Thursday, September 29, 2011

OSWIECIM: October, 2000 (Part 2)

I was grateful to be on my own at Auschwitz as Kaspar took off for a couple of hours. Because this was midweek in late October, I was nearly alone at the site. Gray skies with a light rainfall seemed appropriate. In silence, a morbid history surrounded me with its brick walls and barbed wire. The harrowing iron lettering over the gate: Arbeit Macht Frei. Work will set you free.

Much has been written and filmed about the Nazi concentration camps, but being there is an entirely different experience. Traveling from Berlin, where I'd studied the beginning of that power, to here, one of the cruelest sites of human atrocity, made my head reel. How recently these events had occurred. Certainly I knew dates and such, but being at the place created a fresh and ghastly resonance.

In Berlin, I pictured a mother holding her child's hand as they shopped for school supplies or celebrated a birthday or wandered around the zoo and then...they didn't.

In the Auschwitz museum, I stared, stupefied, at displays featuring huge piles of leather suitcases, stuffed toy kittens, wiry eyeglasses, high-heeled pumps, worn Oxfords, and dentures. These were not the day-to-day belongings of an ancient society. Fifty-five years ago, a businessman had carried one of those briefcases, a five-year-old girl clutched one of those toys, and a university student had strutted in a pair of those tan leather pumps and then....they didn't.

A teddy bear resembled one from my childhood, a child's party dress was not antiquated, and journals and books were not from the Dark Ages...and it seemed to me they should have been. My mind could not encompass this terror being so very modern. I ruminated on Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. What is wrong with mankind that in the face of scientific achievement, in a world of modern medicine and higher thinking, we can backtrack into such horrific behavior?

This place shook me deeply, as it was meant to do. I stood in the long, cold stables where Steven Spielberg had shot scenes for "Schindler's List." In these stables, where prisoners once lived stacked on top of each other, I experienced what a movie could not possibly convey. My hand grazed the frame of a wooden stall and I imagined other hands touching these same splinters. In the death chambers where women and children were herded to be showered and gassed, I felt a clawing loss of my own air as my stomach clenched.

After an hour and a half, I met up with Kaspar. In the rainfall we walked to Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, where bodies had been dumped into a green and murky pond. We stood still, side by side, under darkening afternoon clouds. Kaspar was kind to be there, and kind enough not to speak.

Our drive back to Krakow remained quiet. This time Kaspar's eyes stayed glued to the road. He'd had taken this drive before and knew chit-chat was impossible. As we parted back at the bus station, I palmed him a tip and wanted to hug him, but it didn't seem right.

In the dark of evening, I stumbled home to my hotel. I nibbled at some food in a Chinese restaurant, but my appetite was negligible and I gave up. Later I crawled into bed and wept. That night brought horrific dreams filled with awful images. I would remember this day forever, and that is as it must be. The Auschwitz museum had made its point.

When the German army packed train cars with innocents and journeyed them into hell, they separated parents from children, husbands from wives, and siblings from each other. My last night in Krakow, curled up in that hotel bed, I imagined what that terrible separation might be like. My month in Europe, both with and away from William, was sealing the relationship in my heart and I needed to let him know that. No, I can't imagine we would live our whole lives apart. No.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

OSWIECIM: October, 2000 (Part 1)

Bus schedules had been checked and rechecked. My eyes blinked open early, and after breakfast I made my way on a drizzly, cold day to the station. But the nine o'clock bus to Oswiecim was nowhere to be found and my rudimentary Polish was useless in getting information.

I paced the platform as if I could will the bus into place. I studied and re-studied the schedule. I kicked myself for my mistake. Or was it my error? Inside the station it took a total of one minute to deduce a coherent conversation would not be viable with my language skills.

The nine o'clock bus? Oswiecim?

I pointed to my watch in a silly clichéd movie gesture. The ticket seller waved me aside.

Back outside, the posted schedule indicated the next bus would leave Krakow at noon, if these itineraries could even be trusted. Because I planned to leave Krakow the next morning, this was my only opportunity to visit Auschwitz. It was beyond my comprehension to have come so far, be so close, and not pay homage to the terrible place where so many lost their lives.

