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czechthisshitout · 8 years ago

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Mom visits (Pt. 2) and Interlude between Trips 5.1.17-5.4.17.

Well, it looks the writing bug has really hit me hard in the last twenty four hours. This will probably be my last post for tonight, and then I will write one or two more posts for my trip to Berlin last weekend before I depart for Budapest Tuesday evening.

Monday morning I was back to class, it was kind of weird because we had had such an irregular class schedule over the previous weekend and a half. After an extended morning session and a lunch break (where I met up with Mom and Mike for some Italian food), the entire program went to the Mike and Vera’s home for a round table with some Alumni from the program, and then a dinner they provided us. The round table was fascinating, one girl was teaching English in a rural Czech village, another is attending a war studies graduate program in London and another was studying human rights law in Hungary (which is somewhat ironic given the current Hungarian government’s lack of respect for human rights). Mike and Vera got some really good sushi for us and then cakes for dessert, which was very generous of them. We also got to hangout with their three kids, which was really fun. I stayed until about 10pm and then me and a few other classmates, when to a bar called Dog Bar, with an appropriately grunge/hipster interior (including swings and a few random songs wondering around). There was a cover band playing covers of questionable quality, but it was still a good night with excellent, cheap dark beer.

Tuesday, was back to classes. We watch a movie called “Lives of the Others”, about the Spasi and their surveillance in Eastern Berlin. The afternoon was discussion of Communist specifically in Eastern Germany and its changing relations with the West and the Soviet Republic throughout the years. That night I got a dinner with Mom and Mike at this amazing Vegetarian restaurant called Ethnosvet, as they were leaving very early the next morning. It was fun, but also bittersweet, as I was really going to miss them. After dinner, I started working on my midterm for Mike’s class that was due early Thursday morning before we left for Berlin.

Wednesday was fairly boring, another full day of classes, and returning promptly back to the apartment and spending the rest of the evening working on Mike’s midterm paper as it was due the next morning. As taking a brief break to pack at 1:30am in the morning, I may or may not have turning my midterm in at 3:30am in the morning. Nonetheless, I was up at 7:10 and out the door by the 7:45am, in order to catch our 8:20 train to Berlin. And thus, another trip began.

#ramblings

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czechthisshitout · 8 years ago

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Pictures: Mom’s Visit Addition

Photo 1 & 2. Me posing in various shots around my school building, from when I took Mom and Mike on the tour.

Photo 3. Me and Mom posing in Serge

Photo 4. Me and my ‘communist’ door when I took Mom and Mike on a tour of my apartment.

Photo 5-6. Amazing ‘fake’ Beef Tartar and Seaweed caviar from Ethnosvet, this amazing Vegetarian restaurant we went to the night before their departure.

Photo 7. Me and Mom at the cafe before heading to the Mucha Museum

Photo 8. Me and Mom and our twins.

Photo 9. Enjoying drinks at an appropriately ‘authentic’ Czech bar.

#ramblings #photo

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czechthisshitout · 8 years ago

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Image 1: Mini Cooper in BMW Welt

Image 2: The Chinese Tower

Image 3: English Gardens

Image 4: Roof of Hippodrome Beer Hall

Image 5: Me drinking a totally normal amount of beer.

Image 6: My German Potato Salad and Cabbage Salad at the beer garden in the English Gardens

Image 7: Kristina chowing down during Springfest

Image 8: Busker in English Gardens

Image 9: Totally normal selfie of me in my dirndl

Image 10: BMW Welt

#ramblings #photos

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czechthisshitout · 8 years ago

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Mom Visit and Munich 4.26.17-4.30.17

After returning from Poland, late Tuesday night. I got up early(ish) on Wednesday morning to meet Mom and her boyfriend, Mike at the Mucha museum. They had arrived a day or so earlier, so they had had a bit of time to settle in. The three of us grabbed breakfast at a cafe, and then we went to an art museum dedicated to the Czech Art Nouveau artist, Alphonse Mucha, known for his theater posters and advertising posters often featuring beautiful women with ornate detailing. It was a small museum but had excellent examples of his work and account of his life. Afterwards we grabbed lunch at one of my favorite cafes by Cerge (my school building), and ordered so much we shocked the waitress multiple times. Then I gave them a grand tour of my school building, where many pictures of me were taken by Mom and Mike. We visited a few other spots and then I gave them a tour of my apartment, apparently the entry way and my front door is very ‘Communist.’

