I am of course speaking of the only thing I retained from my college art history course, flying buttresses. Being that there are a shit load of massive, 5+ story, churches here, there are a ton of flying butts. Flying butts are not anything impressive either, but appear to just be a waste of time and money. Then, again, that's what the church loved more than anything back in the day and still does to some degree today. That may be the name of the post cause I like playing on words, but I don't care about churches so I wasn't going around looking at them and really, it won't be a focus of this post.
My first experience that I'll mention is that of the night train, which is almost as crazy an experience as the alcohol. To keep it short, I bought a ticket from Vienna to Krakow. They had me switch cars at one station because they were going to split the train up and half the people would go to Prague. However, I had to ask several times which car I was supposed to be in before I found anyone working for the train that had any idea that this would occur. They appeared to believe that it could magically go to both places and I shouldn't worry about it. Next, after being told that this train would go to Krakow, an old lady in my cabin figured out that I'd need to switch trains at some random station. I was very lucky to have met her cause in the middle of the night, she woke me up in somewhat of a panic. She had figured out that I needed to switch trains by running to another train at the station we were at. Then, she ran (again) me to the correct train. Very nice of her. Also, luckily on the next train was a guy who spoke English and told me which station was mine since they don't announce the stations and only give you a minute or two at max to disembark. This may not be that bad during the day, but throw in disorrientation from sleep and exhaustion from lack of sleep (they check your tickets a bunch and wake you up), it becomes quite rough.
Krakow is a pretty little city. I say little but I guess there's a lot more people than Seattle, though you'd never guess it. Some of the cool things are a really sweet Jewish quarter, a castle/church, nice parks, and a nice old town. I was really tired when I got to my hostel around 8am and the owner let me sleep in an unoccupied bed before moving me to my room. After I got all straightened out, I spent some time looking for a book store that'd trade me some books. I didn't find it till the last day, but along the way I stopped and saw the old town, castle, and Jewish quarter.
It's best to look at my FB pictures for these things to get an idea of them. I will say though that in the castle grounds is the coolest church I've ever been in, and I've been in some neat ones abroad. It was pretty much a museum with some amazing things that I can't even begin to explain other than to say that there was enormous complexity and detailing of reliefs, scultpures, paintings and rooms. They also had the remains of some famous Polish musicians and writers/poets in a basement. Unforetunately, pictures were not allowed inside. Too bad. Also, the Jewish quarter was sweet cause it had a lot of character. Similar to the ruin bars, the pubs and cafe bars here used the area to enhance the experience. One that I went to was called Singer, named after the sowing machines. The tables were old sowing tables.
When I got back to the almost empty hostel, which, by the by, the hostels in Poland are 3rd world prices and some of the most upscale ones I've stayed at, the few people there were planning on going out. One of the guys was working at the hostel and took us around with him and we ended up hanging out with some of his friends. Meeting cool locals is always a cool thing so it was a good night, though for most an early one due to Polish vodka.
I felt obligated while I was in Krakow to visit Auschwitz. I want to make it very clear that I do not want to belittle what happened there or what these people went through, but I am also going to give my honest impressions of what I saw and felt and at times they may seem insensitive. The next thing I want to say is that what I had in my head and what I saw were nowhere near the same thing. I also decided on a tour rather than trying to do it myself, which is not usually how I do things.