A stocky gentleman of maybe forty years hurried toward me. Dressed in a worn beige overcoat and with an errant lock of thin sandy hair falling over his brow, he gave me an energetic look from bright blue eyes. He wiped his hair back with his bear paw of a hand and asked, You like to see Auschwitz?

Well, yes, but I missed the bus....I'll come back later.

No, no...young lady...I take you....Here...my car. And he pointed to a beige wreck of a Volkswagen Rabbit and urged me forward as if it were a stretch limo. How could I get out of this? What excuse could I drum up without insulting him? The Rabbit hardly appeared capable of a trip around the block, let alone out of the city. And who the hell was this guy, anyway?

Ummm...thanks, but I can wait for the next bus.

No, no...I take you....I show you....Private tour!

How much?

Instantly I was negotiating, translating Polish zloty to U.S. dollars and arriving at fifty-three dollars for a return trip. This was one of those moments. One of those spontaneous travel moments. The rush of the back and forth over the money clashed with deciding whether I could trust this guy.

Okay.

My name, Kaspar.

Nice to meet you.

From the back seat, I listened to the engine of Kaspar's Rabbit grumble as he gunned us out of Krakow and into Polish countryside on an hour-long journey to the concentration camp museum. The car rattled and shook along with my nerves. I was certain a single pothole would doom us to wreckage.

Once we were out of Krakow and on a two-lane road, I grew more alarmed at the carefree style of my driver. Kaspar wanted to chat. He seemed to see nothing wrong with turning halfway around in his seat to converse with me. His hands stayed on the wheel but his eyes were rarely on the road, and the highway was hardly straight. My crazy chauffeur careened around bends with no more than a casual look-see beforehand.

Kaspar also believed his English-language skills were top-notch. I had zero idea what the man was saying. Truly, I was mystified, and I didn't care. I just wanted him to face front and focus. And yet I couldn't overcome my good manners. Whenever confronted with a language barrier, my habit is to simply nod, laugh, or express dismay as I pick up clues from my conversational partner's tonal quality or sound level.

No kidding?

Oh, yes, I know...very frustrating.

Terrible.

Yes...ha, ha...funny.

It took me nearly the entire trip to understand what Kaspar meant when he jabbed his index finger at the window and cried Crumbles! Crumbles! After six such interjections, I realized the man was pointing out crash sites. He was communicating that this was a dangerous road on which foolish drivers made deadly mistakes on a regular basis.

I trusted. There was little choice from the back seat of a Rabbit in this Polish Grand Prix. And we eventually pulled into the parking lot of the Auschwitz camp. I stepped out of the car with rubbery legs. Kaspar, as it turned out, was a fair and good travel guide. He led me into the main building of the museum, made sure I had the correct ticket, and we coordinated a later meeting time when he would give me an extended tour of the camp. Private tour!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

KRAKOW: October, 2000

Book, book, book. Food, food, food. Bed, bed, bed.

This was how I jumped off the train in Krakow. A woman with a list and a mission.
While traveling I read, a lot. In restaurants, on trains and in hotel rooms. I was downing an average of five books a week as I scurried across Europe. I'd turned the last page of a novel at the end of the six-hour train ride from Olomouc to Krakow.

The railcar creaked to halt and I alighted in a city painted gold as the sun dipped. A promising vista, but I was without a hotel reservation, I was hungry and I had nothing to read. And that was before I learned some sort of business conference had most of the city's rooms booked.

Filmu.

Krakow sits on the Vistula River and, like Prague, was left fairly undamaged after World War II. The German army invaded Poland and used Krakow as their headquarters. The small city houses a population of just over seven-hundred thousand and is divided into walkable districts. The most engaging area is Stare Miasto (Old Town), a walled center enclosing a large market square attractive to tourists, locals, and certainly me.

In Old Town I searched for a hotel room and found a place for exactly one night. The next day, after much scrounging, I would luck into another room for two nights. Both hostelries charged thirty-eight dollars a night, including breakfast. A water closet down the hall meant no private bath, but I was used to that. Neither was comparable to my expansive apartment in Prague, but to even find a pillow on which to lay my head was fortuitous.

After a cursory glance at my first hotel room, I raced back out to the streets to find a bookstore. There were many, but none with books in my language. I whipped through four stores before spotting one lonely rack of English paperbacks. Not exactly bestsellers, but I was desperate and grabbed a couple of British spy adventures.

