Anna Marta
05-24-2009, 02:46 AM
Home again - a little bit more well informed, hopefully a little wiser and with increased understanding and compassion...
We had a lovely time in Krakow. We stayed in a bed and breakfast in a 120+ yr old house in a poor neighborhood and experienced the hospitality of a lady who, although she spoke only Polish and French, gave us the best she had in a most loving way. We had a taste of old Polish hospitality away from the sleek 5 star hotels. Surrounded with lace curtains and table cloths, older furniture, paintings done by her son and restaurant recommendations from her other son (who spoke English) it was a breath of fresh air from our usual get-aways. I surfaced my long forgotten highschool French and we laughed a lot.
With the Norwegian kroner worth twice as much as the Polish Zloty we could afford to eat like kings, ride in taxis and not feel the financial crunch at all. It certainly gave us a sense of humility. Our one chaffeur told us the average person works 12 hour days just to survive! He was suprised to hear that many Americans work 50 -60+ hour weeks too to be able to provide for their families. The dream to escape to America is no longer as glorious as it was in years gone by.
I am still not ready to describe the concentration camp experience. We need some more days here to recover our hearts and minds from the hours spent amongst the pure evil we saw with our own eyes. For the first time we did not have the distance of a TV screen or magazine page to shield us from the emotional reality. Our hostess at our hotel has never been able to visit. She lost her great grandmother, grandmother and mother and father to the camps.
Our last morning we had the experience of eating breakfast with a middle aged German couple from near Dusseldorf who had come specifically to see the camps. He was a public servant and she a teacher, yet they spoke/understood almost no English at all. With Steinar's highschool German, Norwegian, a bit of English and lots of finger talk we could communicate. --- carefully, to say the least.
More later,
AM
We had a lovely time in Krakow. We stayed in a bed and breakfast in a 120+ yr old house in a poor neighborhood and experienced the hospitality of a lady who, although she spoke only Polish and French, gave us the best she had in a most loving way. We had a taste of old Polish hospitality away from the sleek 5 star hotels. Surrounded with lace curtains and table cloths, older furniture, paintings done by her son and restaurant recommendations from her other son (who spoke English) it was a breath of fresh air from our usual get-aways. I surfaced my long forgotten highschool French and we laughed a lot.
With the Norwegian kroner worth twice as much as the Polish Zloty we could afford to eat like kings, ride in taxis and not feel the financial crunch at all. It certainly gave us a sense of humility. Our one chaffeur told us the average person works 12 hour days just to survive! He was suprised to hear that many Americans work 50 -60+ hour weeks too to be able to provide for their families. The dream to escape to America is no longer as glorious as it was in years gone by.
I am still not ready to describe the concentration camp experience. We need some more days here to recover our hearts and minds from the hours spent amongst the pure evil we saw with our own eyes. For the first time we did not have the distance of a TV screen or magazine page to shield us from the emotional reality. Our hostess at our hotel has never been able to visit. She lost her great grandmother, grandmother and mother and father to the camps.
Our last morning we had the experience of eating breakfast with a middle aged German couple from near Dusseldorf who had come specifically to see the camps. He was a public servant and she a teacher, yet they spoke/understood almost no English at all. With Steinar's highschool German, Norwegian, a bit of English and lots of finger talk we could communicate. --- carefully, to say the least.
More later,
AM