Ok, so Auschwitz is actually not just one death camp. Side note - I don't want to call them concentration camps because, while there they were ultra concentrated, they were more about death than anything else - end. There are 3 main camps, but a couple dozen smaller ones around. What the Nazis did was clear a 40km^2 area and let no one in so that they kept what they were doing there - the mass extermination of people - pretty hush hush. The first camp is completely not like I expected. It was an old Polish army living area. This means that the buildings were brick and actually kinda nice. It looked more like what I would think of a Jewish Ghetto than a death camp. Still, it was a death camp in purpose and there was no doubt about that. The first people really to go here were Pols and not specific to Jews. Also, originally, there were no gas chambers. It wasn't for a few years when Hitler made it the goal of the 3rd Reich to exterminate the Jews that they added those and the crematoriums. Instead, they'd just lead those who couldn't work (women, children, the old and sick) away and shoot them and bury them. So the purpose of the death camps was slave labor till death. Ironically, the entrance has a sign above it that says, "work will set you free". What it really meant was free from the bonds of mortality. If you were to follow that saying, you'd surely as I sit here typing die. This is because you were fed very little food (what most of us would consider a light breakfast) a day and worked harder than most ever will in there lives every day. Obviously this led to starvation. These jobs had high turnover in the form of people dying, so they constantly brought new prisoners in. Many were policital, many were Pols, many were Jews, and then of course minority groups like Gypsys and actual criminals, who were made into Capos (prisoners policing prisoners). The Capos were given nice living quarters and food. They were just as brutal as the Nazis in the treatment of other prisoners, and unforetunately were the most likely to survive their stay.
There was also an actual prison there where they'd hold make believe trials that involved being accused and convicted without being able to state your case, then dragged outside and shot in the back of the head. This was reserved for criminals in the area, mostly politcal. The other things we visited were the only intact crematorium and gas chamber in the area, and some museums that housed. One museum was particularly difficult. It had a ton of belongings that the prisoners were ordered to bring and then stolen by the Nazis. This is shoes, clothes, cooking stuff, jewlery, etc. However, the absolute hardest thing to see was the women's hair. They shaved the women's heads before killing them and shipped the hair to be used like wool would be. In the museum they had about 2 tons of their hair.
Next we went to Auschwitz 2. This was the one that was more on par with what I imagined. The Nazis took all the matierals from the villages in the area and built about 150 houses, which resembled a giant wood version of the old military tents from the 1800s. This is the camp that has the train that comes into the middle and what is typically show in movies or pictures. It is the camp that the Jews were sent for extermination. They had 4 massived gas chambers and crematoriums. The Jews were in horrific living conditions, even worse than the other death camp. Still, the purpose was work. I don't know which is a worse version of slavery: to work about 2 months until you starve to death or to work your whole life as a slave in slightly less appaling conditions. I guess in both cases you do slave labor till you die.
The thing that really struck me as strange was the effort the Nazis went through to fool the Jews, and to a less strange degree, the world. What I mean by this was that they made the Jews to believe that they were going to work camps, not extermination camps. Why did it matter? I guess it was to try to make it so that less will try to escape or something. But the deception gets even stranger. The gas chambers were designed to seem like changing rooms and gym showers. Why? Once they were in the camps it's not like, "oh wait, where are you taking us? No, I think I don't feel like going in this death chamber". When the crematoriums were too backed up they'd just lead them to the forest and kill them in mass graves, burning some alive. So, I really don't understand the deception. Also, some deceptions were just plain fucked up, but still you have to ask from a economic point of view during war, why they'd do it. In the living quarters in camp 2 they put in "fire places" that strecthed the length of the cabin. Except the Jews were never able to use them. So why make them. I think maybe I understand. I think it was for mental torture, but the Nazis didn't really seem to physically torture (in the sense of like torture chamber torture or POW torture from the Vietnam/American war), so why this? Lastly, they tried to cover up their activities when they started losing the war. But why? If they knew what they were doing was wrong, then I don't have any simpathy for those soldiers in the war that said they were just following orders and didn't want these bad things to happen. But these orders were coming from higher up, so even the high ups may not have believed in it. If they had, they'd have left the buildings and documents and other evidence. They had already made it a decree that they were about blood purity, so they'd have just been like, "yeah those are our death chambers. So, we are doing what God wants us to do. Fuck you". Anyway, obviously, you can see I was left with some really perplexing questions about motives. I also wondered how it compared to the atrosities of other genocides in the last few hundred years.
