polish – Growing With Leala

This morning I’m walking to the Museum of World War II. This must do for Gdańsk is the most thorough war museum I have ever visited and takes about three hours for the audio tour.

I also schedule a walking tour for this afternoon of the main town.

I arrive the Museum of the Second World War right at opening and have purchased my ticket and audio guide in advance. Arriving at opening is advisable because this museum is huge and covers lots of information. It gets very busy as the morning passes. The museum gives all the reasons for the war, all the players, and the aftermath. Sure you might see a little more information on how the war affected Poland than other similar museums but it also goes into how the way it affected other territories like the Balkans, Baltic countries, and even those effected by Japanese invasions.

I always enjoy propaganda posters.

I learn the ways the Finnish people tried to stop the Soviet Union from invading.

More exhibits

I learn how every Soviet territory has a little red corner for Soviet materials.

The museum also talks about Japan’s role in the war. There is a particularly disturbing exhibit on Japanese brothels during the war.

Gdansk is talked about as well as Poland. After WWI the treaty of Versailles took Gdansk, which was predominately German at the time and made it the Free city of Gdansk (but tied to Poland). All of this makes more sense when I learn about the efforts to defeat communism that has origins in Gdansk later on. During WWII since most in Gdansk were German speaking and Gdansk is also called Danzig in German.

An agreement was made to partition Poland by the Soviet Union and Germany. There is an exhibit to show the divide.

More war related exhibits

There is a whole section on terror, specifically terror by the hands of the German, Soviet, and Japanese.

I learn about how Germans stole polish children during the war. I learn more about Croatian concentration camps. Also am introduced to the Katyn Massacre where there was a mass execution of Polish military officers by the Soviet Union.

I see an example of an Enigma machine. Enigma is the machine used during WWII to break the German codes. There is a whole movie about it called “The Imitation Game”.

There are walls that show how messages can be hidden in plane sight just by looking at them differently.

One of my favorite little exhibits was about the nazi hunters. So many people were killed during WWII but very few people were punished for those crimes (Nuremberg Trials were the ones actually caught and punished). Most guilty officials assumed a different identity and fled to other countries, many in South America. The nazi hunters were really good at tracking these war criminals down.

I thoroughly enjoyed the museum but it requires a good deal of time to fully experience the whole thing. The audio guide is a must to get you more efficiently through, otherwise you could spend an entire day here.

I am very hungry when I leave the museum. I don’t have a ton of time but I should have enough for a lunch. I mistakenly think I could eat at a pierogi place. I wait for thirty minutes to get a table for them to tell me it’s at least an hour wait for any ordered pierogi. I don’t have enough time before my tour starts so I walk out to find another place to get lunch. I am getting hangry and I cannot find any quick service restaurants in the area. Time is running out.

I finally find a place to get a quick pastry and then briskly walk to meet my tour guide for the city tour. I didn’t eat a full lunch but at least I won’t be hangry. No one wants to meet hangry me. I usually carry snacks but today I did not; I will not make this mistake again.

The tour is mostly of main town Gdańsk which actually looks more like old town Gdańsk and old town Gdańsk looks more like modern Gdańsk. Long story short Gdańsk was also bombed pretty bad in World War II. They didn’t completely rebuild it in its original form like they did in Warsaw but instead they built modern interior buildings. In the main town they built facades that make it look like the original Gdańsk. However in old town they have more modern facade with the architecture more modern day or communist style.

Brama Złota or main gate. Lots of town symbolism.

I learn again from the tour guide how Gdańsk has a very different history from the rest of Poland. They were German speakers in 14th-16th century but loyal to Poland.

The tour guide asks if there are any Americans in the group and I seem to be the only one (there is one other American that lives in Ireland but she doesn’t speak up). Apparently the guy who invited the Fahrenheit thermometer is from here (Gabriel Fahrenheit). There is a monument to him. Although not sure how much we can praise him since only a couple countries use his scale, mine one of the few. Fahrenheit makes things so confusing with the large amount of international travel I tend to do since I am forced to do math to communicate to people about the weather.

At one point the Poland was part of largest country in Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonweath. Gdańsk was a large player in this and became wealthy. Merchants were middlemen in Gdańsk. The island was purposed to hold Polish grain and secured day and night. The 16th-17th century was the golden age in Gdańsk. It all came to an end when a Swedish king began to rule Poland.

We stop at the beautiful Mariacka street and see the fun drain pipes. This is the place to buy amber since there are amber sellers up and down the street.

House under turtle. Look above the house and see a turtle.

By the 18th century Poland no longer exists. It is partitioned and is no longer prosperous again until the 19th century.

We end up in old town (which is new town) at the post office that was home to a spectacular attempt of postal workers attempting to stop a fascist invasion, one of the first spots World War II broke out.

Post office and a piece of the original city wall.

After my tour I am determined to eat at one of the restaurants that turned me away the night before. It wasn’t worth the anticipation. Even though pasta carbonara is one of my favorite dishes, this one is too salty for me to enjoy.

I have a nice evening walk around town and tomorrow I am taking the train out to Malbork Castle.

I start the day with a tour of the famous factory where Oskar Schindler have saved over 1000 local jews by providing jobs, food and protection for them at great risk to himself.

I booked a guided tour which is very informative but be warned if you book the guided tour option you will not be able to freely roam the museum afterwards because it moves in a one way direction towards the exist. Do I think the tour is worth it, yes, but there are details in the museum I missed because I took the guided tour option.

As for the museum, it is more so about the complete history of the Jews during WWII with some of Oskar Schindlers work mixed in. They have interactive area where you walk through a walled area to get a feel how those that were moved into the ghetto must have felt.

The swastika is used on flooring as a sign of disrespect. Museum visitors are walking all over them.

There are some modern day lessons to be learned here like when Poland was being invaded by Nazis there were plenty of locals acting like everything is normal when it’s not. How many people would easily turn on their neighbors when given the chance or even a small bit of a payout. It makes you think the worst of humanity and while I would like to think we’ve grown past this behavior, I fear we have not. It was common to have families hidden underneath business and had to not make any noise. There were Nazis that went to buildings with stethoscopes to listen to any slight movement to see if someone was hidden in a building.

We learn about the ghettos and camps and working conditions that the Jewish people were under.

We also learn that Oskar Schindler himself is a flawed man. He was actually a nazi spy who profited off of the war but upon living in Krakow and working with Jewish people became sympathetic to their struggles. That is when he starting making his “list” of workers he needed for his factory of enamelware and ammunitions factories. When confronted with the ridiculousness of say employing children he would use excuses like he needs the “small hands” to clean the ammunition. In the end he saved about 1200 people.

After the museum I have lunch at a milk bar where I finally try to get to try one of my favorite dishes, golabki – cabbage rolls stuffed with barley and meat topped with mushroom cream sauce. I ordered a side dish because I thought I needed veggies (even though the cabbage was very filling) but I realize I bought a plate of three different types of coleslaw and I hate coleslaw – yes I know I should like it because I love cabbage but some reason coleslaw is ick to me. I also had another glass of kompot, this time I think it is plum.

I visit the nearby Bazylika Franciszkanów (St Francis Basilica). Even though I have church fatigue like I have castle fatigue I have this church on my list since it is decorated in Art Nouveau style. I am not disappointed. I love the inside decor, especially the stained glass windows.

Afterwards I finally try the polish version that that cream cake you find in all the Eastern Europe countries. It is so good. Each country has their own version of it.

This afternoon I’ve signed up for a bagel class but I’m early and discover a market across the street. I must return after my class. I love a market.

I have a class where I learn how to make the special “bagels” here in krakow. They aren’t actually called bagels even though tourists tend to call them that. They officially name is obwarzanek and they are specific to krakow. It is a bagel like bread that is braided into a ring then quickly boiled and then baked. A number of toppings can be on them but officially they are sold either sesame, poppy seed or salt. You can find them daily in blue carts all over town.

For our class the dough was pre-made for us to save time. I believe it is a simple recipe: flour, salt, yeast, water and some kind of fat, and maybe some sugar.

We are given the dough to split in two and roll into two equal long strings. Believe me it is harder than it looks. Then we attach the end and braid or twist together to two strings. Once we attach or seal the other end then the dough is dumped in boiling water for ten seconds. Only after then do we apply the topping. Then they are placed in the oven.

While we didn’t do any heavy duty cooking here today I did learn an interesting history lesson and got more of a feel for the polish culture.

Side note – The bagels in NYC are another polish/jewish export. They weren’t really popular here in Poland but immigrants were very successful bringing them to NYC.

After I sample some of my bagel I go back across the street and have some wine before dinner. The market closes soon so I won’t be here long.

During my first days in krakow I noticed a weirdly named wolf restaurant nearby. Come to find out it is a medieval-style restaurant where you have drinks made out of potions and you can pay with ducats instead of ZL. The food was decent enough and the whole create your own drink thing was fun. I have some friends who would really dig this place.

Before I forget this is the late night snack I had the night before. I am frequently calling ketchup a garbage condiment but forgive me when I say that ketchup 100 percent works as a Zapiekanka topping.

Also this breakfast a couple days ago was great.

For tomorrow I was supposed to take a day trip to a mountain town but I canceled those plans to stay local and sightsee at a slower place. The constant action is tiring me.

Tag: polish

Gdansk all day

Krakow: Schindler Factory and Bagels