We headed out again, with Fran in tow to go get a drink at the bar in the Dancing House, only to learn that the bar didn’t open until later, so me and Fran got a tour of their Air Bn’B and wandered around the surrounding neighborhood (outside of Petrin Hill), finally finding a bar that was appropriately ‘authentic’ and ‘non-smoky’, which is a rather tall order in Prague. Then we tried going to a vegetarian restaurant that they had noticed, which was closed (we later learned it had closed that very date for good), and after much wandering we grabbed some grub at an Italian restaurant before parting ways. I spent the rest of the night somewhat frantically finishing up a reflection paper due Thursday morning.

Thursday I had class from 12:30-3pm, so I grabbed breakfast with Mike and Mom, where we talked about my trip to Krakow, and spent a lot of time debating whether the hostel I had booked for my weekend trip to Munich was too sketchy to bring my laptop too, it was a thrilling conservation that included some very racist TripAdvisor reviews. After class, I rushed home quickly packed my stuff for my trip to Munich and shoved some food down my throat before heading out with Ashton, Maddy, and Kristina to catch our 5:15pm train.

We arrived in Munich at about 10pm, walked twenty minutes through the freezing rain (yes, you read that right, freezing rain) to get to our hostel only to see that there had an error in the room booking and we had been given a room with two twin beds, so we had to wait in the lobby for another 40 minutes before finally getting to our new room with an appropriate amount of beds. Needless to stay, it had been a very long day and I was passed out by midnight. (Also it snowed. Not joking)

Friday we had a leisurely morning, and just walked around our neighborhood before walking to the fairground where Springfest was (should I mentioned it was still snowing?). The place was a virtual ghost town, though many of the stalls and rides were open, we poked our head into one of the indoor beer gardens and it was also dead. So we decided to go to the BMW Welt, a huge showroom that show cases BMW’s newest lines, as well as Mini Coopers and Rolls Royce’s. I’m not hugely into cars, but it was pretty impressive and there is something strangely empowering about sitting behind the wheel of a car worth over a hundred thousand dollars. It is an incredibly nice facility, it was really cool looking at the Mini Cooper exhibits, as I was obsessed with them when I was younger. We called saw the BMW tower, which is based off a four cylinder engine, which is pretty cool.

Afterwards we (my room and the guys) returned to one of the beer gardens in the fair grounds of Springfest, where I order a liter of beer, a giant pretzel and a huge helping of Spatzle with cheese. It was a real exercise of moderation on my part. Eventually we met up with the other girls in the main ‘beer hall’, the Hippodrom, it was insane, thousands of people in varying states of intoxication, talking loudly, many dressed in Lederhosen and Dirndls, with a live German band playing at the head of the hall. We spent the rest of later afternoon and evening there, just talking, joking around and generally enjoying ourselves. Due to the ridiculous serving size of the beer (1 liter), and the early time we started drinking, everyone was back in the room by 10pm and quickly feel asleep, visions of pretzels and beer dancing in our heads.

Saturday was another relaxed morning, we spent the early afternoon walking through the English Gardens and grabbed food at a beer garden, by the ‘Chinese Tower’ a tall, Eastern-style tower, where a traditional German band playing different polkas. Afterwards we went to a shop by our hostel that sold dirndls (the touristy version of a traditional Bavarian folk dress), where a very spirited saleswoman helped us find the right sizes and gave her frank opinion on what styles suited us and which did not, it was actually a lot of fun trying them on and seeing all the different styles, I got a rather ‘Westernized’ purple one and maybe spent too much money on it, but what are you gonna do?

Unfortunately after finishing getting our dirndls (and some surprising good Mexican food), I had to head back to the room to work on my research proposal. I spent the rest of the day working (or trying to get myself to work) on my research proposal. It wasn’t the most exciting time I’ve had on my trip thus far.

Sunday was a similarly not-adventurous day. We got up, grabbed some hostel breakfast, packed up our stuff and checked out. We may or may not have gotten lost a few times in finding out where our departing bus was located in the train station (Munich has a huge train station with few signs about buses). I grabbed some lunch in train station, and then waiting for the bus to come, the bus ride was spent working on my proposal and napping. And thus, yet another trip had come to an end.

#ramblings

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czechthisshitout · 8 years ago

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Photo 1. The infamous “Work Will Set You Free” sign at the entrance of Auschwitz I.

Photo 2-4. Auschwitz I

Photo 5. Memorial to Inmates shot by Nazis during Auschwitz’s operations.

Photo 6. Pages from the giant tome that holds the names, birthdates and all fates of all the victims of the Holocaust, both those who died and survived. The book is about 30 ft long.

Photo 7. Gas Chamber at Auschwitz I

Photo 8. Train tracks and platform in Birkenau

Photo 9. One of the train cars that transported victims to Birkenau.