The whole tour was fucked up beyond belief in what human hate is capable of. When I got home I noted I hadn't uttered a word the entire day. It really affected me and I pray that these things can never be repeated anywhere. I know that hate will never go away, but hopefully we can keep it from manifesting itself like this.
Moving on to less depressing subjects. The rest of my time in Krakow was pleasant. Even though the weather turned, it wasn't too big a deal. I used the time to see The Hangover 2. I only recognised a couple places in the movie. I also found a second hand book shop, which I felt was a rip off. I had three good books in good quality and they wouldn't even trade them for one used book off their shelf. For Tandia, they offered me 25 cents. Fuck you. I kept that one and traded the other two and still had to pay about 4 bucks. I'll trade Tandia with another traveler.
Oh yeah and I had a funny thing happen at a cheap food place I had been going to. I tried to order a salad and add meat and they tried to charge me an outrageous amount. For the price I could have gotten two kebaps bigger than any burrito I've ever had. In other words, I could have gotten double the meat and double the veggies, minus the cheese in the salad, for the same price and it would have given me 2 days worth of food (seriously the kabaps were two meals). I didn't pay them that amount though. Still, the food and beer in Poland is dirt cheap and GOOD.
The next place I went was Wroclaw. I had a friend I made in Vietnam living there and she told me it was the best city in Poland. I took the train and since it was an early train I was trying to sleep. The train was fairly empty and I had my own compartment for most the trip. The only time anyone came in was after one stop a guy came by and opened the door. I figured he was looking for a seat and other compartments may have had more people in them. I told him he could sit there and so he did. While he was sitting there, he got some beer out of his back pack and offered me one. It was odd as I was obviously alseep when he opened the door and still obviously trying to sleep. However it wasn't odd that someone would be drinking that early in Poland. Granted many places have the people absolutely hammered walking the streets at 10AM, and Poland had this problem too, it was common to see people having a .5L beer with their breakfast (not with the purpose of getting drunk, but more like having a beer with dinner). I turned him down since I was trying to sleep, but he insisted. Not wanting to offend his hospitality, I took one and put it unopened on the floor. He then grabbed it and opened it and handed it to me. I gave him a, "uh, thanks" and he demanded $2 for it. The dickhead. Being that I was in a very vulnerable situation and having been woken from sleep I was in no condition to confront this guy to the point of a fight, which seemed likely by his body language now. I didn't have exactly the money he was looking for so he took it a little bit lower and left; I assume to go fuck some other travelers.
Wroclaw was definitely beautiful and had a really great vibe. I think I liked it even more than Krakow. I'm going to try to keep it short, but the basics are this. Wroclaw was actually German till they lost WW2. The city had been leveled and rebuilt. There is a river that flows through it and a couple islands that are parks. There are monstorous churches in Wroclaw. They are known for these little (one foot tall) copper or bronze gnome statues that are all over the city. I know there are 50 minimum, but I heard upwards of 200. I liked them, but only saw about 20 and took photos of each.
Other than that, I met up with Marta and her boyfriend Nick and toured around with them for two days. The first night we went to a concert/fireworks display. It was pretty sweet and about 30 mins long with thousands of people crowded into the streets to watch it. I also got to meet some of their friends. The next day we took a boat on the river and walked around with them filling me in on the history of the town and cultural things.
My hostel didn't have room on Sat. night so I couchsurfed for the first time on my trip. This was fine by me as the hostel had the worst selection of people yet. There was a 70 year old dude in my room. He obviously felt that this hostel should treat him like a hotel. At 2AM he had them bring an extra matress in for him. 2AM really? Don't worry about the other 5 people in the room. Which he didn't cause he made a ton of noise otherwise, talking or banging around. The second morning he even woke me up to tell me they were serving breakfast (the breakfast in Poland is toast with jam and cheese, and cereal). What the fuck. If I wanted breakfast I would have woke my own ass up.
