 7 tomorrow morning to catch a bus to Zakopane, the ski resort in the Tatra mountains!
Last night we went out with Matt and Maggie, the two Americans we've met also studying here, and Viktoria and Gerard. It was Gerard's last night in Krakow before heading back to Vienna at 7 am today, so there was a lot of dancing and picture-taking in celebration. We went to a pretty classy place for the first part of the evening (we had to pay a cover charge!) that was full of people in business suits. When we first walked in the waitress told us to be sure to dance since there was small and empty dance floor in front of the stage where the live musicians were playing. We didn't dance at first but went up about a half hour after we got there and started dancing on the still-empty floor. It was a little awkward since it was just Gerard and the four girls (Brad and Matt stayed at the table with the coats) but we were having fun and the band loved having us up there. After a little while a bunch of the business suits joined in and there was a whole crowd out on the floor! But we got bored eventually and decided to go someplace else, and by the time we'd gotten our coats and were headed to the door all the business suits had sat down again. So we totally brought the party....and then took it away again. I don't get though why all those men and women were out at 10-12 pm in business suits! It was weird.
I'm getting totally excited for classes to start on Monday! The Polish attitude towards scheduling is really laidback. We met all of our professors almost two weeks ago at a coffee-tea shindig and asked when our classes we're going to be meeting. The professors all said that it was very flexible and we should tell them when we wanted to have class. So then we asked when their other classes for the semester are scheduled, so we could try to pick times that would work for them. Their response: "we don't know when our other classes we'll be, they're not scheduled yet." That was almost two weeks before the start of classes. Brad, Rachel, and I sat down on Wednesday to plan when we wanted to have our classes - half a week before classes are supposed to start. We sent each professor a time suggestion of when we would like to have class, and they all emailed back: "we'll get back to you, that time is ok for now but our other classes are still not scheduled!" So we have most of our classes set up for the first week starting on Monday, but they're all conditional and will probably change over the next couple of weeks as people START scheduling things! It's so so so so so different from the US. One of the professors teaching us our Polish History and Culture course this month said that this mindset about scheduling is a symptom of the general Polish mindset that developed as a result of communism. He says that under communism there was no reason to ever think of the future, that the past was glorified and the present was thought of as polluted so there was no long-term planning or thinking about tomorrow. It was pretty cool to have a lecture on this during our first week here and then to see it for real now. It makes sense to see this in our professors because all them are my parent's age and grew up under communist rule.
Now I'm going to enjoy drinking my cup of mint tea and watch an episode of The Office with Brad and Rachel. We're having a lazy Friday evening because we have to get up at 7 tomorrow morning to catch a bus to Zakopane, the ski resort in the Tatra mountains!
Monday, February 16, 2009
Birthday party
I forgot to include the most important thing of all in my earlier post...namely that I will be celebrating my 21st birthday in VENICE. I had been debating between Venice and Athens, but then Brad made the astute observation that Athens will be there forever whereas Venice is sinking into the Adriatic. So Athens got bumped to a "retirement trip" status and Venice got the birthday vote.
Auschwitz and maybe some nightlife
Valentine's Day consisted of a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau in -3 degree C weather (that's without considering the windchill and the zero-heat retainment of damp clothes). I'm not even going to try to describe that visit, since it's exactly what you've imagined from history class and personal accounts compounded by the extra horrificness of walking the same "streets" between the barracks, touching the barbed wire fences, or leaning against a wall in a room big enough for maybe 50 people to sleep under what we would consider crowded conditions, and hear that there were usually 5 or 6 times that number during the war. Especially...(insert adjective here)...were all the personal items of Jews and other prisoners discovered by the Soviets that the Nazis hadn't had time to ship off to the Third Reich, the rooms full of human hair, the pictures of deliberately starved children and victims of medical experiments. Also, walking between buildings on our way to see the "wall of death" where some political prisoners and medical experimentees were killed by shooting, a cat danced up to each group of visitors purring and begging to be patted. It lightened the oppressiveness a bit and provided a moment of pure biological and historical irony. Needless to say, we were pretty burned out after that afternoon and spent Saturday night hanging out with Brad's suitemate, Viktoria, and her boyfriend Gerard visiting from Vienna.
