Welcome to the Wyatt Exploration trip for 2010! Our theme is "Poland Between East and West." On May 3rd, 12 UM-Flint students, 3 faculty and I are headed for Krakow, ancient capital of the kingdom of Poland (before the Crown joined with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Warsaw seemed a more logical location). We'll be in Krakow May 5 to 17. We have a great itinerary planned and I really excited and curious to see how students enjoy Poland!

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Krakow 2010 in retrospect

Finishing up our Wyatt travel blog, it's a joy to find pictures like these!  Here's our group, May 10, 2010---15 students, 3 faculty, one friend all seated beneath the monument to Adam Mickiewicz on Krakow's Market Square.  Mickiewicz is Poland's national poet, a romantic 19th century bard and advocate of freedom. And fittingly for this group, he was a son of the old Commonwealth: born in Lithuania, lived in Russia and France, died in Istanbul during a cholera epidemic while organizing a Legion to fight against Russia in the Crimean War.
So here are some American sons and daughters of many nations who have traveled to Krakow to experience a place and history that at first seemed distant from their Michigan homes.  This picture shows how comfortable and happy they are to be there---and they want to go back!

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Day 11: Dunajec raft ride

Saturday, May 15---the Dunajec raft ride or "splyw nad Dunajcem" is the last excursion for us; it's one of the obligatory things to do when visiting the Krakow region.  It's about an hour's ride to the Dunajec, a branch of the Vistula.
The wood rafts are made of sections that are lashed together.  As many as 10 or 11 people can bobble along the river and view the protected landscape of the Pieniny National Park. The park is a great place to hike; none of the trails in this limestone formation is very difficult.  In Polish and mountain tradition, all trails are marked by color for difficulty.  Years ago, I climbed Trzy korony ("Three Crowns).


You can see this region and the rafting schedule at http://www.flisacy.com.pl/page,27

Two raftsmen or flisacy pole each raft--one fore and one aft---along the current. Their felt, shell ringed hat iresembles that worn by the gorale or mountaineers in the Tatras. It's a local business (I care barely understand the flisaks' dialect) and the raftsmen have their own association or union. The Dunajec river divides Poland from Slovakia and so we can look across at our right onto the Slovak side and see a buggy driver there.
Today the river is very high due to all the rain we've had since we arrived on May 5. Fearing the worst, I bought plastic rain capes in Krakow for our entire group. So we are prepared.

Because the current is swifter than usual, there's less chat from our head raftsman and less wildlife is visible too. But the steep, forested gorges are beautiful.  We end up, after about an hour and a half of twists and turns, at the mountain resort town of Szczawnica where the raftsmen breakdown the raft and transport it back to the launch  point and our van meets for the return to Krakow.  The van ride to Krakow (about 100 km) goes through beautiful countryside; the main town in the area is Nowy Targ (traditionally the place to buy sheepskin jackets). The land is farmed in the long, narrow traditional strips, but houses seem fairly prosperous.  Commerialism has made inroads of course, but tourism is an economic mainstay.  Houses along the road advertize rooms for vacationers.
And after two hours rafting in the rain in the mountains, what do you do? You stop in for mountaineer's tea or goralska herbata, that is, hot tea and a shot of cherry liqueur (wisniowka).

Friday, May 14, 2010

Day 10: Center for European Studies with Prof. Magdalena Gora, "Poland and the EU"

Friday, May 14---This is our last lecture at the Center for European Studies on Garbarska St. We are in the reading room and our lecturer today is Dr. Magdalena Gora.  And the topic is appropriate: Poland in the European Union.  Magda rapidly and energetically leads us through powerpoint slides that trace Poland's historic links with western Europe. The main part of the lecture focuses on 2 aspects of Poland's post-World War II situation:  the persons and events that shaped Poland's relation to West Germany in communist times and the stages of Poland's status in the EU since acceptance in 2004. 

Like Dr. Gawron, Dr. Gora exemplifies the best teaching that students can experience in Krakow. These lectures were so good that two of our Wyatt students are interested in returning to Krakow for the MA programmes the Center for European Studies offers for students studying in English. http://www.ces.uj.edu.pl/european/european.htm
Here's the Garbarska Street building that's the home of the Center where we came for lectures.  It is an old building that has been renovated.  I remember it very well, because years ago when I was a student in Krakow I used a University cafeteria that was in the basement!. 

