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!

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).

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!. 

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!)

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.