DreadSong

Aydan went to Prague this weekend. I did not. Perhaps I should have gone on one last adventure, but I spent the time with Jackie and our new friend Marcin (the boy who picked us up in Zielona Gora) mentally preparing myself for my departure.

Saturday afternoon, I went out with some women from DUK. We just hung out and went for coffee, then lunch, then beers, and they insisted on paying for everything.

On Saturday night, I did laundry, and we stayed in my room working on Jackie's dreadlocks (yes, dreadlocks!) and eating pierogi. Sunday, we woke up and made lunch and didn't leave the dormitory until 4pm to meet Marcin's friends downtown. We went for coffee, then dinner, then beers. It was basically a perfect, lazy weekend in Poland.


Now I have three more days in Wroclaw before my flight to Tel Aviv. Tonight is our goodbye party (Jackie and Aydan are traveling on to Scandenavia for two weeks), but other than that, I plan to just walk around and do some last minute gift-buying and sight-seeing.

Winding down and reflection. Yes.

Kobiety!

Let me begin like this: You know how most offices might have a little kitchen area stocked with a few plates, coffee mugs, tea cups? Well, the Democratic Union of Women has a kitchen with plates, mugs, and cups -- in addition to a collection of about 20 shot glasses.

The women in the office surprised us yesterday with a traditional Polish lunch and with a 500-zloty stipend that we hadn't planned on receiving. (Guess who's buying gourmet pierogi for dinner!) I realize how lucky I was to have found this internship. It was absolutely perfect (despite my early doubts) and the organization was mostly concerned with teaching us about Polish hospitality. After lunch today, and after our final class, and after receiving our surprise stipend, the chairwoman of the organization (who I now realize is a semi-ımportant player in Polish politics) made us "taste" some Polish honey vodka. Everytime my shot glass was empty (it's a sipping vodka) the chairwoman would refill it and instruct me to drink. After 6 or 7 glasses, Aydan and I said our goodbyes, and stumbled out of work.

I feel like I've been saying goodbye to Wroclaw for the last two weeks, but I still have six more days until my flight actually leaves. Everyday is filled with foreshadowing of my departure. I don't have anything to do for the next week, and though I was originally planning on traveling during this time, I think I need to stay here and absorb a bit more. And attend the various goodbye parties planned for the summer interns. Though I haven't done much since I've been back from Warsaw, everything I do feels filled with signifigance.

Wednesday night, we made pasta at the dormitory and talked about our life plans. Thursday night, right after work, we went to another intern's apartment to make French Toast and drink apple beer. We invited Marcin, the student who gave Jackie and me a ride from Zielona Gora when we were hitchhiking back from Berlin. After French Toast, we went to the main square for a free outdoor film sponsored by Era New Horizons - an intnernational film festival happening now in Wroclaw. After the film, Marcin took Jackie and I to a few clubs and I finally made it home around 7:30 am. Yesterday, after the party at DUK, Aydan and I met some other interns to watch another free movie in the town square, followed by sandwiches at my favorite restaurant and beer at my favorite bar.

I was the one leading the other interns around Wroclaw, I was the one suggesting a good restaurant and a good bar. How weird is that?

Warszawa

I'm travel weary and drinking diet coke at the office.

After Jackie and I got home from Berlin, I had six hours before my train to Warsaw with Aydan and Krisia from the DUK. The DUK decided to send us to the capitol city for three days so we could learn about Polish history and visit the regional office of DUK there.

My legs were numb from getting lost in Berlin, and then I was shuttled off to Warsaw to visit the parliament and various palaces. Let me tell you this: Warsaw has nothing on Berlin. Most of the Poles we talked to said Warsaw wasn't really worth seeing, but we went because DUK paid for everything.

We stayed in this terrible little place called a Botel - a dirty hostel that was "unique" in that it actually a boat and utilized the polluted, undeveloped Warsaw riverside as a dock. We had to climb to the top of a bridge to get a bus into the city proper every morning.

