Finding myself in Poland
Joanna Mikulski
Innsbruck Stimme
Its magnificent Old City forms a geometric maze of black-stained, yellow buildings. Above the downtown rises the Wawel Castle, a tribute to Eastern European kings.
A marketplace, where eager salespeople sell carved wooden boxes and cheap crystal, stands central in the downtown next to the Cathedral of Saint Mary, which testifies to the faith of the country. The central crucifix of this blue, red and gold-adorned church inspires awe in all those who pass through its heavy brown doors.
Outside the voices of students radiate throughout the streets of this jewel of a city once hidden behind the wall of communism.
In the days after Christmas, I found myself in Krakow, Poland.
Throughout the snow-less month of December in Austria, I looked forward to my trip eastward. I had yet to cross into territory once held by the force that inspired the fall-out shelter in the basement of my grammar school.
I eagerly awaited the opportunity to look for the legacy of the past in the growth of Krakow, a city that has developed over the last ten years into a center of culture and hope in Poland. I also aimed to find some pierogies, Polish cheese and potato filled ravioli, like those of my grandmother.
As I walked through the streets of Krakow, I felt for the first time since departing the United States that I had truly left my home country. The obligatory McDonald's in the Old City stood as the only evidence that western civilization had reached Poland. The Dunkin' Donuts that had sat on a corner near the train station went out of business last year.
In contrast to Austria, Switzerland or Italy, where the majority of students, salespeople and train personnel that I have encountered converse fluently in English, the barrier of language hindered our navigation of the Krakow.
In two restaurants, my travel companions and I ordered by pointing at an item and hoping that it would appeal to our tastebuds. (I did eat some pierogies at the second.) At a bank, I could only communicate with the teller in German, whose grasp of the language paled in comparison to even my one-dimensional, American-accent tinged verbal abilities.
The lands beyond the city touched me to an even greater degree. On our second day in Poland, we rode from Krakow to Oswiecim, the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps.
The landscape of rural Poland starkly contrasted that of Austria with its ornate village churches and wooden-roofed, orange and brown farmhouses. Villages of rectangular shacks and wire fences dotted the fields. The cartoonish graffiti that decorated the walls of the houses provided the only color in the winter landscape. No break in the contours of the land denoted the end of the world of the living and the beginning of the camps of death.
The museum at Auschwitz and Birkenau pays tribute to the suffering and turmoil that Poland has endured over the past century. It also stands as a monument to the depth of the crimes that humans have the capability to commit against one another.
The shatteringly perfect calculation of the Nazis and their sadistic manipulation of the prisoners violently struck me. They denied certain prisoners blankets and others shoes or jackets so that the captives would have to fight amongst themselves to survive.
Yet, perhaps ironically in this somber place, I encountered some of the most hospitable people that I have ever met. Our tour guide from the museum met us with a smile and a calm voice at the train platform. A driver from a youth center in Oswiecim took us to the museum, kept our bags safe in the taxi and awaited our return from the tour. The center provided us with dinner and allowed us to stay there as we waited for our midnight train to take us back to Innsbruck.
But, perhaps our simple visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau inspired the welcoming demeanor of our guides. More Americans visited the concentration camps in the 1970s, when Poland still existed under communism, than today in a time of open borders.
On the ride to the Oswiecim train station, we passed a point of controversy that had reached the pages of Time and Newsweek — a disco just outside the death camps. As we drove past the gray, metallic building, our driver, an older man around 65 years old, commented that the children here must live too.
And to me, Poland did indeed feel like a country coming to life.
Joanna Mikulski is a sophomore arts and letters major who is currently spending the academic year abroad in Innsbruck, Austria.
The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, February 9, 2001