Anyway, I moved to a girl named Asia's flat. My first experience was quite a nice one. She had a comfy couch, a funny cat, a nice clean place, she prepared and cooked dinner the first night and breakfast the next day. Her family came by and we went to a really strange fountain music show. It was a bit too artsy for all of us and no one "got it". Asia and I met her friend at a bar to watch a big boxing match that was going on that night at the new stadium in the city. The Polish dude lost. The next day we went with her family to a flea market. The market was set up around an old German mill and had anything you could possibly want, including uzis (hopefully fake, but I don't think so) and chain mail in case you might find yourself in a sword fight (also sold there). Next, we went to her parents for lunch and they made a huge lunch. Her dad, Jack, Asia, and her littlest sister, Julia, played Jenga (27 levels, new record) and talked and I had a wonderful time. I helped her dad move a 100+ lb TV for Asia's grandma, which wasn't so bad. Later, Asia and I went to the zoo.
The zoo was tough to see. I've heard Europe has some bad conditions. Most of the exhibits were bad and people can feed the animals. That means that the animals do tricks for food and get fed whatever shit food the people have. One funny thing that happened was that I told Aisa, because she was astonished at how her cat, her family's cat, and her grandma's dog and cat loved me, that animals have an affinity for me. I was half kidding around. While we were at the zoo, we went into a butterfly exhibit where they are free to roam around. At one point there was a big one flying about and I knew, as if it was telling me itself, that it would land on my finger. So, without moving anything other than one of my fingers, stuck one out. Within thirty seconds, it landed on it. We took a couple photos, see FB, one with me bringing it up to my face. Up close their faces are very odd looking. It apperently really liked me cause I had to try really hard to finally get it to fly away. She told me that the mother behind me was sicking her arm out at butterflies and saying, "I don't get it, he does nothing and they just come to him". Later, Asia also laughed about it saying, "I get the cats and dogs, but butterflies, come on". What is interesting is that I just knew with 100% that it would happen; I think I even saw it happening before it did.
And now I'm in Prague.
All in all, I loved Poland. I highly recommend it for anyone travelling Europe. It is cheap, $35 a day is doable, the food is good, the hostels are good, the people are super friendly and good humored and beautiful, it's lovely scenery and culture, and they have good cheap beer. Go! Seriously, GO!
D
My first experience that I'll mention is that of the night train, which is almost as crazy an experience as the alcohol. To keep it short, I bought a ticket from Vienna to Krakow. They had me switch cars at one station because they were going to split the train up and half the people would go to Prague. However, I had to ask several times which car I was supposed to be in before I found anyone working for the train that had any idea that this would occur. They appeared to believe that it could magically go to both places and I shouldn't worry about it. Next, after being told that this train would go to Krakow, an old lady in my cabin figured out that I'd need to switch trains at some random station. I was very lucky to have met her cause in the middle of the night, she woke me up in somewhat of a panic. She had figured out that I needed to switch trains by running to another train at the station we were at. Then, she ran (again) me to the correct train. Very nice of her. Also, luckily on the next train was a guy who spoke English and told me which station was mine since they don't announce the stations and only give you a minute or two at max to disembark. This may not be that bad during the day, but throw in disorrientation from sleep and exhaustion from lack of sleep (they check your tickets a bunch and wake you up), it becomes quite rough.
Krakow is a pretty little city. I say little but I guess there's a lot more people than Seattle, though you'd never guess it. Some of the cool things are a really sweet Jewish quarter, a castle/church, nice parks, and a nice old town. I was really tired when I got to my hostel around 8am and the owner let me sleep in an unoccupied bed before moving me to my room. After I got all straightened out, I spent some time looking for a book store that'd trade me some books. I didn't find it till the last day, but along the way I stopped and saw the old town, castle, and Jewish quarter.