Warsaw was completely destroyed by the war, so there's nothing particularly beautiful or interesting about the architecture, and the rich history of the city doesn't make up for this. We walked around the former Warsaw Ghetto area, which is now a park with a bronze monument and unkept grass surrounded by soviet-style apartment buildings. There were a few quaint streets and it was generically European-looking, but nothing very interesting.

On Saturday morning, Aydan wants to hitchhike to Prague. I need a vacation from this vacation. It's not that I don't want to see Prague, I really do, but I also want to spend my last weekend in Wroclaw, hanging out with my friends here and making sure I appreciate this city before I leave it.

I can't believe that I only have about a week left here. I can't belive that for most people, a week is a very long trip. I can't believe that I thought two months was such a long time. I'm homesick in a very strange way. I miss English, I miss being able to ask for directions, I miss my friends and family, of course, but coming back from my weekend trips, as I walk down the street to my dormitory here, I can't believe how much it feels like home here too.

Auchtung!

Friday: Jackie and I woke up and left Pszegobowiecs around 7:30. We took a bus to the edge of town and stood by the highway. Three rides and a 2-Euro regional train later, we were in Berlin trying to find the apartment of the girl who agreed to host us for the weekend. We finally found her, in the middle of lovely Turkish neighborhood, and we dropped our stuff and went to explore Berlin.

Saturday: More exploring. First a very long stretch of the Berlin wall, then walking around some cool neighborhoods as advised by Mr. Stoler. We saw Tacheles, this bombed out shopping center that's been completely taken over by artists. Then back to our host's place to freshen up, then some parties. We were invited to a house party at a co-op. We walked there with some CouchSurfers we picked up at a previous party. We drank and shared travel stories until the sun started to rise. We walked back to our host's apartment and slept for a few hours.

Sunday: We woke up, had brunch with our host, and headed out. We got hopelessly, hopelessly lost trying to get out of Berlin. And then again in Zielona Gora, the town we ended up getting a lift to in Poland. Our last lift, though, was from a student who lives in Wroclaw and he gave us tons of advice about the town and Jackie and I assured him that if he's ever in the US, he would have a place to stay.

We were only in Berlin for 2 days, but after the first 5 minutes, I fell in love with it. We spent most of our time getting lost in the transit system, but it was still lovely. I didn't go on any tours or explore any museums, but I peeked around and took note of all the things I want to do when I can make it back some day. I could imagine transplanting myself there for a while. Maybe I'm inspired to start studying German?

Dupa Biskupa

We were in Wroclaw for two days after the conference in Mazury before we headed out for another wild and crazy weekend. Our Aiesecer friend Jacek picked us up at 7:45pm on Friday. Two hours and a 120 zl trip to Auchan (another French-based Walmart-type megamart) later, we were at some lake outside of Wroclaw with Jacek and about 12 of his friends, stocked with provisions for the weekend: kielbasa, bread, beer, wine, vodka, and ramen noodles.

Friday night passed in a virtual haze of straight-from-the bottle drinking and learning dirty words in Polish. I was one of the last to go to sleep, and again found myself with 4 Polish guys who were more than happy to practice their English. Before I went to bed, they told me that I was a really tough girl. My dream of dreams. I spent the night in a slightly-larger-than-twin-sized bed with Jacek, who looks like a NASA scientist from the 50s.

Saturday was spent recouperating from the previous night. We played cards and layed by the lake all day. We got to know most of Jacek's friends, including Piotr. After I explained to Piotr that I was studying Women's Studies at my university, and gave him a brief introduction to what, exactly, that meant, he said something along the lines of: "I think it's really bad when people have so much confidence in their point of view that they think they can change the way other people act." To which I said something placating and sweet, of course, but I was actually kind of taken aback. That's how all of human history has progressed, isn't it? But this altercation didn't end in blows, and Piotr still called me a tough girl.


Sunday, we yawned and stretched and said goodbye to the lake before returning to Wroclaw around noon.

It was another amazing weekend in Poland, and I can't believe that it's one of my last. It was almost painful to meet all of Jacek's friends, knowing that I'll probably never see any of them again. There's an Aiesec phenomenon where, very rarely, interns fall in love with the places they visit, and end up extending their internship indefinately. I don't think I've come down with this bug, but I can easily imagine it.

