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.
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