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Swiatowid and the Archeological Museum of Krakow

This limestone pillar is an idol called "Swiatowid," and it's a replica a 9th century idol, called the Zbruch idol (because it was found in 1848 in the river Zbruch, an offshoot of the Dniester, in Podolia or Ukraine).  Dr. Ellis took this picture. The original idol is here in Krakow's archeological museum on Poselska Street, between the Rynek and the Wawel.  Some of the students went to there during a Sunday  free afternoon, and others went later on their recommendation.
We always think of Poland as a Christian state, intensely Catholic, and that's historically true, but pagan religions were an important part of Polish, Slavic, and Baltic prehistory. We know about them from the early Christian missionaries (who described them as they were trying to root them out).  
Swiatowid was a god of war and other important things like fertility; his pillar has 4 sides (he can see all directions; pretty smart, especially in wartime).  There are other similar Swiatowid idols throughout Poland. Here's a link to the Museum's website (alas, only in Polish but you can look at the pictures!)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Nowa Huta, Part 2

Arka Pana or the Ark of the Lord, the church in Nowa Huta.  Of course, when the socialist state of People's Poland (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, affectionately known as "PRL") decided to construct Nowa Huta there was no provision for a church.  Small churches and even a Cistercian monastery were in the area where several villages were (taken over by the communist authorities). The workers for the new heavy industry came primarily from the countryside and so they were devout Catholics. The state forbade the construction of new churches and meantime those who lived in Nowa Huta overflowed the little churches left there and heard mass standing in the outdoors.  So a plan emerged to build an addition to one of the churches, and this is what the "addition" turned out to be:  a huge, completely modern church similar in architecture to a church designed in France by Le Corbusier. The negotiations between the church and the government all transpired while Karol Woytyla was archbishop of Krakow. Aside from the architects and other professionals needed, all the construction was done by the Nowa Huta steel workers themselves.  Not surprising to those of us from Flint who know the talents of skilled trades!

Day 8: Crazy Communism! or Nowa Huta, Part 1

Wednesday, May 12---
Students went to Nowa Huta (means "New Foundry") today---the city near Krakow built under communism to house the workers at the Lenin Steelworks. The city was designed for the new socialist worker and intended to counteract the traditionally bourgeois Krakow.  You can get to Nowa Huta (today part of the city of Krakow) by tram or bus, but a group of enterprising young organizers has developed a "Crazy Communism" tour using a "fleet" of Trabants, the old East German  produced in the late 1950s through the 1980s.  Notoriously polluting, the Trabis survived---semi-plastic bodies, simple motors---even though Czech Skodas, Yugoslav Yugos, and then Polski Fiats became available.  
Nowa Huta was constructed on some of the best and most fertile land in the area.  As a new city, the Nowa Huta layout is rational and geometric, with broad avenues and circular intersections.  But the monumental buildings are quasi-Renaissance style with scrolling parapets.  The housing districts had shops, schools and day care for the workers' families and the apartments themselves were larger than in Krakow.  In communist days, the shops were better supplied than in Krakow too.  Workers in Nowa Huta were strong supporters of Solidarity. After the fall of communism,  the old, heavy industry like the Lenin Steelworks collapsed.  It's now  owned by Mittal, a Rotterdam
firm.  
People are coming back to Nowa Huta, especially the young and artists. The tour includes a visit to a typical, socialist era apartment: Pete, Jordan, Chris, Tony, Michelle, and Kim are there in the living room---about the maximum number of people for a party!
To see the most famous movie about the building of Nowa Huta in the 1950s, go to the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075902/
This move is "Man of Marble" directed by Andrzej Wajda





Tadeusz Kosciuszko

Here he is, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, one of my favorite heroes and one with a long and interesting life, one whom our American students need to know better. This dramatic statue greets us on the left as we climb the hill to the Wawel.  Kosciuszko had studied military science in France, and thoroughly absorbed Enlightenment liberalism there. He then served 7 years in the American revolutionary army, returned to Europe and fought the Russians in Poland.  In 1794 here in Krakow on the Market Square he swore an oath to free the peasants who would fight with him against the Russians. The Polish text reads:  "On this spot Tadeusz Kosciuszko took an oath to the Polish nation." He had some battle victories, but of course the uprising was defeated in the end; Kosciuszko was imprisoned in Russia, and finally released.  He lived out the rest of his life in Switzerland, suspicious of Napoleon, but never losing hope in Poland's rebirth.  We cross the Market Square practically each day with the students, but today I gave them a little lecture about this spot, a daily reminder of Kosciuszko's faithfulness to freedom.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Balaton