Photo 10. Remains of one of the gas chambers in Birkenau.

#ramblings #photograph

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czechthisshitout · 8 years ago

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Visit to Auschwitz 4.25.17.

*DISCLAIMER* These are my personal opinions and reflections on Auschwitz and thus reflects my own limited knowledge and personal biases.

Another one of the reasons I may have fallen behind on this blog, was my reluctance to write this post. It’s not that I don’t want to share my experience at Auschwitz, I just wasn’t sure how to approach it and wanted to make sure I did so in a respectful way. This post may be a bit more fragmented and less narrative than most of my other posts.

On Tuesday morning, we all woke up early and packed up our stuff at the Hostel in Krakow, so we could meet up with Mike by the bus by 8am. I stole some cheese and bread from the hostel breakfast, because I didn’t want to buy any food on the premises of Auschwitz (we were scheduled to be there from 9:00am to 3:30pm that day). The atmosphere on the bus ride was strange, some people were silent, others were nervously cracking jokes, by the time was got a few miles away, the bus was silent. Auschwitz is on the outskirts of a rather large Polish town, with houses and shopping malls only a few minutes away, which was very rather startling. It makes sense, as there was houses close to Auschwitz which were torn down as Auschwitz was being constructed and the town was already well established by 1930s. I guess it just goes to show that American conceptualize Auschwitz, as somewhere so inhumane and unimaginable, that is must be in some isolate, desolated place. What was even more disconcerting, was the various food and coffee stands that littered the walk to the front entrance and the brightly colored advertisements for sodas and hotdogs, just like those in the more touristy parks of Prague. Again, I recognize the necessity of having food venues, especially for children and the elderly, but the prominence of the consumerism really caught me off guard. I guess, you assume the entire “Auschwitz” experience has to be solemn and devoted to the memorial, and any aspect that seems ‘normal’ or ‘capitalizing’ off the experience, is deeply uncomfortable and disconcerting.

Anyways, we paid at the front gate and met our tour guide after a few minutes of standing right by the entrance. The weather, was decent, partly sunny and high 50s. Our tour guide was a soft spoken, middle aged Polish women, who’s grandfather worked in the Auschwitz workshops, alongside concentration camp inmates, but said never stepped out of time, as he knew him and his entire family could be killed if he did so. Her grandfather’s story really brings up the question of what is the difference between collaboration and coercion.

Everyone in the group got a headset, so we could hear what our tour guide was saying with minimal distraction to the groups, as it was fairly crowded. She was hugely knowledgeable and did a good job of illustrating the suffering of Polish prisoners and the later shift to Jewish suffering, as well the complicity of various groups during the functioning of the camp.

We started in Auschwitz I, the original camp which originally housed Polish prisoners, and had administrative building, the Nazi officers residents, the barrack, and the more ‘museum’ part of the compound. We had an intensive three hour tour, during which I saw

-The ‘main square’ in which role call was performed twice a day on the inmates, and the inmates often had to spend hours in terrible conditions and undergoing abuse from the officers.

-A massive room filled with thousands and thousands of pounds of hair, which had been forcibly been shaved by officers as women entered the camp. It was mounds upon mounds of hair, some of it beautiful braided.

-Rows and rows of camp inmate photos, taken in 1941 and 1942, before the volume became too vast, and the Nazi switched to tattooing numbers on the inmates arms. Its terrifying how thin and haunted looking some of them already were when they had the photos taken.

-Huge piles upon piles of luggage with the owner’s last names handwritten on them. The victims were asked to do this as they were being transported to the camp.

-Piles and piles of tea kettles, you could tell that many of them had were worn and well loved.

-A memorial to the children inmates, many of whom were only eight or nine years old.

-The original crematorium and gas chamber, which had functioned until early 1944 when three larger crematoriums were built at Birkenau. It was claustrophobic and dark, and I’m glad we only spent a short amount of time there.

-Terrible terrible pictures of the inmates who survived medical experiments by the Nazis doctors, many of them children.

-The inmate prison, where political and other non-Jewish inmates were held for punishment or before being killed by firing squad if they had rebelled or ‘misbehaved’ in any other way in the camp.

-A memorial to/exhibit on the Romani victims of the Holocaust. It was illuminating and disturbing to learn the many ways the Romani were treated just like the Jews. You could also tell that the exhibit had a lot less funding than other exhibitions, reflecting the negative cultural attitudes to the Romani people that continue until this day.

-A room filled with artist recreations of the few drawing from child prisoners which have survived. That was a particularly hard room to walk through.