So a bit about some of the non-cultural things we've been doing in Krakow. Warning to the parental units who read this that I might mention some nightlife-y places, but hey, I'll be 21 in April and you guys have to get used to the idea of me going to bars and clubs sooner or later. :) Thursday night we went to our first dance club, a place called Gorączka, tucked away in the basement of some of the old stone buildings near Rynek Głowny. It seems like all of the clubs in the old city are like this: a narrow hallway leading from the street into the building, then a steep staircase down into a basement space. Gorączka was pretty nice. It had a coatroom (whoo!), a bar, a big dancing room with a stage with benches and a few tables against the walls, and then a different section that was part cafe and part bar. The DJ was absolutely horrible and played lots of American music with really bad mixes and transitions. It was hilarious and we spent most of the night trying to puzzle out exactly which songs he was mashing together. I found out pretty quickly just how attractive red hair is in a country where it's extremely rare so I quickly befriended a group of 26/27 year-old Polish soldiers who were super nice and looked intimidating. Basically the club was exactly like a Paces party at Swarthmore...too many people in too small a place screaming at each other to be heard over the music. Good times.
Tonight we went to a jazz bar right on Rynek Głowny. Same deal: tiny hallway, narrow twisty stairs, a maze of little basement rooms with a couple of bars and plenty of small tables. We met Viktoria and Gerard there, who'd gone early and gotten a table pretty close to the stage. The music was just ok at first. The band had a great lead guitarist but most of their songs sounded the same. Then after the actual concert...dun dun dun, Gerard asked if he could play the keyboard with them for a set since there was going to be a short jam session. They said yes and he proceeded to completely show them all up. This guy is amazing. The guitarist tried doing a duet-y thing with him and Gerard left him completely in the dust, in a friendly sort of way. He got a huge round of applause when he left the stage and the guitarist wouldn't stop shaking his hand. I should mention that Viktoria had a small party in her room last night to celebrate the end of her exams and there was a bit of a jam there too with a guitar one of her friends had brought, Gerard and a weird little keyboard that he powered by blowing into a plastic tube, and impromptu drummers that passed around a pair of drumsticks Gerard had brought (I drummer and sang!). So it's been a musical weekend. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned the klezmer concert we went to last Tuesday in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter in the city? The band was a trio with an accordion, upright bass, and clarinet. I tried to read the program, which was entirely in Polish, and I think that they're originally from Krakow but have toured pretty much everywhere in Europe. Anyway, the music was amazing and if you don't know what klezmer music is you should look it up. The concert took place in a room of the Galicja Jewish Museum which lent extra meaning to the music since it was being played in the middle of a photographic exhibition on Jewish culture before and after World War II.
Yesterday we went to the Czartorysky Museum which is based on the private collection of members of the Czartoryski family. Not really sure who they are, but I'm reading a book about Eastern European history and there was a Czartoryski in the 1800s who did something important with regard to nationalism and independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire. Anyway, it's your typical museum with beautiful paintings and historical artifacts and well-worth the visit. They've got a Rembrandt landscape ("Landscape with the Good Samaritan") and a DaVinci ("Lady with an Ermine"). After the museum we went to a cafe to warm up (the museum wasn't heated very well and they made us leave our coats in the garderobe) that played Charlie Chaplin films on one of the walls! We kept saying after each film that we were going to leave and not quite making it before the next one would begin...and then of course we had to stay! I was drinking Polish hot chocolate, which is basically liquid fudge. We think they just melt a chocolate bar, maybe add a little milk, and voila. This one had mint syrup in it. :) Yesterday was busy: we also met up with two other American students, one from Williams and one from Grinnell, for dinner at an Indian restaurant. They're really nice so we're planning to hang out with them more. Oh, and we had lunch with a former Swarthmore student who did this program during his sophomore year and is now back in Krakow on a Fulbright scholarship working in the department where we're taking classes! He's really nice too, although he speaks about as much Polish as I do. It's depressing because I'm finding it very hard to practice Polish here and he clearly didn't learn much of the language when he was here 3 years ago. He also says that it's possible to do no work in the engineering classes we're taking here, and still get an A. Apparently the professors will expect as much work from us as we're willing to put into the class, which would be cool if I'd come here expecting to take a semester off but I came here expecting to finish my minor and really learn environmental science and also to narrow down my ideas for my thesis and start a little bit of research! So much for being worried that I'd be out of my depth taking engineering classes. It may seem like a little much for me to basing this tirade on the comments of one guy, but the professors also said this same thing when we had our orientation meeting last week. Coming from them, though, I just assumed it was the typical professor schtick: "Oh, my class really isn't very hard. You'll just have a few problem sets, a few projects, but it's not too much." Well, at Swarthmore profs are usually lying through the teeth when they say this but apparently here they're telling the truth. I guess I'll just see how it turns out. I already found that one of my professors is also interested in the peace and environment connection and I asked him to give me some reading recommendations and contacts with environmental NGOs in Poland.
