Musings

Krakow, Poland

Still having trouble with photos.... Maybe it's Poland's fault?


Coincidence is a funny thing. A few days ago in Prague I ran into a friend from University. We were just walking down the street, I heard her talking, did a double take and went to say hi. We hung out over the evening with some of her friends and she invited me out to Krakow to meet up with her again (that would be later today).

Anyway, it got me thinking about chance. This may not seem like much of a revelation but I've been traveling for a little over a month now and in that time I've met people in film, I've ran into old friends like I described above, I've made probably 20 new friends and had three offers from people to let me crash at their place, all among PLENTY of other things. In my month in Calgary I'm not sure any of those things happened. So what does all this have to do with chance? Well my revelation is that if you put yourself out there enough times, things will eventually work out. The odds say they have to.

Out here, I'm forced to interact with new people and meet others and experience something new every day. Even when I don't want to I still have to go out to eat (or to get food to eat) or whatever. Each time I do that is another opportunity for SOMETHING to happen. And as it turns out, somethings happen quite often when you're out quite often. When you stay in, well... I guess you're missing out. It's kind of renewed my faith in the balance of the universe.

Like I said, not much of a revelation right? I always kind of knew that the more you go out the more things can happen, but I'm not sure I always believed it. If you're like me and you don't wholeheartedly believe it either, try traveling alone. I say alone cause when you're with someone you're not forced to interact nearly as much.

Do it. Even the things that go wrong you won't regret.



And now for the big turn-around.

My other thought today is about Auschwitz. Being in Krakow, I went there the other day and that is really something. Auschwitz itself is a pretty good sized compounds with about 30 barracks style buildings or so, but its sister camp Birkenau where most of the killings took place is humongous. It's about three km away and has hundreds of these buildings, each of which held about 600 people. And those are just the men capable of working, the rest of the people just got gassed.

I went to the camps right off the night train from Prague. I didn't sleep much as the train kind of sucked and i didn't eat anything either since when I arrived in town everything was closed. Well, as it turns out it's quite the experience seeing these camps tired on an empty stomach. I think the emotions are heightened a little more when you're weak and as strange as it sounds, I'd actually recommend not eating or sleeping before going out there. The power of the place is more than enough to keep you walking but after a little while you find your feet are dragging, your head is down and your breathing has slowed.

The style of buildings there is primarily red brick with black roofs and sky-blue wood doors. I have never seen anything more sinister in my life, than red and black buildings with sky-blue doors. It gives an almost ethereal sense, like this sky-blue is an escape from the death all around. I guess in a way (eventually) it almost always was.

I don't know if I have much else to say about it. Obviously it's a hard place to go to but it's also obviously important. Everyone knows what it is and what happened there and at times just standing in some spots are enough to push you to tears. There's a dedication by a giant pit filled with scummy water that says it's the ashes of all the victims burned in the crematorium. There are a half dozen of these pits and each one is just as hard as the one before.

We're not allowed to take pictures inside so I don't have much to show you but I did take two or three that I thought were of pretty powerful monuments and I didn't want to lose the memory of them.

They will be here as soon as possible: