Heute gestohlen – morgen schon in Polen

Upfront, lemme say that the title is a joke and not an insult, but it's also not false either. The joke is “Stolen today – in Poland tomorrow.” Unlike the US, where all of our Polish jokes talk about how stupid poles are, in Germany all of the Polish jokes talk about how they are car thieves, or thieves in general. I find this concept hilarious, and being a person with a Polish last name, the irony never escapes me that I am a kleptomaniac. I already have a collection of 7 beer glasses stolen from various establishments. I would have 8, but I got caught in Constance at Oktoberfest with one in my backpack.

Last weekend there was a school trip to Krakow and Auschwitz. The trip was the same time as a trip to some agricultural trade show, but I decided that Auschwitz might trump a trade show, plus I got the trip for a killer price. So Thursday morning, I hopped on a bus with 10 other German students and we started driving to Krakow. In case you're curious, Poland looks like Minnesota, and it's just about as hard to understand Polish as Minnesotan.

The trip was awesome. I'd been feeling sort of shitty over the past few weeks, what with the weather, isolation, and whatnot, but the other Germans on the trip were awesome and it made it so much better to have spent the weekend with them. They were easygoing and funny and personable. It was refreshing.

We got into town Thursday night, checked into the Good Bye Lenin Hostel, and promptly set out to explore Krakow. Poland (as you might expect) is wicked cheap, well not like 3^rd world wicked cheap, but I've been used to paying everything in euros and Poland's currency is about ¼ as valuable. We had pizza and two half-liters of beer for about $8.50 a piece.

Friday was Auschwitz. It's really hard to give a review of a concentration/death camp. I mean, I really shouldn't call it “good,” you know? The tour was interesting(?) and of course seeing the piles of shoes and walking though the gas chambers and stepping inside the barracks was moving. Auschwitz was “the camp” of the holocaust; it's the world's largest cemetery since over 1 million people died there, and it was the home to Dr. Mengele, who was the most monstrous person I've ever learned about. Still, as a museum goes, I thought Dachau (near Munich) was better. 

Auschwitz, just through the main gate

Birkenau, view from the main gate

Our tour guide didn't really explain anything except the raw facts, and I could have read the signs myself. Also, on a lighter note, the tour guide reminded me of a character from a German parody of Poland. She spoke in a really flat voice and rolled all of her R's. “Now.....Shoo mus rrrrrrememberrrr 'zat in concentratt-shee-owns camp is no food for eat. All is starrrrving. Horrible time. Many death.” The tour was in German, and like I've mentioned German has some (often funny) compound words like “finger-hat” (thimble). At one point our tour guide actually said, “Now, please you come closerrrr to death-wall.” Even the Germans thought this one was funny.

Day 3 was a tour around Krakow with a German tour guide. Krakow is kinda dirty. Not dirty and edgy like Berlin; it's just dirty. It was cool though, and the Polish people are fascinating to listen to when they speak Polish. After our tour, I decided to try to navigate the tram system and find the Harley-Davidson store in Krakow. I don't have a Harley, but a few of my family members do and I thought a Harley Davidson-Krakow shirt would be a pretty baller gift. After an hour of searching, asking, gesturing like a moron, and aimlessly riding the tram, I found the store...but it was closed. So Bob, Robert, Eddie know that I was thinking of you, and if I'd been 2 hours earlier, you'd have a new shirt on the way.

Now, remember that off color joke I told about Poles being thieves? Well during our tour we stopped in the Jewish quarter to learn about the history of the Jews in Krakow. There are also some scenes from Schindler's List filmed there, maybe. I never saw the movie, and I wasn't 100% on what the tour guide said. Anyways, one of the girls stopped to take a picture and just like that, someone stole her purse off the ground. It wasn't that bad, she lost debits cards, drivers license, and some petty cash, but nothing horrible. Still the first words out of our bus driver's mouth were, “Heute gestohlen, morgen schon in Polen.”