Eastern European Highlights

At first March in Poland and Czech Republic does not sound like a magical, warm vacation, but strolling the historic cities decorated by flowering trees and parks with crocus and daffodils and the sun warming to 70 degrees did feel like spring. The food was a culinary delight. Polish pierogis and borsche, Czech goulash and pork schnitzel, German sauerbraten and rouladen, hearty vegetables and mushroom sauces, German wine and Czech beer, hotel breakfast buffets with local sausages and cheeses.  We definitely gained a few pounds.  Of course Europe is all about history, architecture, art and music. Castles and cathedrals were daily spectacles.

Our tour group was from Eugene, Oregon; Almeda, California; and across the country.  This is in front of the Wawel Castle in Krakow.

Our guide for the trip, Karol, was wonderful. He was serious, funny and very informative.  He took Elaine to the emergency room late at night to check out her hip injury from a fall in a hole in the sidewalk and was very solicitous.  Karol lives in Prague, and we got to see his adorable granddaughter.

We took this trip with long-time friends Elaine and Fred. Elaine is an opera singer, and she sang for our wedding 47 years ago.  Fred and Don stood up for each other, and we got married a week apart. Though we have lived in different states most of these years, we still connect like family.

Poland

Poland’s tumultuous history has instilled a strong instinct for independence and survival. The nation was partitioned among neighboring countries and erased from the world map several times.  But the people refused to be eliminated. They always came back. Centuries of weak kings and self-centered feudal nobles weakened the potential of this breadbasket of Eastern Europe, enabling takeovers by Germany, Austria, and Russia. Several times these countries agreed to eliminate the “Polish problem” by killing off those troublesome people and dividing the land.  The resilient Poles always managed to survive, rebuild, and preserve their culture.  They remained staunchly Catholic even through communism.

The worst assault on Polish existence was by the Nazis. World War II nearly destroyed Warsaw and the country. Poland lost 800,000 people during the war. Before the war Poland had a diverse population with many minorities including 3.5 million Jews. Now it is homogenous with only 10,000 Jews.   Most were killed in concentration camps. Those few who survived, mostly left after the war. 

In 1944 the Warsaw Rising, a valiant revolt against the Nazi occupation, was crushed.  Russia moved toward Poland as part of the Allied offensive against the Nazis, but they stayed east of the Vistula River until the Nazis nearly destroyed 85% of the city.

Old Town, built in the 14^th century and New Town, built in the 15^th century, were blown up by the Nazis simply for revenge after they had lost the war. Buildings were mostly gone, but rebuilt according to old photos.  Old Town reconstruction carefully reused the rubble and fragments of buildings to be as authentic as possible. For that reason the area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

King Stanislaw, Poland’s last king, built an extensive summer palace complex in Lazienki Park outside Warsaw in 1764. He was a bachelor because his beloved was not royalty and they were not allowed to marry. He did have five children with her though.  The 170 acre park included theaters and homes for his various relatives and his paramour.  The king’s palace was built on an island with a terrace for guests to arrive by boat. He loved to entertain.  When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, they used the complex as their local headquarters, so it was not destroyed.

Warsaw reveres the music of its native composer--Fryderyk Chopin.

Another honored Pole was Nicolaus Copernicus, the Renaissance mathematician, astronomer, and scientist, among his many talents.

The southeast region of Poland was known as Galacia before WW I. King Casamir III in 1335 ordered Kraków to be set out in an organized fashion with a thriving Jewish quarter between two forks of the Vistula River of 7,000 residents.  It served as a refuge for Jews from other parts of Europe. It had seven synagogues. Rabbi Remuh Moses Isserles Auerbach (born circa 1520, died 1572) codified and wrote the traditional rules and procedures still used extensively in Jewish life today.  He is buried here at the still active Ramah Synagogue.  In the 1770’s the Hassidic movement was strong here.

In 1933 the Nazis set up a Jewish ghetto in Krakow near but apart from the Jewish quarter for 30,000 Jews from a larger area. Like other Nazi Jewish ghettos, it was cramped and people starved.  Our local guide said that his grandmother was a young woman at the time who took the train each day through the ghetto to go to work.  She would throw packets of food out the train window to people she knew from school.

Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party when he came to Krakow to manage an enamel cookware factory which he then bought.  He hired Jews because he could pay them less than other workers.  Gradually he saw how Jews were being sent to concentration camps to die and decided to save his workers.  He spent most of his money bribing officials and conspiring to move his factories so that he could keep the Jewish workers.  As the war ended, he helped them get to freedom.  The pictures on the entrance to the factory are some of those he saved.

After WWI and the end of the Austro-Roman Empire, partly due to Woodrow Wilson, smaller ethnic nations were formed: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania.  But Russia, who “liberated” these ethnic areas from the Nazis, had enough influence to foster communist governments.  West Germany and the United States were supposed to pay Poland reparations to rebuild, but Russia refused to take capitalist money.  That meant Polish taxes had to pay for rebuilding. Instead of paying for homes to be built, the Soviets gave Warsaw a grandiose Palace of Culture and Science in the center of the city. The Poles resented it and wanted to tear it down later, but it still stands as the tallest building and landmark in the city.

Living behind the iron curtain was handled in one of three ways. Some agitated and protested; they would lose their jobs and have to stoke furnaces or other menial work, or perhaps they vanished.   The alternative was submission—simply live in a bubble of family and friends ignoring the situation and not making a fuss. The third path was to apply to visit Yugoslavia, a semi-communist country.  That was the easiest escape route, over the mountains to Austria and eventually America.

Karol, our guide, says there is one good thing about communism—it has collapsed.

1989 was the year when Lech Walesa’s Polish Solidarity Union gained enough power to win elections and free the country of communism.  In Czechoslovakia the “Velvet Revolution,” a peaceful protest, freed the Czechs.  The Berlin wall fell.  Eastern Europe learned democracy, and the people have celebrated their freedom ever since.

Czestochowa is the spiritual center of Poland because it is the shrine of the famous “Black Madonna,” a painting darkened with age, reputed to be done by the apostle Luke in the 1^st century. The monks of the Jasna Gora Monastery care for the painting and the church and the millions who visit.  Pilgrimages from Warsaw and Kraków take several weeks on foot, but many people do it. The priest who guided us was devout, practiced, and rather entertaining in his intensity.

The most horrendous thing about the Nazi plans was the planned “final solution” of the Jews; 6.5 million died. A somber  day for us after learning so much about the war was experiencing one of the monuments of man’s inhumanity to man.  We arrived at Auschwitz to find the museum closed and evacuated a half hour earlier. A group of protestors killed a sheep, stripped, and chained themselves together at the main gate under the Nazi slogan, “Work makes you free.” They were apparently objecting to the situation in the Ukraine.  Dishonoring the victims of Auschwitz to make a political statement was deeply disturbing to those who work there. 

We were able to visit the outside buildings. A whole Polish village was evacuated and destroyed to make room for the 30 square kilometer camp which was then built by prisoner labor.

We saw rows upon rows of barracks for prisoners and many more rows of chimneys where more buildings had been. The toilet building had four rows of holes in the board seats right next to each other with no privacy.   

As prisoners were brought on trains, they were sorted into categories, men who looked strong enough to work, women and children, Jews, homosexuals, and others.  They were sent, men to barracks on the right, women and children to the left, Jews and other undesirables, back on the train where they were told they would be taken to a different place to live.

A short distance down the tracks, they were herded into “decontamination chambers” where they were gassed.  Other prisoners were forced to move the corpses to the crematoriums for burning.  Ashes were cleaned out and piled up on neighboring fields. Jews were killed immediately, others were taken there as time permitted.  Few women and children were allowed to survive.  Prisoners who worked in the death chamber area were eliminated after a few weeks and replaced so as not to have witnesses.  Men who were allowed to live were fed only tea or broth and a slice of bread each day, maybe 400 calories while doing hard labor.  The plan was to weaken them so they would die also.  Anyone who agitated fellow prisoners to rebel or have hope was hung as an example.  In all 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed at Auschwitz.

Today it is again a village.  People have built homes on land that had been covered by human ashes.

Kraków is a beautiful city that was not heavily bombed during WW II, so the buildings are all original, just restored.  The amber trade route crossed the Vistula River at a narrow valley, making this a good place for fortifications.  In 966 Poland was baptized in the Roman tradition as part of western civilization.  Krakow was the seat of Polish Kings from 1038 to 1569 before the capital was moved to Warsaw.  In the 15^th to 16^th centuries King Sigismund I indulged his Italian wife by bringing architects and craftsmen from her homeland to create a Tuscan courtyard at Wawel Castle, a majestic complex beautifully restored.

