HOME!

Home at last!  Its been a quick 11 weeks, but I am glad to be back where I speak the language and know whats going on most of the time.  

I thought driving would be weird but its just like getting back on a bike!  (Which Kate and I did the last day, we rented bikes and bikes around a park, it was great fun!)

Tomorrow I go back to Augie for a couple days, it will be great to see everyone again to say goodbye!

Hope to see everyone this summer!

Kristin

The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music! (Salzburg and Innsbruck)

On a happier note than my last post...

This week we took a class trip to Salzburg, due to scheduling mishaps we were only able to spend a couple hours in Salzburg, so I had to decide between the sound of music tour, a salt mine tour and a brewery tour.  

Interestingly enough, I chose the brewery tour.  I know some of you will be shocked to learn that I didn't go on the SOM tour, but at least I finally saw the movie!  I just didn't want to have to use a Eurail day and tour around outside in the rain.  

My friend Kim's parents know people in the most random places, it turns out they know a man who used to live in Chicago but moved to Salzburg about 20 years ago and works at the Stiegl Brewery.  We got a nice tour of the brewery, including a very humorous video, complete with a genie that had been stuck in a bottle that told us about the brewery.  We had a personal tour, but Herb (the parents friend) kept adding his own parts to the tour and told us more about the brewery than our guide got to, most of the time repeating the same thing she had just said, but we were grateful.  

We then got a nice lunch and got to sample the different kinds of beer they brew.  My favorite was the Rotes Zwickl, which was their bier of the month, an unfiltered reddish beer, not available outside of Salzburg :(  

After our lunch, Herb showed us around Salzburg, including a beautiful Cathedral and a view no tourists get to see.  It was from a spot there the Bishops would have lunch and look over the 18 churches that are in Salzburg, its a pretty devout town, it was a great view to say the least.  

Innsbruck

This weekend Kate and I traveled to Innsbruck.  Friday after we got into town, we walked around the pretty small town (a couple times) and saw the sights, including the "Golden Roof" Maximilian's coffin in a church, there were a bunch of kinda creepy, not all named, statues surrounding him.  After that we went to yet another Cathedral, but it was quite beautiful and decorated.  

We had a fairly early dinner, and we both enjoyed it when the waitress spoke to us in only German, it was very nice that she didn't switch just because it wasn't perfect German.  The older British couple next to us were quite impressed.  

After dinner Kate and I took a stroll and went back to the hotel to play Shanghai before going to bed at the late late hour of 10 pm.  

We got up at 7 to pack for our hiking adventure and went to breakfast at 8, where some Spanish people tried to have a conversation but I failed at speaking Spanish, I don't think it helped that it was before 9 am and I haven't really spoken Spanish in about 2 years.  

We finally set off on our mountain hiking adventure at about 9 am.  We made it to the base camp at 9:10, after taking a slightly scary, and a little exhilarating tram ride.  At the end of our first bit of hiking, 10 minutes to what we might have thought was the beginning I was already out of breathe and thinking I was out of my mind for trying this.  Things got a bit better after we made it to the first "cabin" of our "meadow hike"  I think we took a wrong path to it because there wasn't a lot of meadow, more like weaving through cut trees and up rock, rooted trails.  

After about 2 hours total, we made it to the "second" cabin.  We decided to not go all the way because we would have had to double back to pick up the trail to the next cabin, and we didn't want to waste time or energy.  The journey to the second cabin was clearly on the trail, there were bikers and the trail was made of gravel, but I thought it was still a hard climb, most of the time I was 50 feet behind Kate, who often goes running and has climbed an Alp before in Switzerland, did I mention her legs are also longer than mine?  That seems to help when mountain hiking.  A half an hour more, and we made it to what we thought was the 3rd cabin, but it wasn't.  I am still not sure what it was but the cabin we wanted was really a 5 minute hike through snow, by the way I was only wearing my black tennis shoes I had bought before the trip to Vienna, I knew I should have bought hiking boots.  We made it the the 3rd cabin and were going to set off to the 4th, when I figured out that the steep, rocking climb we were about to take probably wasn't the trail.  I asked for directions, which included lots of confusion and German and finally a translator, who told us to just go back and take the ski lift.  We had been 20 feet from the ski lift when we , mainly Kate, decided that that wasn't the way to go and we should try to find a different way.  At this point in the mountain the trail was still very much covered in snow.  Kate decided to take a picture of me climbing our first bit of snow. 

 See....  Not happy, Kate said I had a look like "I am going to kill her for making me do this!"  I believe her.  

Mind you, this was the first, fairly flat bit of snow we crossed.  We finally took the ski lift like the people told us to do, after laughing at us.  

It was interesting and a bit thrilling to use a ski lift for the first time, let alone with out skis or a snowboard.  