We ate lunch on our ride back to Krakow from Auschwitz and the rest of the afternoon students had free.  It takes time to absorb the Auschwitz experience.  The deeper effect of the visit may only emerge much later at home when students show family and friends their pictures.
So for dinner this evening I chose a place that's tried and true, an older and still dependable restaurant on Grodzka street, just a block from the Rynek: the Hungarian restaurant Balaton---named for a lake in Hungary.  This restaurant was one of the better ones during the Communist decades, known for spicy food and endless bottles of Egri Bikaver, a Hungarian red.  It's still here, less elegant by today's standards; its metal-framed front windows and lucite door handle date back to the 1970s and the interior is the same, with red and green placemats.  But Balaton is friendly and not crowded (tourists go to newer, Italian style places). perhaps just happy to have survived and to have us. It's also early (you can see that it's light outside), so even as a large group of 15 we get great service. Chris (above, on the left) is delighted; his family is Hungarian.  Our waitress suggests some reliable dishes and one, of course, is goulash which comes to the table in its little chafing dish. Everything else is great too.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

We ride a mini-bus a couple of kilometers across a bridge to Auschwitz II-Birkenau.  This camp came into existence in fall of 1941, a monumental addition to Kl I and built by prisoner labor from Auschwitz I. The sick from Auschwitz I were transported to death here too. The  trains ended at the ramp, transports of human cargo were divided left and right---the vast majority of people going directly to eventually 4 huge gas chambers and crematoria. Birkenau was the major center for the extermination of the European Jews. The smaller number that survived a preliminary "selection" at the ramp went to slave labor, suffering extreme heat and cold crowded in the bunks of wooden barracks, dying from starvation, disease and work.
Today, on a May morning, the terrain is a deceptively quiet, low-laying plain (the Germans had cleared the villages and expelled the Polish population). Some students have difficulty grasping what went on here. I remind them to imagine this open space roiling with people---prisoners, guards, dogs moving at a fever pitch when each transport arrived, a shrieking and crying din, and then suddenly quiet until the next transport arrived. Day and night, hot summer and freezing winter. 
Plaques at the site of the crematoria memorialize those who perished here; in communist times, the language was "victims of fascism". Today the language recognizes that the majority of victims suffered because they were Jews, regardless of country of origin. 

Day 7: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Tuesday, May 11--- Auschwitz-Birkenau is a major point on our group's itinerary. Prof. Edyta Gawron and I had discussed when the students should go and we'd agreed: after students had learned about the long history of Jewish settlement in Poland and had walked the Kazimierz district in Krakow.  We enter the old camp, Kl I (Konzentrationslager I) or Auschwitz I, under the cynical motto of all the camps.
It's only about 9:30 am, but many groups are ahead of us---each with its own language guide. I'm impressed by each visit (this is my 4th) at the cadre of docents and how well trained they are. We step onto the poplar-lined paths that chart the visitors' route through the former World War I Polish army barracks the Nazis commandeered in spring of 1940, just months after invading Poland.  The solidity of the concrete columns of double electrical fencing show how hopeless was the idea of escape. 
The block house corridor walls are lined with the photos of inmates, male and female, young and old; these were the early prisoners whose passing utility as forced labor warranted camera and tattoo.  Their eyes look out at a camera as they were months before death, perhaps a year or more if they were stronger. Outside is the execution courtyard wall, below are solitary confinement, standing cells.  More blocks and corridors lead to rooms where we peer through glass at mounds of now gray-brown utensils, glasses, shoes, a small fraction of the tons of objects hoarded here for use in the Reich.  Cream and black prayer shawls in soft, fine wool hang immobile on rods---they would have covered swaying shoulders. 
We walk past past other landmarks---guard boxes, the kitchen, a gallows, the commendant's residence, a small, modest villa with flower beds, and finally reach the spot to the right of the old crematorium (later replaced by 4 crematoria when Birkenau was developed); here, after trial, Rudolf Franz Hoess was hanged in 1947.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Day 6: Auditorium Maximum of Jagiellonian University

