Update

All´s well here. I´m traveling on two wheels now, a Yamaha Virago borrowed from an acquaintance of Mirko´s...Of course the other night as we sealed the deal, turning over registration & keys, etc. they had to seal it with a shot of homemade vodka. I took only a bit of it...

I´m staying at a wonderful hotel just south of Jelenia Gora, the Hotel Villanuova. It´s top-notch--just had a great dinner here, some of the best food in Poland -- the owner´s wife is Italian, and she can cook...started with melon wrapped with ham....

I treated myself to a night in a Palace last night, literally. I was trying to find a place to stay in Kowary, near the Czech border, but it´s not a tourist town, and I got up some really rough streets...and by 7 p.m, was burned out-- nothing to eat since breakfast, not much sleep the night before -- so I came upon the Schloss Lemnitz, a real palace, and stayed there.

This afternoon I hiked up into the mountains outside Karpacz...walked about 5 miles up and down mountain trails, so got my exercize...It was beautiful.

I´ve decided not to do the alternative Woodstock -- looked like it would be a noisy, dirty, crowded mess...the mountains are better.

I´m turning the bike back to its owner Saturday, then if plans work, headed up to Augustow, near the Belarus border, to try to find relatives.

Hope everyone´s well...

Galeria Cracovia, a big new mall just outside the train station in Cracow. When Ron & I were here a couple years ago it was a construction-zone mess.

Though the photo doesn't show it, most of the day there are big big crowds. It is bright, noisy, a Polish Mall of America, and I am as uncomfortable in it as I am in the Mall of America.

It is a cathedral of consumerism. Full of the young, while the churchs are slowly being emptied of the old...

While I am not a Believer in the sense of being able to say the Creed in sincerity, I stopped by the other day at an evening service in a small church near my room, where a really lovely soprano chant was responded to by several dozen nuns at the service, all in lovely Polish. I would any day choose to spend my hours in the church rather than the Mall, and am sad that this part of Polish culture, as it appears to be, will fade away.

End of Rostaje

The Rostaje folk festival closed out with a concert last night at the Filharmonia here in Cracow. First on was the Bester Quartet (http://www.besterquartet.com), a Polish group -- violin, accordion, bass, percussion. Experimental, is how I'd label them -- some version of very modern classical, jazz, new age...really excellent. If I'm reading the blurb on the promo right, they're compared to the Kronos Quartet. Don't seem to be available on Amazon. I'll see if I can get cousin Mirko to help me find them in a Polish CD store.

Top billing was Dhafer Youssef Quartet, some available at Amazon...Youssef is Tunisian, his backup is a very very good collection of percussion, bass & piano from the US, Poland & Canada...Youssef is best described I think as Sufi jazz...sings with a very unusual voice, like the muslim prayer songs, but specially effected...I sat at the hall next to a man from Holland, visiting Cracow, who is a big fan of Youssef.

The concert didn't start til 9:00, ended half-past midnight, but I thought as I left -- hearing these guys was worth the trip, alone.

Off today to Wroclaw to visit cousin Mirko. Not sure what happens after that. It may or may not involve a motorcycle, a Polish Woodstock, and/or meeting Lech Walesa...

Will try to find time/facilities to update.

Hope everyone's well; looking forward to seeing you again....

From the Ethnographic Museum

Ron & I encountered what are called "Pensive Christs" at the Zakopane cemetery.

We usually see Christ preaching, or suffering on the cross or in the Passion...but there's a tradition in the south of Poland of showing Him deep in thought. Pensive.

(Channeling George Carlin here): "Let's see, what should I have for that last supper? Rye or whole-wheat...wait, there's that great bakery around the corner has challa to die for..."

From the Ethnographic Museum

This display showed folk paintings representing the Trinity. How to show God the Father? Well, He's often painted as a kind of Zeus or Abraham, white hair, long beard, etc...

But there were several showing Him in this form, the all-seeing eye, here with hands dispensing largesse.

Look on the back of a dollar-bill!

From ethnographic museum

Folk painting, St. Branislawa....note the angels, as putti, with flutes & fiddles. It wouldn't be heaven without Polish folk music! (John, is that you third from right?)

There is (was?) a tradition of building models at Christmas time...

From the Ethnographic Museum

A display of Christmas carolers, dressed as types -- death, the devil, a king, a bull. We did these at Folklore Village during a Christmas festival or two, when Anna Dwiewenowska taught Polish customs & dances.

From the Ethnographic Museum

Crown of a staff carried during the Christmas caroling...

From the Ethnographic Museum

Folk-art: Straw decorations.