It's best to look at my FB pictures for these things to get an idea of them. I will say though that in the castle grounds is the coolest church I've ever been in, and I've been in some neat ones abroad. It was pretty much a museum with some amazing things that I can't even begin to explain other than to say that there was enormous complexity and detailing of reliefs, scultpures, paintings and rooms. They also had the remains of some famous Polish musicians and writers/poets in a basement. Unforetunately, pictures were not allowed inside. Too bad. Also, the Jewish quarter was sweet cause it had a lot of character. Similar to the ruin bars, the pubs and cafe bars here used the area to enhance the experience. One that I went to was called Singer, named after the sowing machines. The tables were old sowing tables.
When I got back to the almost empty hostel, which, by the by, the hostels in Poland are 3rd world prices and some of the most upscale ones I've stayed at, the few people there were planning on going out. One of the guys was working at the hostel and took us around with him and we ended up hanging out with some of his friends. Meeting cool locals is always a cool thing so it was a good night, though for most an early one due to Polish vodka.
I felt obligated while I was in Krakow to visit Auschwitz. I want to make it very clear that I do not want to belittle what happened there or what these people went through, but I am also going to give my honest impressions of what I saw and felt and at times they may seem insensitive. The next thing I want to say is that what I had in my head and what I saw were nowhere near the same thing. I also decided on a tour rather than trying to do it myself, which is not usually how I do things.
Ok, so Auschwitz is actually not just one death camp. Side note - I don't want to call them concentration camps because, while there they were ultra concentrated, they were more about death than anything else - end. There are 3 main camps, but a couple dozen smaller ones around. What the Nazis did was clear a 40km^2 area and let no one in so that they kept what they were doing there - the mass extermination of people - pretty hush hush. The first camp is completely not like I expected. It was an old Polish army living area. This means that the buildings were brick and actually kinda nice. It looked more like what I would think of a Jewish Ghetto than a death camp. Still, it was a death camp in purpose and there was no doubt about that. The first people really to go here were Pols and not specific to Jews. Also, originally, there were no gas chambers. It wasn't for a few years when Hitler made it the goal of the 3rd Reich to exterminate the Jews that they added those and the crematoriums. Instead, they'd just lead those who couldn't work (women, children, the old and sick) away and shoot them and bury them. So the purpose of the death camps was slave labor till death. Ironically, the entrance has a sign above it that says, "work will set you free". What it really meant was free from the bonds of mortality. If you were to follow that saying, you'd surely as I sit here typing die. This is because you were fed very little food (what most of us would consider a light breakfast) a day and worked harder than most ever will in there lives every day. Obviously this led to starvation. These jobs had high turnover in the form of people dying, so they constantly brought new prisoners in. Many were policital, many were Pols, many were Jews, and then of course minority groups like Gypsys and actual criminals, who were made into Capos (prisoners policing prisoners). The Capos were given nice living quarters and food. They were just as brutal as the Nazis in the treatment of other prisoners, and unforetunately were the most likely to survive their stay.
There was also an actual prison there where they'd hold make believe trials that involved being accused and convicted without being able to state your case, then dragged outside and shot in the back of the head. This was reserved for criminals in the area, mostly politcal. The other things we visited were the only intact crematorium and gas chamber in the area, and some museums that housed. One museum was particularly difficult. It had a ton of belongings that the prisoners were ordered to bring and then stolen by the Nazis. This is shoes, clothes, cooking stuff, jewlery, etc. However, the absolute hardest thing to see was the women's hair. They shaved the women's heads before killing them and shipped the hair to be used like wool would be. In the museum they had about 2 tons of their hair.
Next we went to Auschwitz 2. This was the one that was more on par with what I imagined. The Nazis took all the matierals from the villages in the area and built about 150 houses, which resembled a giant wood version of the old military tents from the 1800s. This is the camp that has the train that comes into the middle and what is typically show in movies or pictures. It is the camp that the Jews were sent for extermination. They had 4 massived gas chambers and crematoriums. The Jews were in horrific living conditions, even worse than the other death camp. Still, the purpose was work. I don't know which is a worse version of slavery: to work about 2 months until you starve to death or to work your whole life as a slave in slightly less appaling conditions. I guess in both cases you do slave labor till you die.
