Summer Trip Days 11-12: Travel to Warsaw and on to Moscow

We had purchased our tickets to take the train to Warsaw from Krakow, and so checked out of our hotels about 9:00 and met the Stices on the square in front of the train station.  We were about an hour early, and spent the time sitting and waiting.  The train arrived a few minutes late, and then there was a mad scramble to get everyone on board.

We were in different cars on the train, but all of our family was in one compartment.  There were eight seats, but the six of us were the only ones, so it was pretty comfortable.  The train trip was pretty similar to the journey that we had taken from Prague to Krakow a few days before. We spent most of the time reading books.  The station in Warsaw was underground, and there wasn't an announcement, and we just sat for a few minutes, until a group of young people came to get in our car and we asked them if we were at the station.

Reading while riding on the train to Warsaw

Lina reading on iPad

We exited the station and found the office of the apartment rental company and got our keys.  The Stices were in a different building right next door, but their room wasn't ready yet.  Ours was, so we walked a few blocks and dropped off all our bags.  We walked back to the mall and ate a lunch/dinner at McDonald's.  The next thing we needed to do was to find out where the bus stop was where we could catch the bus to the airport the next morning.  We wandered around a bit, but then found it, and bought tickets for the next morning.

By this time it was about 5:30 p.m., so we walked back to our apartment and just settled in for the evening.  The apartment was a bit spartan - it didn't have full curtains, just gauzy filmy ones, and the beds were not great.  We had bought some groceries to have breakfast the next morning, so we were up early (5:00 a.m.) to eat and get to the bus stop.  It had rained all night, but it had broken.  It started up again when we started walking, so we were quite wet when we got to the bus stop. The bus came right on time and we got to the Chopin Airport as planned.

We flew Baltic Air to Moscow, with a layover in Riga, Latvia.  The plane from Warsaw to Riga was a turbo-prop with high wings, but a nice airplane and a beautiful view of the Baltic Sea as we landed.  We had to go through passport control and wait for about an hour before boarding our plane to Moscow.

Baltic Sea from up high

 We got through passport control and customs okay and were able to get tickets on the train just in time, so we made good time.  We took the metro from the Belarus train station to our hotel.  The hotel was in an area that had three streets named the same thing, and we had to wander a bit and ask directions before we found it.  It turned out that it was very easy and close to the metro station once we knew how to get there.

The hotel wasn't sure we were coming, so they had given one of our rooms to someone else.  We had a two-room set up with a shared bathroom that was supposed to be just for the girls, but we settled into it okay and the girls bucked up and shared two beds and did okay.  We also saved a bit of money.  The hotel was a standalone building - it was older, but had been remodeled and was very nice, and in a good location.  We were out of the center of the city, but not too far, and very close to the metro.

Cool painting at our hotel

We settled in, and then went across the street to a KFC to have dinner.  It had been a long day of travel, and a long couple of days of travel with the day before's trip to Warsaw, so we settled in for the evening.  The kids were happy because they could watch television and understand it (we watch Russian television at home usually anyway).  We were settled in to our last hotel of the trip, and ready to see the sites of Moscow the next day.

Dinner at KFC

Relaxing at the hotel.

Summer Travel 2017: Day 10 - Schindler's Factory and Krakow

I woke up on Monday morning feeling quite ill - I was congested through my head and chest.  I'd been having some allergies, but this felt more like a cold.  I didn't feel up to going out, so Yulia and the girls went to the Schindler Factory and Ghetto without me while I slept and tried to recuperate some.  It sounds like they had a really good time at the factory - which is a museum about the Ghetto and Polish resistance and is very interactive and child-friendly.  It was also free on Monday, and they got there in time to get some of the few tickets remaining for early in the day, so everything worked out okay in the end.

[Yulia will tell more about the museum in the captions to the photos from that experience]

Portrait of Oscar Schindler

Portraits of people saved by Schindler, on both sides of the wall.

Equipment from Schindler's factory to make cookware.

Beginning of museum: pictures and video of Krakow in 1939.

Looking at slides from 1939

Stations where you could stamp documents

Apartment from the era.

Scenes taking place behind the window.

Polish Resistance

Nazi invasion and occupation.

Replica of Ghetto wall, which resembled tombstones, with actual accounts from Ghetto survivors on the wall.

Schindler's Office 

Big cube with cookware from the factory

The names of all the workers saved by Schindler

Exhibit about Aman Goth, camp director played by Ralph Feinnes in the film.

Closing the Ghetto and putting Jews into camps.

Working camp.

At the end of the tour.

Plaza of empty chairs in commemoration of the victims of the Ghetto

After everyone came home, we went out at about 5:00 p.m. and looked around the old part of the city.  Part of the day was buying Poland souvenirs.  The girls each got a wooden jewelry box, and Yulia got an Amber necklace to put in her own jewelry box at home.  After we were shopped out, I went and showed them Jagiellonian University, where I'd been to a conference two years ago.  After we saw the university, we went and found a Ukrainian restaurant that we had seen the first night when we got turned around.  We found the restaurant and had a nice meal - the portions were much smaller than the night before, but the food was delicious.  You can't go wrong with Eastern European cooking.