So a bit about some of the non-cultural things we've been doing in Krakow. Warning to the parental units who read this that I might mention some nightlife-y places, but hey, I'll be 21 in April and you guys have to get used to the idea of me going to bars and clubs sooner or later. :) Thursday night we went to our first dance club, a place called Gorączka, tucked away in the basement of some of the old stone buildings near Rynek Głowny. It seems like all of the clubs in the old city are like this: a narrow hallway leading from the street into the building, then a steep staircase down into a basement space. Gorączka was pretty nice. It had a coatroom (whoo!), a bar, a big dancing room with a stage with benches and a few tables against the walls, and then a different section that was part cafe and part bar. The DJ was absolutely horrible and played lots of American music with really bad mixes and transitions. It was hilarious and we spent most of the night trying to puzzle out exactly which songs he was mashing together. I found out pretty quickly just how attractive red hair is in a country where it's extremely rare so I quickly befriended a group of 26/27 year-old Polish soldiers who were super nice and looked intimidating. Basically the club was exactly like a Paces party at Swarthmore...too many people in too small a place screaming at each other to be heard over the music. Good times.
Tonight we went to a jazz bar right on Rynek Głowny. Same deal: tiny hallway, narrow twisty stairs, a maze of little basement rooms with a couple of bars and plenty of small tables. We met Viktoria and Gerard there, who'd gone early and gotten a table pretty close to the stage. The music was just ok at first. The band had a great lead guitarist but most of their songs sounded the same. Then after the actual concert...dun dun dun, Gerard asked if he could play the keyboard with them for a set since there was going to be a short jam session. They said yes and he proceeded to completely show them all up. This guy is amazing. The guitarist tried doing a duet-y thing with him and Gerard left him completely in the dust, in a friendly sort of way. He got a huge round of applause when he left the stage and the guitarist wouldn't stop shaking his hand. I should mention that Viktoria had a small party in her room last night to celebrate the end of her exams and there was a bit of a jam there too with a guitar one of her friends had brought, Gerard and a weird little keyboard that he powered by blowing into a plastic tube, and impromptu drummers that passed around a pair of drumsticks Gerard had brought (I drummer and sang!). So it's been a musical weekend. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned the klezmer concert we went to last Tuesday in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter in the city? The band was a trio with an accordion, upright bass, and clarinet. I tried to read the program, which was entirely in Polish, and I think that they're originally from Krakow but have toured pretty much everywhere in Europe. Anyway, the music was amazing and if you don't know what klezmer music is you should look it up. The concert took place in a room of the Galicja Jewish Museum which lent extra meaning to the music since it was being played in the middle of a photographic exhibition on Jewish culture before and after World War II.