Where Is This Train Headed?

There's not much journaling to do. We got back late last night from our Mazury vacation. I gave my presentation about women in the US and all of the committee members came up and kissed me afterwards and told me, in broken English or half-Polish, that I was a very good young woman. There was a poetry reading on the final evening (it was nice to listen to, even if I couldn't understand it), followed by a wine-tasting. The whole conference was lovely and chilly and I ate a lot of Polish food. On the train back, all of the women from the conference were in the same car. We filled four compartments. These women, all 30-60, brought provisions of beer and vodka, sandwiches stolen from the hotel buffet, and seemingly bottomless bags of peanuts. Half of our car was actually a freight room, which eventually turned into a dance hall. As we lost passangers at each small town between Mazury and Wroclaw, the women joined in singing some old Polish song about riding the rails. It was quaint and incredible and even though I didn't understand most of what was going on around me, it may have been a necessary experience.

So maybe now I can transition into something more abstract. I found myself at the conference, as I find myself in most places, looking very closely at the women around me. I felt silly, at first, coming to Poland for an internship. From all outward appearances, it seems like I'm trying to find myself, or something else equally silly. And maybe I am, but the fact that it's Poland, that it's the land of pierogis and kielbasa and my grandparents' parents, is actually much less imprortant than the fact that I'm just very far away from everything familiar. But this certainly doesn't stop me from really staring at the noses and lips and cheekbones of everybody around me, maybe trying to find a little bit of myself in them. So I spent a lot of the conference doing this, and thinking about how I ended up where I am.

Today, when I returned from this conference, Ben had sent me this link to a recent Times article. The article is about the Jewish culture festival that I accidentally happened upon in Krakow, the very evening after I visited Auschwitz. So I'm in Poland, exploring my roots, visiting Auschwitz and Jewish culture festivals, and very soon, I will be in Jerusalem. May I quote a bit of Plath without sounding desperate? . . . "I may be a bit of a Jew." But what does this mean for me? For a shiksa who didn't know any Jews until highschool? Do I suffer from the same potentially commercial philia that the city of Krakow suffers from? Or (this is the option I've been taking more seriously lately), is there something drawing (or pushing) me towards this end? Maybe I've just had too much free time in Europe and it's making me crazy, but I can't help feeling that there is some imminent revelation about to unfold itself to me.

Action & Adventure

We went biking today.

Zapraszamy.

Currently, I'm in the library of the Hotel Oscar Panoramic in a small town called Mragowa in a region of Poland called Mazury. It's the Polish equivalent of the Poconos. Imagine lakes and forests and quaint hamlets. Voila -- Mazury!

Aydan and I will be here until Wednesday for the Democratic Union of Women's summer conference. Workshops all day and beer all night. Actually, after the first day, we were excused from the workshops because they're all in Polish. Some women were translating them to English for us, but it was still difficult to follow along and it was distracting to everybody else. However, the "beer all night" part is semi-true. Tonight we went for drinks with all of our coworkers. It was a bonding experience. Women here love their half-liters of Zywiec.

So since we're excused from the workshops, and we're kind of stuck at this resort, we've just been lounging around our lovely hotel room, eating at the endless buffett, and watching Polish cable. It sounds like it could get boring, but I feel like I'm very purposefully on vacation. I also feel like it's one of the few times I've been in a hotel room for a wholesome reason. I think in my life, hotels have always been associated with nefarious activity.

At the beginning, I decided to view this conference as a retreat. It's not quite a silent retreat, but it is five days without any native English-speakers. I've been writing and reading and laying on the docks by the lake. And the weather is brisk and windy, more like late-March weather than middle-of-July weather. I'm feeling very zen. I think, for the first time in a long time, I've stopped feeling like I'm on the verge of being late for something. Does that make sense?

And now, it's off to sleep in my very clean and very soft Hotel Oscar Panoramic bed.

Stag Night

Last night was a party to welcome a new intern. Suddenly it was 2am, and just me with 7 boys - 5 Poles, 1 Englishman, and 1 Tunisian. I think maybe I stuck around as a sociological experiment.

