My trail of criminal acts stretches across Europe

I can’t believe we’ve only had Day One of what will be 7 days of World War II sites. It’s hard to see these places and not feel incredible anger and a bit of vulnerability for being Jewish. Krakow is full of preserved memories and homages to the plight of the Jewish people killed here and in nearby cities. We walked from our apartment in the Old Town to Oskar Schindler’s Factory Museum, which is one of the best museums I have toured and I am almost always the first to complain in a museum setting, be it art, history, whatever. But this place shared the plight of the Jews of Krakow through factual data, pictures and well-placed sensory interactive experiences…rooms that turned dark to convey the terror of the Jews as they had to walk forward, floors that turned from concrete to squishy mat material to convey their lack of grounding in the world and hallways that turned suddenly to rock floors surrounded by barbed wire walls to show their imprisonment. It was just staggering to walk through. I didn’t take many pictures but I did take this one: it’s a cigarette holder made of human skin. No further detail about ownership or creation was offered but boy did I stare at it for a long time.

We also toured the Underground City – thousands of years of Krakow’s history, excavated under the floor of the main square, too many churches to count and a synagogue or two. Here’s my favorite – St. Mary’s on the main square. It’s painted dozens of shades of blue inside and filled with stained glass. I got in trouble for taking this picture because I had failed to pay the $1 extra photo fee but he let me go without making me delete the picture.

Krakow is an interesting mix of Communist and Capitalist in terms of public buildings and general feel. The side streets are full of dirty old buildings, stained from coal and soot, I guess and the main square area has been cleansed and beautified and is lively at all hours of the day. I like the contrast. Here’s a shot of the main square with St. Mary’s cathedral:

And here’s a shot of a building I really liked over by the old Ghetto.

We’re having a great time. We’re a little sleep-deprived and so I’m going to cut this short tonight and head to bed. I had a lot of fun today, trying to teach Ron to say “zloty”, which is the currency here. I’m not sure where we stand with our progress but I knocked my silverware off the table at dinner as I was laughing so hard. He likewise has trouble with each and every street name and so listening to him try to read the map to me as we transit around makes it hard to focus on our actual routing. He seems to use a system of pronouncing the first 3 or 4 letters and then simply making up the rest.

So that he’s not offended that I’m making fun of him, I will also reveal here that I got stopped by a transit worker at the Birmingham train station for trying to leave the station without punching through with my ticket by pretending I had a ticket. In my defense, I feel the entire thing was the fault of British Rail, as the train we rode on was super hot due to an air conditioning malfunction and therefore I fell asleep during my ride. And while I was asleep, the ticket fell to the ground and I forgot about it, necessitating my criminal act. I apologize to the British government. And to the Polish government for the theft of the photo.

Finally, here’s my two favorite shots of the day. These are potatoes we bought for about $2 from a street vendor, swimming in oil and onions and I hope to buy them again tomorrow and I won’t be sharing an order with Ron this time:

And the toilet paper at the Schindler museum. Does the picture do any justice to the incredible coarseness of this stuff? I’ve never seen toilet paper like this – not in Egypt, China…I actually think it might have been an intended part of the experience. Tomorrow we head to Auschwitz.