 The present cathedral built in 1364 is the third one on this spot. St. Stanislaw is interred under the altar. King Jagelon was also buried here.  The golden dome is covered with 45 kilos of gold leaf. This was the cathedral that Pope John Paul served as archbishop before being elected Pope.  He is, of course, Poland’s favorite son in this predominantly Catholic nation.

St. Mary’s church is located on the market square. The Wawel Castle cathedral was for the nobility only, so the bourgeoisie built St Mary’s, paying for much of it including the incredibly ornate interior.

On the stroke of every hour a trumpeter plays a five-note patriotic tune from each of the four sides of the steeple.  Legend says that during a Mongol Tatar invasion in the 1200’s, a bugler was shot in the throat before he finished, so still today the tune is cut off abruptly.

The Wieliczka Salt mine is the largest and oldest continuously active salt mine in Europe, beginning in the 12^th century. The mine has 300 kilometers of tunnels and 3000 chambers, most chipped out with hand tools, and later dynamite.  These are salt stalagmites.

We were told the tour would be 1 ½ hours and cover three kilometers. We were actually in the mine 2 ½ hours and walked a few miles and hundreds of stair steps. It was very difficult and stressful for Don with his limited tunnel vision.  All of the excavating and shoring up with timbers was done by the miners. They also carved numerous statues and decorations from salt to honor famous visitors and to create lovely chapels and historical dioramas.  Most of the statues in the mine were carved and then moved into place.

St. Kinga’s Chapel is a huge cavern with detailed realistic bas relief scenes from Jesus’ life.

Selesia was an ancient land populated in the last 1000 years by Celts, Slavs, Germanic tribes and others.  In 1949 it was taken from Germany to become the western part of an independent Poland. Ksiaz Castle near the Czech border was built in late 13^th century to protect border with Silesia. The Hochberg family owned it from the 1500’s.

In 1891 Hans Hochberg married a social young Englishwoman called Daisy.  They raised three sons in the castle. Daisy did not follow the usual rules for noble women. She did much charitable work, even starting a school for disabled children in the local town. She was not silent on politics and other important topics. Hans and Daisy’s two older sons distinguished themselves in WW I, while she volunteered in a war hospital. After the war she and Hans divorced, and he married Cothilde, a Spanish woman 30 years younger.  It was not a happy marriage.  Hans’ youngest son Bolko had an affair with her, and Hans divorced her, forcing Bolko to marry her. They had two children. There was some question about the fatherhood of the previous two Cothilde had while still married to Hans.

Ksiaz Castle was heavily destroyed in WW II because it was used by the Nazis who began preparing it for Hitler to use.  Beneath the castle is a labyrinth of tunnels dug out by the Nazis using laborers from nearby Gross-Rosen concentration camp.  No one is sure of the purpose—factories of munitions?  Bunker to protect Hitler?  Hiding place for spoils of war?  The fabled lost Nazi train full of gold and treasures is rumored to be hidden there.

Traditional crops in this part of Europe are potatoes beets and sugar beets, wheat, corn and of course, barley and hops for beer. Now canola has become a profitable crop.

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic has about 10,000,000 people of different ethnicities. In 1938, parts of Czechoslovakia, were ceded to Germany in the Munich Agreement and ceased to exist.  After WW II Czechoslovakia was liberated and reunited as a country. In 1968 the Prague Spring revolt against Communist rule began peacefully, but Russian troops crushed it.  

Czech people participated in reformation of the church and many became Protestant. Later Catholics gained power and forced all to be Catholic, but many remained lukewarm. The political turmoil of 19^th century  became more important.  Under communism churches were allowed to exist, but people were discouraged from participating. So church attendance now is low and not important in people's lives. 

The palace in Prague

We walked across the river to Prague's Old Town.  It is as beautiful as people say..

On the left is Pat May from the Eugene, Oregon, Chamber of Commerce.  She plans and organizes two trips a year.

Elaine and I went up to the top of Old City Hall.  Look for a turquoise jacket at the Jan Hus memorial.  That is Don.

The castle and cathedral across the river,

One of the synagogues in the Jewish quarter.

The Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Prague, set in a lovely expansive park on the river, provided a relaxing half day after the rush of being on tour so long. The Vyšehrad Cemetery was packed with lavish grave and monuments. Composers Dvorak and Smetana are buried there along with many other Czech notables.

Karlstejn Castle near Prague was built in the 14^th century by Charles IV, the Moravian King who later became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  The castle had a great tower to house the crown jewels that was built with thick walls to withstand attack.  Connecting it to the rest of the castle was only a wooden covered bridge that could be burned to prevent enemy access.  The tower never fell.

Our last night of the tour we ate a traditional Czech meal at a folk music dinner show.  Unlimited wine and beer led to a happy party.

A three piece band consisting of violin, bass, and a large dulcimer played with soft mallets featured traditional Czech music. Singers and dancers added color and action. So much fun to watch them twirl, lift and swing.

Don asked the band to play a polka and let us dance. We whirled in the German style polka as we always do, but then they picked up the speed faster than this late sixtyish couple could handle. Great fun. Elaine and Fred can polka the same as us, but Elaine could scarcely walk due to her fall. We thanked God that she did not break her leg, but a bad soft tissue injury had her on crutches.

It was a bittersweet goodbye to new friends and especially to old friends Karen and Roger we have enjoyed on several previous trips.

Germany

Fred, Elaine, Don and I took the train to Dresden where we took a bus tour of the city with headphones translating it all into English. Again we saw where bombing had caused heavy damage and destruction during WW II, and again meticulous reconstruction after the war

Leipzig's train station is the largest in Europe.  It has three floors of shops inside.

Leipzig is the home of Elaine's dear friend, Jeanette, so we stayed there for several days in an elegant old hotel, the Victor, near the train station. It was beautifully restored.  We were lucky to get a corner turret room with a miniscule balcony.

Leipzig was chosen by the Holy Roman Emperor to be an exclusive market town with no competition allowed for many miles around.  This led to its success and growth in medieval times. Its churches thrived, expanding into impressive edifices.  St. Thomas Kirche has been home to the famous Thomas Boys’ Choir since 1212.  The most illustrious cantor of the choir and music director of the congregation was Johann Sebastian Bach who held that position from 1723 to 1750.  He also wrote many canticles for the church services both at St. Thomas and the Nicholai Kirche, a few blocks on the other side of the big market square.  Bach’s remains were moved from his original grave to the place of honor in front of the altar in St. Thomas.  Martin Luther preached here during one of his visits after the famous Leipzig Disputation in which Luther irrevocably challenged abuses in the Catholic church of the 1500's.  We attended a Motette, a musical service of classical music, that included Bach, of course, and Luther's A Mighty Fortress is our God.

St. Nicholai Kirche was a meeting spot for thoughtful, peaceful resistance to communism under the German Democratic Republic in the 1980’s. The people protested the infringements on free speech and press, democratic elections, ability to travel freely, environmental issues and more.  Every Monday they gathered in the church, with numbers reaching hundreds to thousands in 1989 leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

A riverboat trip gave us water-level views of grand old houses and parkland. Leipzig did not sustain much damage during the war compared to other places we have seen.

 Fred

We had lunch at Auerbach's Keller where Goethe hung out and wrote Faust.

Jeannette is a music professor and voice tutor at the University of Leipzig. Listening to her and Elaine talking about their adventures singing in various operas and working with musicians was entertaining. Jeanette's husband Wolfgang is a German retired opera set designer and a wonderful sculptor.  We saw many of his works around the apartment.  One of his techniques involves fusing thin layers of wood and then carving it into large, fluid shapes. Simply lovely. They live in a spacious old building overlooking a large park.  Jeannette and Wolfgang are both accomplished cooks and served us an amazingly delicious and beautifully presented meal.

 They served snacks and drinks on their beautiful balcony.

Personally this has been a difficult trip.  Elaine’s hip injury, crutches and pain slowed down a woman who usually is on the move trying to see everything.  Don’s eyes continue to deteriorate due to Retinitus Pigmentosa, and he had a lot of trouble maneuvering in the salt mine, castle steps and cobblestone roads.  I have to guide him more and more.  But he is a trooper and enjoyed the trip despite the difficulty.

Many parts of this tour were somber with the emphasis on WW II and other wars, the bloodshed and lives lost, the bombing and destruction, the cruelty and domination, and communism. But we also learned of hope and rebuilding, freedom and faith, and people who would never give up.