Yesterday we went to the Czartorysky Museum which is based on the private collection of members of the Czartoryski family. Not really sure who they are, but I'm reading a book about Eastern European history and there was a Czartoryski in the 1800s who did something important with regard to nationalism and independence from the Austro-Hungarian empire. Anyway, it's your typical museum with beautiful paintings and historical artifacts and well-worth the visit. They've got a Rembrandt landscape ("Landscape with the Good Samaritan") and a DaVinci ("Lady with an Ermine"). After the museum we went to a cafe to warm up (the museum wasn't heated very well and they made us leave our coats in the garderobe) that played Charlie Chaplin films on one of the walls! We kept saying after each film that we were going to leave and not quite making it before the next one would begin...and then of course we had to stay! I was drinking Polish hot chocolate, which is basically liquid fudge. We think they just melt a chocolate bar, maybe add a little milk, and voila. This one had mint syrup in it. :) Yesterday was busy: we also met up with two other American students, one from Williams and one from Grinnell, for dinner at an Indian restaurant. They're really nice so we're planning to hang out with them more. Oh, and we had lunch with a former Swarthmore student who did this program during his sophomore year and is now back in Krakow on a Fulbright scholarship working in the department where we're taking classes! He's really nice too, although he speaks about as much Polish as I do. It's depressing because I'm finding it very hard to practice Polish here and he clearly didn't learn much of the language when he was here 3 years ago. He also says that it's possible to do no work in the engineering classes we're taking here, and still get an A. Apparently the professors will expect as much work from us as we're willing to put into the class, which would be cool if I'd come here expecting to take a semester off but I came here expecting to finish my minor and really learn environmental science and also to narrow down my ideas for my thesis and start a little bit of research! So much for being worried that I'd be out of my depth taking engineering classes. It may seem like a little much for me to basing this tirade on the comments of one guy, but the professors also said this same thing when we had our orientation meeting last week. Coming from them, though, I just assumed it was the typical professor schtick: "Oh, my class really isn't very hard. You'll just have a few problem sets, a few projects, but it's not too much." Well, at Swarthmore profs are usually lying through the teeth when they say this but apparently here they're telling the truth. I guess I'll just see how it turns out. I already found that one of my professors is also interested in the peace and environment connection and I asked him to give me some reading recommendations and contacts with environmental NGOs in Poland.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wieliczka Salt Mine - more pictures, of course...
This is rock salt from the salt mine, which is the only open mining facility in the world working continuously since the Middle Ages. Not much mining goes on today (they just evaporate some of the super-saturated water that can be found in the mine and use it for local consumption) and the mine is supposed to end production in the next year or so and become solely a tourist attraction. It took us three hours to complete the tour of the sections of the mine open to tourists, and our guide said that we had covered only 1% of the total area of the mine! Most of the rock looks kind of like this: blackish greyish due to impurities with white veins of more pure salt. They hand out free samples like this in one of the chambers of the mine.
A picture of the underground restaurant where the tour ends. I think I read that it's the only completely underground restaurant in the world? And it's something like 135 meters under the surface. This place was dug out of the salt...so yeah, that ceiling is rock salt and under the wood floors is rock salt.
Huge banquet hall next to the restaurant, also dug out of salt.
A statue of Goethe made out of rock salt. There are tons of sculptures in the mine that were all chiseled from rock salt by the miners themselves, none by professional artists.
A chandelier made from pure crystal salt. This was in the main chapel (huge!) of the mine. There are 40 or so chapels in the mines because the miners were understandably very religious since they worked in such a dangerous place. Most of them are small chambers dug out of the salt, maybe the size of your average living room but with taller ceilings. I've got a picture of the largest chapel below.
A carving from the main chapel of the mine. I think this is honoring the resurrection of Jesus. All made out of salt, and sculpted by your average miner.
A salty version of "The Last Supper." It's amazing that the miner that did this could get the kind of depth he did.
A shot of the main chapel (all made out of salt) from the top of the stairs leading down into it. All of the chandeliers are made from the pure salt. This whole place was made by three miners. It's a lot newer than all of the other chapels in the mine, most of which date from the Middle Ages up through the 18th century. This one was made by miners in the first half of the 20th.
Passage through the salt.
A sculpture of one of the dwarves that miners thought lived in the mines. They were very superstitious and believed that there were dwarves that would help them mine the salt and keep them safe.