The thing that really struck me as strange was the effort the Nazis went through to fool the Jews, and to a less strange degree, the world. What I mean by this was that they made the Jews to believe that they were going to work camps, not extermination camps. Why did it matter? I guess it was to try to make it so that less will try to escape or something. But the deception gets even stranger. The gas chambers were designed to seem like changing rooms and gym showers. Why? Once they were in the camps it's not like, "oh wait, where are you taking us? No, I think I don't feel like going in this death chamber". When the crematoriums were too backed up they'd just lead them to the forest and kill them in mass graves, burning some alive. So, I really don't understand the deception. Also, some deceptions were just plain fucked up, but still you have to ask from a economic point of view during war, why they'd do it. In the living quarters in camp 2 they put in "fire places" that strecthed the length of the cabin. Except the Jews were never able to use them. So why make them. I think maybe I understand. I think it was for mental torture, but the Nazis didn't really seem to physically torture (in the sense of like torture chamber torture or POW torture from the Vietnam/American war), so why this? Lastly, they tried to cover up their activities when they started losing the war. But why? If they knew what they were doing was wrong, then I don't have any simpathy for those soldiers in the war that said they were just following orders and didn't want these bad things to happen. But these orders were coming from higher up, so even the high ups may not have believed in it. If they had, they'd have left the buildings and documents and other evidence. They had already made it a decree that they were about blood purity, so they'd have just been like, "yeah those are our death chambers. So, we are doing what God wants us to do. Fuck you". Anyway, obviously, you can see I was left with some really perplexing questions about motives. I also wondered how it compared to the atrosities of other genocides in the last few hundred years.
The whole tour was fucked up beyond belief in what human hate is capable of. When I got home I noted I hadn't uttered a word the entire day. It really affected me and I pray that these things can never be repeated anywhere. I know that hate will never go away, but hopefully we can keep it from manifesting itself like this.
Moving on to less depressing subjects. The rest of my time in Krakow was pleasant. Even though the weather turned, it wasn't too big a deal. I used the time to see The Hangover 2. I only recognised a couple places in the movie. I also found a second hand book shop, which I felt was a rip off. I had three good books in good quality and they wouldn't even trade them for one used book off their shelf. For Tandia, they offered me 25 cents. Fuck you. I kept that one and traded the other two and still had to pay about 4 bucks. I'll trade Tandia with another traveler.
Oh yeah and I had a funny thing happen at a cheap food place I had been going to. I tried to order a salad and add meat and they tried to charge me an outrageous amount. For the price I could have gotten two kebaps bigger than any burrito I've ever had. In other words, I could have gotten double the meat and double the veggies, minus the cheese in the salad, for the same price and it would have given me 2 days worth of food (seriously the kabaps were two meals). I didn't pay them that amount though. Still, the food and beer in Poland is dirt cheap and GOOD.
The next place I went was Wroclaw. I had a friend I made in Vietnam living there and she told me it was the best city in Poland. I took the train and since it was an early train I was trying to sleep. The train was fairly empty and I had my own compartment for most the trip. The only time anyone came in was after one stop a guy came by and opened the door. I figured he was looking for a seat and other compartments may have had more people in them. I told him he could sit there and so he did. While he was sitting there, he got some beer out of his back pack and offered me one. It was odd as I was obviously alseep when he opened the door and still obviously trying to sleep. However it wasn't odd that someone would be drinking that early in Poland. Granted many places have the people absolutely hammered walking the streets at 10AM, and Poland had this problem too, it was common to see people having a .5L beer with their breakfast (not with the purpose of getting drunk, but more like having a beer with dinner). I turned him down since I was trying to sleep, but he insisted. Not wanting to offend his hospitality, I took one and put it unopened on the floor. He then grabbed it and opened it and handed it to me. I gave him a, "uh, thanks" and he demanded $2 for it. The dickhead. Being that I was in a very vulnerable situation and having been woken from sleep I was in no condition to confront this guy to the point of a fight, which seemed likely by his body language now. I didn't have exactly the money he was looking for so he took it a little bit lower and left; I assume to go fuck some other travelers.
