euroSlurve

It’s been interesting hearing different perspectives on World War II as we travel through Europe. In England, they spoke of the Blitz. In Denmark, it was all about occupation and resistance. In Austria, they talked about being forced to play along with the Nazis. In Germany it was shame, embarrassment and rebuilding.

The Polish people I’ve met have some of the most intense stories. One of them, Marek (a church planter in Gryfow) talked about how his father was sent to Siberia to work in a labor camp. Another guy talked about how his family fled to Yugoslavia and couldn’t return home until the late 1940s. The area we just came from (Gryfow) is in the southwest corner of Poland. Between WWI and WWII it was actually annexed to Germany. The Germans expanded their territory and most Poles fled. They didn’t return until the war ended. Then the borders were redrawn and it became Poland again. Crazy stuff.

We heard of ton of these stories yesterday at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp here in Poland. The tour was pretty intense and it’s still hard to comprehend the stuff we saw.

OK, enough history lessons. Let’s lighten it up a bit. We arrived in Krakow last night after a long, five hour journey from Gryfow. We packed eight people in a small van and journeyed across this fair land. At one point (at Auschwitz) it actually started snowing. Just a few flurries, but it was real snow. Anyway, we had dinner (pierogis and beer) at a cafe in Krakow last night with about 10 other Americans who were here for the conference in Gryfow. We stood out a little, but it was a good time.

The old town square here in Krakow is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in Europe. It was untouched during the war and is absolutely beautiful. We’re going to explore a bit more in a couple hours so I’ll post some photos on Flickr. I’m now using Jamie’s MacBook since it appears that my hard drive has failed. I’m really, really, really, really, really hoping that isn’t the case (since all of my photos are on that hard drive) and that I can fix it when I get home. Scott, Josh and I have already laid hands on it. So hopefully it’ll be ok.

We’ll be spending the day in Krakow today and then Jamie and I will board on overnight train to Prague.  So we’ll talk to you later from the Czech Republic.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 12:06 am and is filed under Poland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.