Room: check

Book: check

Dinner: Hmmm?

Twilight settled over Krakow. Restaurant windows framed in lace glowed amber in candlelight. Cobblestone walkways reflected lamplight and the scents of roasted meat floated from doorways. Couples swayed, teetered and giggled, presumably after pre-dinner cocktails. The city's atmosphere radiated warmth and giddiness.

A stone-walled restaurant caught my attention. Tapered candles stuck in wine bottles flickered with tiny flames, casting shadows off the ancient brick. Settled at a table with my book and a glass of wine, I exhaled with satisfaction. Small potatoes roasted on the hearth of an open fireplace in the center of the room. Customers helped themselves to tender charred morsels. I dined on borscht, pork stuffed with prunes, two glasses of red wine, mineral water, cappuccino and as many of those potatoes as I could pluck from the hearth.

The next morning my I started my exploration of Old Town. As in the Czech Republic, a youthful exuberance resonated from cafes offering internet services. Posters hanging on city walls advertised all sorts of artistic performances and gallery viewings. I trekked up Wawel Hill to Wawel Castle and Wawel Cathedral, and further on to the Jewish district with its synagogues and cemeteries.

Across the main square, pigeons fluttered into nooks and onto windowsills of apartments and offices. I rested on a bench alongside the Vistula, munching on an apple and a homemade pretzel, salty and warm, I'd picked up in a farmer's market. Under the shade of a stone archway, I studied the details of the architecture around me. I was grateful this jewel of a city had not been obliterated in the war — but the next day I would see, up close, the handiwork of the Nazi regime.

In a short telephone conversation with William, it was impossible to describe all that I'd seen in these three cities. The routine of his workdays continued unchanged and he seemed content with that.

"I miss you."

"Me too."

Thursday, September 8, 2011

OLOMOUC: October, 2000

Olomouc, a town with a population of a hundred and four thousand, had been recommended as an agreeable stop on my way to Krakow. Across from its train station, a charmless, gray-slab high-rise hotel waited for me. For a mere fourteen dollars I booked a clean, top-floor room with pristine white sheets and a cozy duvet. Breakfast in the downstairs dining room was included. It became increasingly clear that prices in the Czech Republic would soon change as mobs of world travelers discovered these jewel-box villages.

The previous night, I had celebrated my exit from Prague with a farewell dinner. I cast myself in a movie from the nineteen-sixties: imagine Elizabeth Taylor circa "The Last Time I Saw Paris." A dining room, grandly ornate in gold and red, with heavy drapes framing floor-to-ceiling windows. An all-male wait staff on guard, straight-backed in black suits and white gloves, ready to serve.

Each course was elegantly ported across the room on a silver tray, then flamboyantly swooped to eye level as a shining cover was pulled away to reveal its contents. The entree was a dish of braised meat glazed in a rosy sauce, with a parsley sprig daintily adding color. Was I underdressed in my black corduroy pants and black sweater? The ambience screamed for a jade cocktail dress and strings of pearls.

Solitary travel sits well with me. The opportunity to silently observe and to embrace the challenge of getting from here to there. Reading books on long train trips, no problem. I'm fine with every aspect — except the evening meal. It's at the end of the day, as I sip a glass of wine and peer out a dark window, that the pangs hit and I want to be with him. To hear of his day and tell of mine.

Olomouc, perched over the Morava River, was delightfully free of tourists. A small town full of churches and palaces. The city, painted in pastel tones, spoke of a peaceful existence. Pale blues, yellows and creamy stone blended with windows trimmed in gold or sienna. The October light cast a pink tinge on the masonry. Stone trumpeters balanced on rooftops next to statues of bishops solemnly blessing the city down below.

Cobblestone streets and a village center with a towering fountain welcomed me on this warm, sunny day. Small store windows featuring fine Czech glassware and china clamored for attention. Workmen repaired streets, carpenters remodeled apartments and schoolchildren chased pigeons. Old men in hats and women in headscarves chatted in small groups.

A young tour guide in Potsdam, Germany, explained a social chasm that had occurred since the fall of the wall. Under the Communist regimes, people would retire by fifty years of age and the state would take care of them. As a new democracy replaced the old system, those in their late forties or early fifties panicked. Their children jubilantly stomped the Berlin Wall to pieces while the older generation was preparing to end their working lives. But now they faced...what? Who would pay their rent, their medical bills? Who would take care of them?