Wroclaw was definitely beautiful and had a really great vibe. I think I liked it even more than Krakow. I'm going to try to keep it short, but the basics are this. Wroclaw was actually German till they lost WW2. The city had been leveled and rebuilt. There is a river that flows through it and a couple islands that are parks. There are monstorous churches in Wroclaw. They are known for these little (one foot tall) copper or bronze gnome statues that are all over the city. I know there are 50 minimum, but I heard upwards of 200. I liked them, but only saw about 20 and took photos of each.
Other than that, I met up with Marta and her boyfriend Nick and toured around with them for two days. The first night we went to a concert/fireworks display. It was pretty sweet and about 30 mins long with thousands of people crowded into the streets to watch it. I also got to meet some of their friends. The next day we took a boat on the river and walked around with them filling me in on the history of the town and cultural things.
My hostel didn't have room on Sat. night so I couchsurfed for the first time on my trip. This was fine by me as the hostel had the worst selection of people yet. There was a 70 year old dude in my room. He obviously felt that this hostel should treat him like a hotel. At 2AM he had them bring an extra matress in for him. 2AM really? Don't worry about the other 5 people in the room. Which he didn't cause he made a ton of noise otherwise, talking or banging around. The second morning he even woke me up to tell me they were serving breakfast (the breakfast in Poland is toast with jam and cheese, and cereal). What the fuck. If I wanted breakfast I would have woke my own ass up.
Anyway, I moved to a girl named Asia's flat. My first experience was quite a nice one. She had a comfy couch, a funny cat, a nice clean place, she prepared and cooked dinner the first night and breakfast the next day. Her family came by and we went to a really strange fountain music show. It was a bit too artsy for all of us and no one "got it". Asia and I met her friend at a bar to watch a big boxing match that was going on that night at the new stadium in the city. The Polish dude lost. The next day we went with her family to a flea market. The market was set up around an old German mill and had anything you could possibly want, including uzis (hopefully fake, but I don't think so) and chain mail in case you might find yourself in a sword fight (also sold there). Next, we went to her parents for lunch and they made a huge lunch. Her dad, Jack, Asia, and her littlest sister, Julia, played Jenga (27 levels, new record) and talked and I had a wonderful time. I helped her dad move a 100+ lb TV for Asia's grandma, which wasn't so bad. Later, Asia and I went to the zoo.
The zoo was tough to see. I've heard Europe has some bad conditions. Most of the exhibits were bad and people can feed the animals. That means that the animals do tricks for food and get fed whatever shit food the people have. One funny thing that happened was that I told Aisa, because she was astonished at how her cat, her family's cat, and her grandma's dog and cat loved me, that animals have an affinity for me. I was half kidding around. While we were at the zoo, we went into a butterfly exhibit where they are free to roam around. At one point there was a big one flying about and I knew, as if it was telling me itself, that it would land on my finger. So, without moving anything other than one of my fingers, stuck one out. Within thirty seconds, it landed on it. We took a couple photos, see FB, one with me bringing it up to my face. Up close their faces are very odd looking. It apperently really liked me cause I had to try really hard to finally get it to fly away. She told me that the mother behind me was sicking her arm out at butterflies and saying, "I don't get it, he does nothing and they just come to him". Later, Asia also laughed about it saying, "I get the cats and dogs, but butterflies, come on". What is interesting is that I just knew with 100% that it would happen; I think I even saw it happening before it did.
And now I'm in Prague.
All in all, I loved Poland. I highly recommend it for anyone travelling Europe. It is cheap, $35 a day is doable, the food is good, the hostels are good, the people are super friendly and good humored and beautiful, it's lovely scenery and culture, and they have good cheap beer. Go! Seriously, GO!
D
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