It's nice to see that jokes about masturbation and pornography are international.

Also, imagine a tall, pale Englishman telling me (in his funny little accent) that he used to be in the army and then explaining to me that there's a place on a man's neck where, with enough force, you can push your hand right through his skin and pull out his windpipe. Who would this remind you of? Ten points for the right answer.

The Road to Katowice

I have too much to explain about this weekend to worry about conventions, so would you mind a bulleted list?

• There wasn't room for Aydan on the trip to Slovakia, so she ended up coming to Krakow as well. Since there were two of us, we decided to hitchhike. We consulted our friend Antonio, who has hithchiked all over Europe, and Friday morning we caught a city bus to the edge of town.
• We stood next to a gas station and held up our little sign and stuck out our little thumbs and in less than 10 minutes, a guy picked us up. He didn't speak English and took us only about 60 kilometers before he had to turn off the highway. So again, we stood by the on-ramp and smiled and another guy picked us up. He lived in the suburbs of Krakow but drove us right to the city center.
• We had no idea where we would sleep or what we would do in Krakow, but we did know that there was a CouchSurfing meetup on Friday night. We arrived at 6:30 and all we knew was that we had to met a girl in a red skirt next to a statue of a dragon.
  
• While waiting for the girl in the red skirt, I got a phone call from a one Benjamin Stoler who reminded me that he was also in Krakow. He offered his hotel room for the night, but first, Aydan and I wanted to go to the CouchSurfing party.
• We met Kasia, the girl in the red skirt, and she took us to this campfire party where we met Carlos from Chile, Christian from France, and lots of Polish kids. Including Ania who owned a hostel and offered us a free place to stay on Saturday night.
• Around 11 we ran to meet Ben in the Jewish old-town. We cabbed back to his hotel, picking up some wine on the way. At his hotel, we had to find somebody to uncork the wine. We stumbled upon a Croatian high-school field trip and made friends.
• Free breakfast at the hotel the next morning before Ben's group left.
• Aydan and I went to explore the main market square before heading to Ania's hostel.
• Ania appologized that she didn't have any free beds, only a "chill out" room that didn't have electricity. So we had a free night's stay in an awesome bedoin-style room that was way better than any of the hostel's dorm rooms.
• After dropping our stuff at the hostel, Aydan and I went to the bus station to get a 7 zloty shuttle to Auchwitz (as opposed to the 80 zl tours they offered from the main square). Aydan and I seperated at Auchwitz, I think it was better for me to see it alone. I don't know what I can write here about it, I think it deserves more than a point on a bulleted list. Maybe later.
  
• After we returned to Krakow, we rested at the hostel before going back to Kasmiersz, the Jewish old-town. Apparantly Krakow was in the middle of a a Jewish music festival and we stumbled upon a raging Klezmer concert. Yes, raging. We danced with some old women and Jewish youth groups.
• On Sunday morning, Aydan wanted to see this hill that had a good view of the city. I wasn't totally enthused and we ended up walking about 3km uphill to get to the top. We were exhausted afterwards and went back to the hostel to get our stuff and leave.
• It took us about two hours to get out of Krakow because we got on the wrong bus. It was completely my fault. We were lost and frusterated and tired and hungry, but we finally got to the highway around seven. Three cars and three hours later, our last ride dropped us off right in front of our dorm. As soon as he drove away, we high-fived like nobody's business.

I am still completely high from this trip. There are a million things I could write about now, like Auchwitz, or how I only spent about $30 on the whole trip, or about the gendered implications of two girls hitchhiking, or about the cosmic alignment that helped us at every juncture of this endeavor, or about Polish hospitality. Mostly, though, I just want to say that after this weekend, I feel like I can do anything. I'm still completely amazed that we survived, and not only survived, but had an awesome time.

When we were asking Ania, the girl who owns the hostel, about the best way to get to Auchwitz, she told us that the 80-zloty tours we saw advertised were the tourist price, not the traveler's price. So there's a difference between tourist and traveler. I'm not ready to completely abandon my middle-class life, but it's nice to know that I have what it takes to be a traveler, if only for a weekend.