In general, I was surprised by the emphasis on the non-Jewish, Polish inmates and the harsh conditions they had to endure, again its somewhat makes sense as Auschwitz is in Poland and was originally a camp for Polish prisoners, but the American narrative is that of Jewish suffering.This emphasis is also somewhat political in nature, as Auschwitz serves as an excellent way for the Polish to uphold a victimization narrative and distance themselves from any charges of complicity. I hate the fact that Auschwitz is used for political purposes and to possibly uphold over simplified narratives about the Holocaust. I know its inevitable and all memorials are in someway political, but there was so much suffering, so much death on such an unimaginable scale, I just want it to remain apolitical. I want it to honors both those who lost their life and those who suffered, and to educate future generations, I want it to retain some kind of ‘purity of purpose’ I suppose.

We had thirty minutes for lunch, I went back the bus and eat my bread and cheese before swinging by the bookshop and purchasing a two books, one a testimonial of one of the Nazi doctor’s assistants and the other about art the prisoners managed to make in the camp. At the end of the break we piled back into the bus and headed to Birkenau, the later, larger camp, where most of the exterminations happened. We went to the entrance/guard tower and the tour guide gave us a quick history lesson before thanks us and parting ways. For the afternoon, we were freed to explore Birkenau in our own way, at our own rate.

The first thing that struck me was just how huge Birkenau, most of the barracks are gone, the material being reused in the Post-war period, but the rows of their foundations just stretch on, row after row, there is dozens, if not hundreds of rows. What is even more sickening, is than 75% of the (predominantly Jewish) prisoners who arrived at Birkenau went died in the gas chambers within the first few days after their arrival, many never even used the barracks that splayed before me.

At Birkenau you get this nearly suffocating sense of ‘nothingness’, its not the visceral sadness I felt from many of the personal artifacts in Auschwitz I. There is no human elements there, just the skeletons of the buildings. Many of the victims that there died, weren’t just killed, they were erased, their belonging stripped from them, their bodies destroyed, many didn’t live long enough to leave any mark or reminder of their presence. So many people died in Birkenau, in such as an efficient, clinical way, the human mind can’t comprehend it. The scope is so massive, any individual can only dip their toe into the ocean worth of suffering that was the horror of the Holocaust.

We had about two hours to ‘experience’ Birkenau, I saw:

-A ‘children’s barrack, with a few murals made for children and which highlighted just how inhumane the conditions of the barracks were.

-The train line extension that dropped off the prisoners, and where they were sorted as being ‘fit’ or ‘unfit’ by Dr. Mengele. Those who were fit to work were sent to the barracks, those ‘unfit’ sent to the gas chambers. Women, children and those over 40 were most often deemed unfit.

-The ruins of the three gas chambers, which the Nazi blew up in the last weeks of the war, in an attempt to cover up their tracks, and where you can still see the steps the victims descended as they entered the building.

-The building were the all incoming prisoner were processed, registered and stripped of their belonging before being forcible shaved and showered. It was one of the few buildings intact, with large pictures on the walls of Jews waiting to be processed and the Nazi offers ‘registering’ them. When I walked through the building I was the only person within the building, the rooms were freezing and it just felt incredibly suffocating and ominous. It was one place in Birkenau were you really felt a ‘reminder’ of the victims who suffered here.

One of the weirdest things was just how ‘pretty’ it was parts of Birkenau were. The back of the camp is a wooded area with small paths between the various buildings, it was a sunny afternoon, you could hear bird song, it was *pleasant.* Not a word you would ever wanted to associate with Auschwitz. You almost feel guilty, enjoying the natural beauty where so much suffering occurred. We like to believe that beauty and suffering are two separate experiences, and its uncomfortable whenever they simultaneously occur.

I was nearly late headed back, we were supposed to be back at the bus by 3:30pm and at 3pm, I found myself on the far side of the camp, so I quickly had to cover the 2-3 mile walk back. Part of the walk involved walking back through the barracks on a rough uneven path with a tall fence on each side. It was only as I was halfway through this portion did I remember this was one of the major paths victims look from the train platform to the gas chambers. Except I was walking in the opposite direction, from the crematorium back to the entrance, it really hits you that you have this simple freedom that hundreds of thousands of victims did not. A mixture of guilt-tinted relief and dread descended over me, and I visibly sped up when I neared the main walkway. I was able to catch up with Francesca, Maddy and Mike as they were nearing the guard tower/entrance, and we were the last people back to the bus.

I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. No to be too hyperbolic, but I can think of few instances where I was more exhausted than the bus ride back to Prague that late afternoon and evening.

#ramblings

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