Fancy Schmancy Pierogis

Today, I had to gear up for what I thought would be quite an emotional day - visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau about 50 miles west of Krakow. On the way there in a mini-bus (7 zloties, $2 ) I listened to Barber's Adagio on my iPod. My sister Karla gave me the CD years ago and described it as sad music - so I think of it as Sad Music now. You would recognize it as the music playing in Platoon when Willem Defoe is left behind as the helicopter takes off without him and the Vietkong are closing in. The ride there was beautiful countryside - lots of little towns. Some of the older houses (almost log cabins) had blue stripes painted on them. This is an old custom that when girls became of age to marry, the dads painted the houses with blue stripes and the single boys would flock! (Note to myself: Paint blue stripes on the house when I get back)

The first part of Auschwitz was an existing Polish army barracks converted to a concentration camp. I don't want to go into detail of the camp except to say its been preserved in a way that is amazing and harsh and real and hopefully a stark lesson for us all. The picture to the right is from Birkenau - showing one of the crematorium that the Nazi's destroyed as the Russians approached. If you zoom in, you can see the hundreds of chimneys from individual wooden shacks that were taken apart for the wood after the war. Other impressions - I get the feeling the Steven Spielberg spent alot of time here - there is a wallcase full of shoes that are very muted in color except for the faded red shoes - it really reminded me of the scenes with the little girl in the reddish/pink coat standing out in the black and white film Schindler's List (filmed in Krakow at the actual sites). Also, hearthbreaking was a case full of hundreds of prosectic limbs, and of course, baby clothes and toys. On the bus ride home, I listened to Django Reinhart, a French Gypsy guitairst from the 40s that Atticus is named after (as well as Mr. Cole Django Evers), in honor of the Gypsies killed at the camp.

I was lucky enough to befriend two kind gentlemen on the tour and we spent the rest of the day together. It was nice indeed to have company walking around Krakow and having dinner with them after seeing the camps that day. Their names were Joe (Washington DC) and Sylwester (Dansk). See Joe showing off the receipt for the pierogi dinner for the 3 of us that he spotted - 32 zloties, or about $10 - for the 3 of us. Joe's a big spender!!! Sylwester latched onto my Fancy Nancy blog name since he really loves the phrase fancy schmancy - so we over-used the phrase as often as possible - especially about the pierogis (though none of them had the image of the Virgin Mary, Jean, like the one that sold on eBay recently - Dang!). Pls pardon Joe being on his side - the day wore him out. Joe likes to say that he will always remember running out of Auschwitz with me... in fact, we were running to catch the bus back to Krakow = but it also felt right to get the hell out of there. A bit of trivia on Joe = he just retired from working at the Library of Congress - and in the late 90s, he had occasion to hang up on Vice President Gore not once, but twice.

I finished the day by going to a Chopin piano recital in an old hall with 12 foot wood-beamed ceilings off the main square. It took me awhile to stop thinking about how I was having trouble finding a room in Prague next Monday..... but I eventually got into the music. His music evokes the image of a Jane Austen heroine sitting at a window on a rainy English day, waiting for her proud but elusive man to show up. I am reading Austen's Persuasion this week so its very much on my mind. One song especially made me cry - its a famous , schmaltzy dramatic number (I think Liberace used to play it) that I remember we had on vinyl and yet again, I found myself crying over my Mom and her love of all things unsubtle and Polish (Mom died in January of 2006).