Stopping for pastries after the museum.

Part of original defenses of Krakow

Peacock sculpture in a random building.

Scenes from Old Krakow

On the square.

Central square

Souvenir shopping.

A flute-playing goat.  Our flute-playing girls.

University courtyard

University courtyard

                   

Looking down the well.

Part of the original walls.

Ukrainian food!

After we ate, we had room for ice cream, so we got some and sat outside and watched people for awhile while we finished our cones.  We walked home, calling it an evening.  Our time in Krakow had come to an end.  Yulia hadn't been to center Krakow before, and she fell in love.  Krakow is less touristy than Prague, and quite a bit cheaper.  We loved Prague, too, but in Krakow we felt very much at home as well.  

Summer Trip 2017: Day 9 - Trip to Auschwitz

We wanted the girls to experience going to Auschwitz.  In preparation for our trip we showed them the film Schindler's List and had some serious discussions. Polina means "girl from Poland" so on our trip to Central Europe we also wanted to get a chance for her to be where she was named after (besides being named in honor of my mom, Polly).  We woke up and ate breakfast and met the Stice family at their apartment and went to the bus station.  We bought tickets and had to wait for a bus for about 40 minutes.

Our bus ride took just over an hour and we arrived about 9:40.  We had to get tickets, but they were free.  We spent about two and a half hours at Auschwitz 1.  We went through the Polish section, the Red Army section, and all of the sections about the horrors of the camp system.  The girls were well-behaved and the gravity of the evil that had taken place there seemed to sink in.

Polish history of invasion and resistance

Prisoners

Eyeglasses collected from Jews

Kitchenware

Shoes

Outside the barracks

Fence and guard tower

Crematorium inside Auschwitz I

Camp from the outside

The day was very warm, so when we finished getting through the camp we took a short break to drink water.  Then we took the shuttle bus to Auschwitz II- Birkenau.  In the two times I'd been before, I hadn't ever been there.  If Auschwitz is sobering, then Birkenau is overwhelming.  The size of the camp is immense.  Much of it is just the chimneys where  the barracks stood.

Entrance to Birenau - train tracks leading through the entrance

Rows and rows of chimneys where barracks were located

Railcar, the type that Jews from all over Europe were shipped in.

The Germans had dynamited the gas chambers and ovens before the Soviets advanced in early 1945.  On the rubble of the killing area a memorial was built.  The memorial is simple, and consists of plaques, with a common saying in twenty languages: FOR EVER LET THIS PLACE BE A CRY OF DESPAIR AND A WARNING TO HUMANITY, WHERE THE NAZIS MURDERED ABOUT ONE AND A HALF MILLION MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN MAINLY JEWS FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU 1940-1945.

Russian version of the plaque

A Jewish group was reading names and singing songs at the memorial

Rubble left over from blowing up the gas chambers and crematoriums

Looking back over the camp from the memorial

The walk from the bus to the memorial and back was nearly two miles (a mile each way) which gives some scale to the size of the camp.  We finished at about 1:00 p.m. and took the shuttle back to Auschwitz I.  We ate at a little pizza place across the street, and then walked about a mile to the train station.  We bought tickets and got right on the train, which left about ten minutes later.  The train was a dedicated train between Oswiecim (the name of the town in Polish) and Krakow.  It was an older train, but was a nice adventure for the girls.  The adventure grew when we were told at a station about half way to Krakow that we had to get off the train and get on a bus.  We did that.  We assumed the bus would take us all the way to Krakow.  It did not - it only took us to another station further down the line (apparently there was construction on the tracks), and then we had to wait for another train.  We got back to Krakow a little after five, tired, but fine.

Walking to train station

On the train

Lexa and Papa

Waiting for the second train

We agreed to meet for dinner at 7:00 at a place that had been recommended by some friends of the Stices.  The name of the restaurant was U Babci Maliny (or At grandma Rasberry's).  The place was interesting, with decor like a peasant hut.  You ordered your food and then came and picked it up, but it was like home-made food.  We ordered, and the portions that came were huge.  The food was delicious and there was plenty of it.

Our huge dinner!

Ramona was funny and had an adventure with ordering.  She wanted to get a mix of Pirogi, so she ordered that.  Then she started naming types of Pirogi, assuming that she could choose the mix.  She ended up ordering 4 huge portions of pirogi - the mixed platter, plus full platters of the three types she named.  We teased her about that for the next few days, and they ate pirogi for breakfast for the next two days - and Lina took home a portion and ate them, too!

All of the food for Ramona!

It was a long, emotionally draining day.  But one that we hope the kids will remember for a long time.