Poland

Our time in Poland was a gripping juxtaposition of tragedy, annoyance, and contagious giggles. We entered the country and immediately went to Auschwitz, an interesting choice for a first stop, a real mood setter, a real kick in the pants after a night of befriending Aussies and discussing topics like fruit juice and ‘who wore it better’. Our tour guide through Auschwitz was a tiny Polish woman with bright orange hair and a thick Slavic accent. I couldn’t understand a dern thing she said but she looked at you intently while she spoke of the horrors of the past and that’s no time to be caught off in distant thought or intent on pushing back your cuticles. There were a few troubles here on this day. For starters, a mob of 50 kids around a tiny, incomprehensible woman made for a difficult situation. You couldn’t get close enough to hear her or translate her garbled tongue. If you did get close enough you could almost see the holocaust playing out on a filmstrip in her shiny eyeballs. She had sad, pained eyes and I worried that anyone the group would offend her by looking away or wandering off while she was talking.

Trouble number two was that the little orange lady was a bit long-winded. By all means, pour your heart out, BUT there were other tour groups behind us and we were holding up traffic. Now I know I’m not the only person who noticed the pile up forming behind us but the larger it grew the more antsy I became. I started dancing around in place, scooting forward an inch at a time hoping it would push our guide along. I find it incredibly burdensome to hold up other humans in any capacity. Should I ever crash my car on a busy highway and it takes the Jaws of Life to carve me out, I’m certain I would still shimmy out the window and use that 'Baby Trapped Under a Car', Mom adrenaline to push my totaled vehicle to the side of the road with my broken leg dragging behind me. Wouldn’t want to hold up traffic. Another great example is airport security. All those angry humans waiting on me to disrobe, unpack my bags, strike an awkward pose, and then put myself back together again… I’m so terrified of being an airport nuisance that I take extreme measures to blow through there like a seasoned pilot with a security clearance, but that’s a tale for another time.

So I was getting antsy and I started to wander a few steps past the guide. A few kids took my lead and the little lady would then walk backwards while she spoke and allow for more groups to come in. It settled my nerves for the next three minutes of her muddled spiel. Around this time, trouble number three set in. It was really hot that day and Aushwitz is… like… not air conditioned? Yes, yes. I know. Of all the places in the world were I’m disgruntled for being hot, this is not the place to complain. “Oh you’re hot here? I’m so sorry you’re uncomfortable. Perhaps you’d like to lay down over in the human oven for a few minutes!” So I didn’t say anything but when we left the shade of the Auschwitz buildings and ventured over to the open field that is Birkenau, I really started to get woozy.

So far, I had learned nothing about the concentration camps. This is partially because this was a heavily covered topic in school and I’ve read an awful lot about it but mostly it was because I couldn’t understand the Polish woman. No one could and all of us shot glances of annoyance and guilt at each other for the duration of the two and a half hour tour. I had hoped that visiting would not only make it feel more real but also offer some new information. The order and normal appearance of the buildings in Auschwitz made it look less like a death camp and more like a campus of buildings, each designated for a different faculty head. Birkenau was a big empty field with train tracks running through it and a few piles of rubbled stone.

While we were walking farther into the sunny field, I realized this venture wasn’t going to pan out how I hoped and more importantly to me at the time, I’m going to faint soon. If you’re wondering where Ellen is while this is happening, well I’m happy to tell you that she spent the duration of her visit through Auschwitz flirting with an attractive, Lebanese paramedic. It wasn’t until Bradley came up to her and said, “Ey, where’s ya sistah?” that she came to and noticed that I wasn’t with the group anymore. I watched her, Bradley, and the paramedic scan the field for me. I was hiding in a narrow strip of shade created by an electrical pole near the train tracks. I stood sideways, sucking in my stomach to keep in line with the ribbon of shade. To me, it was a last resort and a godsend. To anyone who didn’t know me, I assumed I looked like a social recluse or lousy spy with a Clouseua-like ineptitude. 

I smiled and waved at them when they finally noticed me.

“She must be too hot.” Ellen said and she shrugged and flipped her hair back towards the paramedic. A half dozen or so people became concerned when Ellen told them I’m a fainter. The little orange guide noticed the commotion and shot an irritated glance our way. I spent the next hour skirting around the tour group to the next small patch of shade I could find. I was always at least twenty yards away from the group and the guide could see me loitering around and blatantly avoiding her tour. She looked at me a shrugged once when she walked past a trash can and found me squatting behind it. Her shrug nearly killed me. “I can explain!” I wanted to shout but I was too weak and embarrassed. I had been so concerned that some fool in my tour group would offend this woman with disregard and indifference and it turned out to be me. I made it though the tour with the help of an Aussie fella named James that gave me a bottle of water and stood behind barrels with me until the tour ended.

Later that day we drove into Krakow where we spent two nights. We had a peirogi dinner, visited a giant salt mine, and went out dancing with our new friends. The Wieliczka Salt Mine is one of the world’s oldest mines and only stopped production back in 2007. We ventured over a thousand feet down (by stairs) and wandered all through the corridors and chambers. There’s a salty cathedral way down there where they have Mass every Sunday. Bradley was in my tour group and he convinced me to lick various walls (they all had different flavors) and taste the salty brine water being pumped through old wooden buckets. It was so salty it burned. At the end of the tour, our guide, Sylvester, crammed fifteen of us into a rickety elevator for six and rocketed us up one thousand feet to the surface. Each of us agreed that it was the scariest forty seconds of our lives.

That night a group of us went to a local club and danced the hours away. Ellen and I decided to leave around 2am and we gathered up Bradley, James, and four other fellas and tried to navigate back to our hotel. We got very lost. We wandered in circles in a really dark city park and had to stop often to let the fellas go to the bathroom. When we finally recognized a road home, they decided they were hungry and so we stopped for pizza slices and sodas. We made it back to our hotel at 4:30 and had to be up and on the bus by 6:30 for a ten hour ride into Budapest.