Monday, May 10---Rain all day, at times just pouring, and our entire group needs to get down Krupnicza street, several long blocks from the Rynek, to a new Jagiellonian University building called "Auditorium maximum."  Since I am giving the lecture, we've decided to give up our umbrellas and get cabs at Atrium, our hotel.  The reception desk staff is wonderful; a couple of phone calls and then three mini-van cabs does it!
This new (opened in 2005) building is really part of a complex of buildings that includes a 1000 seat auditorium and was built together with European Union funds.  It's state of the art.  Anyway, this was my opportunity to "give back" to Jagiellonian University's Center for European Studies by giving a lecture about the writing of Henryk Grynberg.  Some Center Students came so this was a chance for our UM-Flint students to talk to the masters' level students studying here in Krakow.  And two of our students, Chris and Michelle, want to come back here to study! Here's the Center's website http://www.ces.uj.edu.pl/ou

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Sunday Dinner at Del papa

Here we all are at Del papa---ready to choose our first courses and second courses and our wine! We learned that "karafka" means a half carafe (not everyone drinks wine).  Conversing with our servers, asking questions, discussing the details of food is all part of the evening.  Everything is cooked to order so dining is leisurely (a new experience for some!) but the results are well worth waiting for.  Here's a sample---

More on Day 5 --- Sunday in Krakow

Well, today we're doing some typically Sunday things in Krakow: go out for a stroll, go to a museum, and have a lovely evening meal. Alas, it's been mostly drizzling and not a great day for the usual Sunday stroll (our sunniest day so far was yesterday while we were deep in the mind in Wieliczka!).  So after we visited the Wawel Cathedral we went back down into town to the Wyspianski museum in the Szolayski house which is a part of the National Museum in Krakow.  There's a great special exhibit for May:  "Sarmatism: A Dream of Power." Sarmatism defines the culture and mindset of the 17th century Polish gentry---former knights now become landowners.  
After their winged cavalry defeated the Turks at Vienna in 1683, these noblemen promptly turned around and adopted numerous Turkish elements as we see in this display of portraits, clothing, weapons.  Richly emboidered silk sashes, gold buttons, soft boots all in Turkish style---incredible wealth and display of swashbuckling Sapiehas, Rzewuskis, Tarnowskis, Czarneckis and Sanguszkos. 

Some of us took a break for tea and cake at the cafe Jama Michalika on Florianska St., a Krakow landmark from the turn of the 20th century with its cabaret, The Green Balloon (Zielony balonik).  Always full of tourist visitors, the service isn't great but the Young Poland ("Mloda Polska") atmosphere/decor is historic:  deep green and mahogany furnishings in Secessionist designs.    



For dinner we went to "Del papa" on sw. Tomasza or St. Thomas street alongside Plac Szczepanski.  Del papa is one of the quieter Italian restaurants, fewer tourists come here than the more well-known Miod Malina or Pod Aniolami. Its quality has helped it survive for several years. It's a nice spot late in the evening for just a drink too. Good menu with beautiful presentation. We have a long banquet table; our group is making some progress with dining skills: learning how to order, ask questions, discuss the history of foods.  Why is the Polish-Italian connection so natural and enduring?  Meals are a surprisingly important component of this Polish exploration.

Day 5: Wawel Cathedral

The Cathedral of Sts. Stanislaus and Wenceslaus, on the Wawel hill, is the place where poets and kings and bishops are buried. The Cathedral dates from the year 1000 when Krakow became a bishopic.  All of Polish history is somehow reflected here.  Barbara leads us up the steps beneath the great mammoth bone, and then we enter the main nave of the Cathedral with the huge silver sarcophagus of St. Stanislaus under a canopy directly ahead. On the right and left are sarcophagi of King Ladislaus Jagiellon and Ladislaus of Varna.  Tapestries  hang from the arches.  It's the "mother of churches" in Poland and the coronation cathedral, but the church is not that large.  We make our way around beginning at the left, looking at the chapels that line the side naves. We see Queen Jadwiga's altar, the Sigismund chapel, the white marble sarcophagus of Queen Jadwiga, and several dozen other chapels and monuments.  Then most the group climbs to the top of the bell tower (touching the clapper of the bell named "Zygmunt" for good luck).  Then we go down through the crypts below: first, underneth a heavy iron door, the poets (Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Norwid) and then the crypt of St. Leonard (the oldest part of the cathedral), and (after many other crypts), that of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, and the urn with soil from Katyn. Pilsudski is important in Polish history and not to be dismissed as a dictator. From Lithuania, he appreciated Old Poland of many ethnicities including the Jews (who mourned deeply at his death). His notion of a multi-cultural Polish state that included Wilno (Vilnius) and Lwow (L'viv) had outlived its time.  After 1945, Poland was moved westward and the eastern borderlands had their fates entwined with the Soviet Union.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Day 4: Wieliczka Salt Mine