A shot down through the mine as we walked down the stairs from level 1 (about 60 meters below ground) to level 2 (about 90 meters). We traversed a total of 3 levels (the deepest at 135-ish) out of a total of 13 or so.
Head of Kazimierz the Great, a Polish king from the 1300s. He's kind of a big deal. Made out of salt, like everything else in the mine.
The whiter salt is called "cauliflowers." It gets made when water seeps down through the salt.
Another passage through the mine. That's Rachel and Bradley in the picture.
Nicholas Copernicus! Or Mikolaj Kopernik, as his name really was in his native Polish. He attended the university where we're taking our language classes (the Jagiellonian). He visited the mine as a tourist in the 1500s. The mine was already open for tourism (though only for the rich and famous) way back then.
So visiting the mine was pretty amazing. All the salt is the remains of the ocean that used to cover this part of Europe and evaporated who knows how many millions of years ago. Salt was apparently really important in the Middle Ages and the centuries that followed - our tour guide said that at the height of Poland's power (so the end of the Middle Ages through the Renaissance), 70 miners worked the mine and generated one third of the national income. Salt was more precious and valuable than gold. Pretty cool, huh? When we first got down in the mine, the guide said that if we didn't believe that all this black and gray-ish rock was really salt, we could lick the walls...super disgusting. You can actually see the places where the salt is worn and smooth-looking from people licking it. I did lick the little hunk of salt I got for free, just to check. It was super salty! I bought a candle-holder made out pink-ish salt and now I'm tempted to rub a little off every time I make pasta since I still haven't gotten around to buying some at the supermarket yet.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
My room in Dom Studencki Piast, where I'll be living until June! It's supposed to be a double but I've got it to myself so I can use that bed under the window as a couch! The room us pretty tiny (by Swarthmore dorm standards). I'm standing against the door, which leads out into a foyer with doors to Rachel's room and the bathroom which the 2 of us share. To the right of the picture and right next to the window is a door leading to a balcony to the right of my room. Rachel's room also opens onto it. It's a nice balcony and big enough for some chairs in the summer, but a family of pigeons has a nest on the floor in one corner! We would get rid of it and clean the balcony except that the pigeons have two eggs...so we can't. But we get cute baby birds in a few months!
View of my room from the balcony door.
Electric "icicles" hanging in some of the trees downtown. They also have very pretty white-blue electric Christmas lights in beautiful shapes mimicking water in the fountains downtown, since they can't have the water running in the dead of winter.
The oldest building of Jagiellonian University, the school where we take our language class this semester.
The Bishop's Palace where Pope John Paul lived when he was a Bishop in Krakow. There's a picture of him in the window above the arch because this is where he stayed every time he visited the city after becoming Pope. After leading masses, he would come back to the Palace and talk to Krakowians from the window.
A statue of the Wawel dragon! It supposedly lived in the cave you can see down the hill to the left of the statue in the Middle Ages. There a couple stories about it. The most official one according to the tour guide who took us around Wawel Hill is that a noble (I forget exactly what he was) in 1000 or so managed to slay the dragon and because of this was made the first King.
The dragon is on the bank of the Wisła River below Wawel Hill, where the Wawel castle and cathedral are located. Wawel is where the rulers of Poland lived for hundreds of years when Krakow was the capital of the country until 1596, when the capital was moved to Warsaw. The Cathedral is a major symbol of Polish nationalism.
Statue of Pope John Paul II outside the Wawel Cathedral, where he was Bishop before becoming Pope. He also led his first mass ever in 1946 at one of the altars in this cathedral.
The door leading into the cathedral. There are some bones that you can see hanging to the left of the door that were uncovered in the area. The really long curved one is a mammoth bone, but legend has it that it's a bone of the Wawel dragon. There are two other bones that are part of the jawbone of a whale from millions of years ago and are also supposed to be the bones of the dragon. Legend also says that everything is ok as long as the bones are hanging next to the cathedral door. If they ever come down, though...Poland will be destroyed and the world will end. Whooey.
More pictures in the post below! I confused myself with all the windows that I had open and ended up making two posts by mistake...oh well!
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