 

We finally made it to the top!  We wanted to go all the way up but it was closed because of the snow so we weren't able to, but we were still about a mile about the base, so I still feel VERY accomplished.  It was probably the most physically demanding and endurance building day I have ever had.  We had lunch on the outside terrace and got sunburned and today Kate and I had a bit of trouble walking, but we actually aren't as sore as we thought we would be, I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow.  

Trip to Krakow and Auschwitz/Birkenau.

Last weekend we took a trip to Krakow and Auschwitz/Birkenau.  I was excited to get to see parts of Poland because I heard it was beautiful and I am Polish.  I, along with many of my classmates were glad, but hesitant to go to Auschwitz because, although it is something everyone should experience in their lifetime, it is also a hard place to visit.  

First Krakow:  It was a beautiful city!!  It still has the old city wall up and you can stroll in parks along the wall.  The town square is the largest in all of Europe and is complete with one of the most decorated Cathedrals I have seen yet!  Every square millimeter was covered with some sort of painting or other decoration.  It definitely put St. Stephan's in Vienna to shame.  In the middle of the square stands an old textile trading center, now full of merchants selling souvenirs.  surrounding the interior of the square are many, many restaurants and cafes.  I wish Vienna had a central area like it, it was a joy to stroll around and people watch.  

The next day we packed up and headed on an hour bus ride to the Auschwitz complex.  

Pulling in to Auschwitz 1 to start our tour was a lot like pulling in to Versailles in Paris, or even Six Flags in Gurnee.  There was a large parking lot and you don't really see any buildings at first.  As we ventured in and collected our headphones for our guided tour I could see a sculpture depicting a person trying to cross over barbed wire, I knew things weren't going to be easy from then on out.  Crossing through the main gate to Auschwitz 1 the sign reads "Arbeit Macht Frei"  which means work sets you free, which is pretty ironic seeing as how they forced them to work and they would never be free for it.  

We saw where they had originally kept the first prisoners, Polish citizens who the Nazi's deemed as dangerous to their cause, basically people who would fight against the Nazi's.

The hardest part of all was Birkenau, a couple kilometers outside of Auschwitz 1.  

Birkenau is the camp that is recreated for movies about Auschwitz, it was the camp where they were sent to be sorted, and from there either killed immediately or worked to death.  

It seems much larger than Auschwitz and has two gas chambers/crematoriums, both at least twice the size of Auschwitz's.  

We saw what was left of part of the men's camp, a fairly large building, but certainly not large enough for the 400+ men that would "sleep" there, with 4-6 men per bed and bunk beds that were triple bunk beds, so each bed area (about the size of a horse stall) could hold up to 18 people.

We saw the bathroom area, in another building with 200 holes in concrete that were as close to a toilet that existed, they were allowed to use it 2 times a day, and many would often suffer from intestinal issues because their diet consisted of boiled water with vegetables in it, NO meat.  We were told that having the job of cleaning the bathrooms was one of the best jobs to have because they go to be indoors, and use bathrooms whenever they wanted, the guards were also a bit lax on yelling at them, so it was much better than having a hard labor job in the middle of a Polish winter wearing thin uniforms, about as warm as summer pajamas.  They would be punished if they put paper or anything else in their uniforms to try to keep warm.  One of their punishments included standing in the space of a telephone booth with 3 other people for the night, and working the next day.  Obviously this was uncomfortable and they did not get much sleep.  

After going through Auschwitz I began to just become numb from seeing everything, I would have periods of extreme sadness or anger, like when I saw a pair of cowboy boots that reminded me of a pair I had when I was young, but sitting at the far end of Birkenau, my back to the monument, seeing the camp in its entirety with the gas chambers on either side of me looking at the main camp I pictured all the movies I had seen about the camp and imagined being pulled apart from my family, never to see them again, not knowing if i would be immediately killed or be forced to work to death, all while vicious dogs bark at me and hate-ridden Nazis and German guards yell at me.  I got a little emotional.  It was also interesting to see my classmates, going through similar emotions and the same experiences all sitting on the same steps, all near each other but not close enough to have to talk, or put into words what we were all truly feeling.  

Whatever emotion you may feel while reading this, I can tell you, is not as strong as seeing, I think that EVERYONE should see it in their lifetime, no movie or pictures do it justice.  I decided to take one picture or the entire camp complex, and that was the sign above the gate at Auschwitz 1.  The pictures I see that my friends took aren't as clear or broad as the ones that are still vivid in my head, there were also many times we couldn't take pictures, (inside the museum, with the shoes, hair and belongings of the people who were taken there)  but I still have them in my head, and will forever.  

I feel like people always see something about the Holocaust and say we should never let it happen again, but it is, even today in places like Darfur, and others that aren't even televised and brought to the attention of the masses.  

As for the Holocaust deniers, well, I probably shouldn't type the words I have for them...