Suddenly, with a long future ahead, fifty looked far too young to call it quits. To make matters worse, as capitalist elements worked their way into society, an older citizen would notice a neighbor who suddenly owned a big-screen television, or a laptop computer, or a new car. A social competitiveness closed in.

The twentysomethings thrilled at no longer being forced to speak the Russian language imposed on them. Their vistas opened to include the entire world via speedy internet connections. Jazzy, stylish blue jeans and all kinds of movies and music showed up. Nightclubs sprang open and the possibilities for variety in higher education spoke of serious money in their futures.

But for the middle-aged, things could not have looked bleaker.

In Berlin, striking laborers camped in tents by the Brandenburg Gate. They argued for higher wages, but construction chiefs could hire new immigrants for a fraction of their pay. It would take years, perhaps generations, for these societies to adapt to their new democracies.

Olomouc townspeople huddled with worried faces as pigeons flapped for crumbs. Guilty twinges grappled at me when I ordered up a dinner of schnitzel, salad, beer and a cappuccino...for a total of four dollars. The area could benefit from an onslaught of tourists. I resolved to stop my joyous, secret buzz whenever I discovered empty towns. These places need an influx of western cash, not just western idealism. I left a hundred percent tip, and that seemed measly.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

KUTNÁ HORA: October, 2000 (Part 2)

After those two unsettling tours, I joined townsfolk lunching under maple trees at a pizza restaurant. Biting into a slice of thin-crust basil and cheese, I counted myself lucky not to have lived in a time of rich Burghers and poor peasants staving off the plague as crazy monks concocted macabre art installations.

By five o'clock the autumn air cooled, the robin's-egg blue sky had deepened into navy, and I zipped up my sweater. It was time to return to Prague. Reading on an outdoor train station bench while occasionally checking the track for oncoming engines, I regretted not bringing a heavier jacket.

After an hour, I hopped on to a warm train car. A dark landscape passed by outside my window. Home, home, home to Prague, the wheels rumbled....Home, home, home to my little apartment. Good day. Weird but interesting.

A young blonde conductor moved down the row, clicking her metal hole-punch on passenger tickets. She smiled and took mine. I was so content thawing out my chilled body and fantasizing about a hot bowl of borscht that I didn't notice her expression until she rattled off something in decidedly stressed Czech. She shook both her head and my ticket in my face. I was on the wrong train, barreling off in the wrong direction.

Hovno.

The train stopped to kick me off into the middle of God-knows-where in the Czech Republic. A station sat empty but for a lonely ticket seller, a young man with about three words of English to match my three words of Czech. His few were mostly taken up chastising himself. Apparently, his wife had been nagging him. She say, learn English! He wore a pained look and banged his fist on the counter. I consoled him and considered patting his hand, but that seemed a tad forward. The guy really needed a hug, but we weren't going there.

Okay, look...we'll figure this out. I need a ticket to Prague. I have to get to Prague...Praha...tonight. My finger tapped at my watch. He attempted to explain that it would be two tickets, two trains, and not for another hour.

Travel is a leap of faith. Despite being cold and tired, and despite the nightmare visuals from Kutná Hora in my brain, I trusted somehow, some way, this young man would get me back to Prague.

For an hour, no one else came in or out of the station. What a lonely job for this guy...late at night in the middle of...where, exactly? We occasionally eyed one another and shared the self-conscious smiles of people who do not speak the same language. We bobbed our heads like popinjays until I heard the welcome squeal of train brakes. My friend pointed and nodded and I danced an international goodbye polka before jumping aboard.

I finally arrived back in Prague later that night, my travel confidence soaring with the surefootedness borne of surviving on foreign soil. I remembered my trepidation back in my Los Angeles apartment. And I thought of William back in our Berlin apartment.

Was he eating a sausage with mustard before going to sleep? Was he wondering where I was? I wanted to say Guess what I saw today and I got so lost in the dark of night and it was so cold and the language undid me but I made my way back and here I am in a Prague restaurant eating pork medallions in cognac sauce with boiled potatoes and a glass of red wine all for seven dollars. And I miss you so, so much.