The Wieliczka Salt Mine just outside Krakow is one of the most popular tourist attractions in southern Poland. People always say, "salt mine, we're going to a salt mine?"  Then they get in and it's amazing and fascinating. On this first really sunny day in Krakow, we set off in our van. 
Wieliczka is the only salt mine in Europe that has been continuously operating since the Middle Ages.  Salt was an incredible resource in the past and made the Polish kingdom wealthy.
Our uniformed guide with miner's helmet (and speaking perfect English) leads us down into the mine by a long flight of 378 wooden steps and then through corridors of salt to various chambers. It's a working mine, but most salt today comes from Bochnia. Of the 300 km of tunnels, we only go through 3.5 km, but it seems endless. Each chamber has salt carvings by the miners, self-taught artist sculptors.  The sculptures are figures and scenes from Polish history, and especially saints, like St. Kinga considered the foundress of the mine.  Some scenes show the development of mining technology. The salt mine is also a sanatorium for people with lung diseases.  The final chamber is an enormous chapel, with altar and wall scenes, and a huge chandelier of salt.  Here's the sculpture of Pope John Paul II.
After our day in Wieliczka we ate dinner at Chlopskie Jadlo, a successful chain of restaurants in Poland that features "Old Polish" style cooking and presentation.  Below is the meat board---beef, pork, duck---and potatoes cooked various ways, and beneath is "after"; demolished! 

Friday, May 7, 2010

Day 3: Center for European Studies and Prof. Edyta Gawron


Friday, May 7---We headed out early to Garbarska street, a short walk from our hotel for a lecture at the Center for European Studies by Prof. Edyta Gawron on the history of Jews in Poland and Krakow. This Center is part of Jagiellonian University, founded in 1364, and the most famous educational institution in Krakow. You can see The Center website at http://www.ces.uj.edu.pl/index.htm

Seated around a large seminar table, with powerpoint up and our notebooks out, we listened for nearly 2 hours as Prof. Gawron described the earliest traces of Jewish life in Kalisz, Wroclaw, and Krakow, town privileges, and the Sejm czteriech ziem or Parliament of the Four Lands.  By the 19th century (Prof. Gawron's specialty), Jews faced the challenges of national independence, the progressive Haskalah, and the mystical movement of Hasidism.  Although by the end of the 19th century, hope in Zionism and emigration replaced assimilation, the Jewish population in Poland grew dramaticallly; by 1939 Jews constituted a large minority, 10% or more of the interwar Second Republic.   With German Nazi occupation in 1939, ghettos were immediately established; the Einsatzgruppen, fewer than 400,000 killed 2 million people. Prof. Gawron dealt with many other 19th and 20th cen. issues and questions: Jewish political parties, the "new Jewish man," Pilsudski, the immigration act of 1924 and the British White Paper, the fear of those few who survived and returned after the war.  Today Krakow has 160 Jews in the single active congregation, out of 65,000 (1/4) of Krakow's population in 1939.

After a coffee break in the cafe downstairs, we walked along the Planty gardens that ring the Old Town to the Jewish quarter in Kazimierz.  We stopped at the Reform Tempel synagogue in Miodowa St., built in Austrian times, and now renovated, where we viewed its beautiful Moorish revival interior.  After walking Szeroka St. and viewing the Remuh and Old Synagoues, the mikvah (ritual bath), and old slaughterhouse, we had a late lunch at Nova, a large modern restaurant. Some of the students walked on with Edyta to the ghetto area in Podgorze and Oskar Schindler's factory. Others dispersed and walked back to Atrium---still drizzle and rain.