From the Ethnographic Museum

A gorale (mountaineer) bagpipe.

Ethnographic Museum in Cracow

Here's their collection of pysanki eggs, which has been a tradition with us since we learned how at Folklore Village.

I spent quite a bit of time at the ethnographic museum. Really good. I watched a 15-minute video of several old babushkas preparing linen, from soaking it in a farm-pond (complete with geese), beating it to soften the fibers, pressing it in a special press, carding, spinning while they sing, their men putting a loom together in a room, & then weaving the linen...fascinating. They also had videos of people using various musical instruments, and doing kalenda (Christmas carols) dressed as different beasts or people. I told the clerk at the museum they should put those videos on CD, I'd buy one in a minute...

And I saw a handmade rake just like the one Uncle Jack made for mom, in the basement at Holcombe, which I still use. Lots of folk-culture & folk-art. More pics maybe tomorrow.

Who is this, showing up on a pysanki egg?

You can find a copy of this one, same color I think, in Menomonie...

We have this one, maybe slightly different color...

The picture didn't turn out too well, but I did this one years ago. It's in the buffet in Menomonie.

Lion King, retired and recumbent

One of a pair of lions in the Main Square of Cracow. I guess I kind of felt like this (only wished I could be recumbent, too) after two nights of four-hour's standing during the Rozstaje shows in the Rynek (Square.)

Last night's highlight was a rock fusion group called Zakopower (check them on uTube...) They're quite good, really...their only connection to Polish folk music being they use some of the same instruments (mountain bagpipe, fiddles, etc.) as the gorale of Zakopane.

I expected more real old-time music at the Rozstaje, from back in the mountains, but got mostly modern, electronically-enhanced, sometimes fusion groups. I think Poland is trying to look to the future...and it was fun standing in a big crowd in the Rynek, as the weather cooled, rocking to Zakopower....

This is the memorial, in Matejko Square, just north of the Main Square in Cracow, to the battle of Grunewald, when in 1410? the Poles & Lithuanians defeated the Teutonic Knights.

During the Nazi terror in Cracow, the flags of the Teutonic Knights were hauled out of the museums and paraded around to demonstrate Germanic superiority.

They're back in the museums.

The memorial to some of Pilsudsi's men, on Ulica (Street) Pilsudskiego, near my room.

When I came into Cracow I used the old map we'd bought in 1974, and showed it to the people at my guest house. Of course Pilsudskiego had a different name then (during the Communist era) because Pilsudski lead the Polish Army to defeat the Red Army outside Warsaw, in 1920, and the Communists wouldn't allow a memorial or street in his name...The clerk at the guest house mentioned he has a map like mine, and pointed out other Cracow streets that were renamed after the fall of Communism (Lenin St., of course, and Pushkin St., and "The Six Year Plan St.")

The Institute of Mining, taken over by the Nazis in 1939 to become the headquarters of the General Government of much of Poland, including Cracow.

I went to the Museum of Cracow History fr0m 1939-45, located at Ulica (St.) Pomarska 2 -- see following posts. They don't get many visitors, because it was locked during hours, and you press a call button for someone to come open it for you, and then sit & wait til you're gone. I have too many pictures from that museum to post, and also bought a CD they have made re the museum.

One of our tutors, Irmina, who showed me around Warsaw's Old Town, complained that the revised Polish high school curriculum doesn't leave time to study WWII history, so many Poles are ignorant of it. It seems, too, that Poland wants to move into the future rather than burden itself with its bloody past.

But the acts of selfless heroism taken on by Polish patriots, priests, and just ordinary people, in the face of the evil of Nazism shouldn't be forgotten. We owe them at least that, the respect of remembering their courage. Their mothers didn't raise them lovingly, to suffer, as so many did...When you walk through Cracow, and anywhere in Poland, you realize that only 65 years ago terror hovered over the streets like a dark predatory bird.

In the museum there was a photo of the ceremony renaming the Main Square (Rynek Glowny), in 1939, as Adolph Hitler Square. But two nights ago I watched the Twinkle Brothers and a Polish gorale group playing a version of Polish reggae, on a stage on almost exactly the same spot from which that ceremony took place. Hitler and his millions of followers named blacks & Poles as Untermensch, but in the struggle and final victory over them, during which other millions died & suffered, including millions of Americans, we showed Hitler & his followers that they in fact were the subhumans.

The Institute of Mining, as it appears today. Just a few short blocks from the gestapo headquarters (next posts.)

The building at Pomarska 2, built in the 1930s as a youth hostel, and now again a hostel. But in 1939 the Nazis began using it as the headquarters of the gestapo in Cracow.

In the basement, the torture cells for their political prisoners (next posts.)

A torture cell in the basement of the gestapo headquarters at Pomarska 2 in Cracow. There were 4 such cells. Hundreds of prisoners were tortured, some killed in these cells.

When I entered the first, I cried.

One of the graffitis carved by a prisoner in the torture cells at Pomarska 2, the gestapo headquarters in Cracow.

Rough translation: It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.

Some earlier pictures

I have some earlier pictures I didn't post, so the order of photos is in some disarray...this is from a week or so ago.

The cell in the Franciscan monastery in which Cardinal Wisnynski was held in house arrest in 1953 (see next post.) The monk was our tour guide.

While under arrest, Wisnynski wrote the stations of the cross on the wall...after he was taken away, the monks preserved them and you can still read them (small squares on wall.)

The Franciscan monastery, near Radyzn Castle (see below) at which Cardinal Wisnynski was held in house arrest by the Communists in 1953...not sure how long he was here, probably months. They moved him around during his arrest.

The church connected to the monastery is also a site of pilgrimage for Polish gypsies (see below.)

The story is that long ago a gypsy woman's child was sick and about to die. She prayed that the child survive, and when he did, she cut her hair off and gave it to the church. So the statue (behind a screen one of the monks controlled with a remote control and only opened so we could see it) has real human hair.

One weeken each June gypsies come from all over Poland to this church, as a kind of pilgrimage.

Radzyn Castle

A view from one tower of the Radzyn Castle -- see next post.

Radzyn Castle

A pictures taken even before Warsaw, or Cracow, so out of order -- This is another of the Teutonic Castles scattered across northern Poland.

Back to Warsaw: The memorial to the little boy, in Warsaw, reminding us that even little children sacrificed themselves in the Warsaw Uprising.

Time runs backward

The Bishop's residence in Warsaw...Next to Pilsudski, JPII's image is the most common in Poland....maybe even first!

Time runs backward

One view of Old Town in Warsaw. We have to remember that just 60 years ago this was all one pile of rubble.

The changing of the guard, every hour, at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, in Warsaw.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Warsaw.

Time runs backward

I looked up one evening from our favorite beer tent in Torun and on the clock tower of the nearby church, saw a clock-face running backwards...While the clock on the other side of the tower ran correctly. We started a legend about passing into the Twilight Zone, where piva was free & you could get whatever kind you want...Actually, it was close to that!

So now I run the clock back a few days for a few pictures from Warsaw, before getting to Krakow.

This is Stanislaus Poniatowski's Palace, last king of Poland. He was also Catherine the Great's lover....

Twinkle Brothers

The younger Twinkle Brother dancing with Ania...see next post. This guy was great, I'd say charismatic...I think a trip to Jamaica this winter, to pick up some rasta vibes might be just the thing to cure the winter blues.

For a youtube of the Twinkle Brothers in concert with their Polish friends, see this youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfCxB0x02qQ

Last night's concert at the Rynek Glowny (main square) in Cracow featured first a Belarussian group (not too good), then a really good gypsy band, and finally The Twinkle Brothers, a reggae group from California. They were great. They closed off the evening with a set together with a traditional mountain (gorale) group from the Cracow area. The Twinkle Brothers have been playing in Poland for more than 20 years, and they and this Polish group have cut one CD and are just releasing another.

It was quite a night -- a big crowd rocking to reggae-gorale sounds.
Later I went to a smaller venue to hear the gypsy group, but though they were scheduled sto start at 11:00 they didn't get going til 11:30 and by a bit after midnight I headed home. I suspect the revelry & dancing went on into the wee hours, without me.

Dworec Wapionka

First night at Wapionka we had a horse-drawn wagon ride, two hours, up into the national forest, on into the evening. It was made more comfortable by a potent mulled wine...

We stopped for a few moments in the forest at a memorial to the forest manager who in 1944 was executed by the Ukranians as the Russian army made its way through here towards Berlin. I noticed the Poles are very precise about who mistreated them -- not just the Russians, but the Ukranians, though they were part of the Russian army. These tragedies leave a long psychic shadow...

Dworec Wapionka

A small homestead up in the hills from our resort at Dworec Wapionka. Two of us rented scooters & road up dirt/sand roads far back into the national forest. The countryside was very reminiscent of northern WI or MN, right down to the deer-stands along fields...

Brodnica

Our director Andrjez hamming it up at the archeological museum in Brodnica.

The display looked stunningly like reconstructions of Native American sites in museums scattered across the states. The people who lived in Poland 8000 years ago, in fact came from the Siberia region, after the end of the Ice Age, as did the Native Americans, so they were related.

The Slavs pushed these neolithic people out, as we did in America.

Brodnica

The view from the tower (next picture) at Brodnica castle.

Brodnica

A tall tower, the best-preserved part of the castle at Brodnica, built in the 13 or 1400s by the Teutonic Knights.

Another image of the tall structures in Chiochochinnek, which salt water is trickled down about 50 feet tall.

In Krakow

I arrived in Krakow yesterday. It's hot here, but my room is VERY nice & VERY reasonable, and near the center of things. I went to the first Rozstaje concert last night, really really good traditional Polish music. The fiddler was unbelievable. I bought a CD. Then they danced afterwards, but it was about 100 F in the hall, all the dances were fast & lasted 10 minutes or so. I chose disgression over valor. They did a grand march, only they RAN through it, and it lasted about 15 minutes.

Spent 3 hours in the Czartoryski Museum today, all very much worth it. From ancient Egyptian to about 1800, sculpture, paintings, armaments, artefacts. They had Kosciusko's waistcoat and sword, a quill used by Voltaire, the daVinci "Woman with an Ermine" a Rembrandt landscape, a Turkish tent & lots of swords, etc. captured by Jan Sobieski's troops outside Vienna in 1683, plus lots more.

Poland can still be frustrating to travel in. When I arrived at the domestic terminal of the small airport here (now Jan Pawel II Airport) I asked information about how to get to the Rynek, the center of town. He said to take the 292 bus. So I went out to the bus-stop & it listed times of departure of buses, very 30 minutes. A bit late, a bus arrived. I asked if he's going to the Rynek. He says, no. I ask again, he shakes his head. I stayed on anyway, an act of faith.

Turns out the bus went to the international terminal, where you catch the 292. Information should have told me that's what I needed to do...take one bus to get to the other....but didn't.

I'll update the blog with more pictures from after campe, in the next days.

Off now to an evening of traditional folk music... from stages in the Rynek.

Love!
Ken

At Chichochinnek there are salt waters pumped up from the earth -- 5 to 22% salt, saltier than just mineral waters. The town is a huge spa, where people come from all over the country. The President of Poland has a country house right in town. The director of Radio Maria, the conservative religious radio station out of Torun, which broadcasts all over Poland, is building a McMansion here in town (he also drives a Maybach, a high-end luxmobile.)

The town has many hotels, only they call them hospitals, so that staying there can be paid for by the national health care system.

Here they pump the water over tall stacks of special brush brought from Holland, and people are charged a small fee to sit downwind from the water as it passes through the brush, to breathe the waters. This is old technology, but still used. Each of these long stacks of brush is 600 meters long (almost 2000 feet) and there are three in town.

I wanted to include a photo of Andrez, camp director & superindent of schools at the XLO school we taught at, wearing one of the t-shirts we created. We had a horse-drawn ride through Chichochininnek.

We found this Japanese anime comic book at a kiosk in Chiochochinnek....

John said you can learn more about this at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Meow

Our last morning together. We are all somewhat sad...

Just fyi, this is the cafeteria we ate at for the three weeks of camp. Behind the green curtain in the background is a multicolor mural of Da Vinci's famous portrait of man with arms & legs outstretched within a circle -- the one they sent on Voyager. But Da Vinci included certain male reproductive parts which have been considered inappropriate for a high-school clientele, so it is permanently draped...

Cousin Mirko & his wife Margareta, from Wroclaw. They pulled into the St. Catherine's church parking lot with their big high-end F150 Ford which Mirko bought on e-Bay in New Jersey, flew over & picked it up & shipped it back to Poland, last year. They're traveling in the really nice camper he got online, on their way to a country music festival -- Poland's only -- up in Magrove, not too far from here. Mirko's band is one of 8 finalists in a competition out of about 50 entries. They play Sunday and if they win they get to play at a very big country music festival. They do some Johnny Cash, etc., also pieces from an opera written by someone Mirko knows, about a Polish immigrant in the US who became a wild-west legend, something like Mad Mrazek or some such thing.

It was really good seeing them. Mirko's his usual high-energy self; Margareta balances that with sweet common-sense. Their daughter Kasia, just 16, stayed behind for the first time w/o them, and is throwing a big party with her friends. ..Enough to drive Margareta crazy with worry...

Barbaka

A larger view of the Barbarka massacre site. It is in a large, quiet forest, where I found wild strawberries & blueberries...

The memorial, a bit hard to read, at Barbarka, where 900 of Poland's best were murdered by the Nazis in the fall of 1939.

Macarena

God and one of his angels doing the Macarena...There's a story behind it, which I forget.