My Trip to Poland Part II

I can’t explain how good it is to be back in the Czech Republic and back in our apartment. I still seem to forget how much I have made Prague my home, except for when I return and realize how much I missed what now has become the familiar. I think we are all pretty exhausted, so the rest of our weekend will be spent resting and preparing for Midterms and paper topics we have due in this upcoming week.

A recap on the rest of our trip:

Monday like I said before we went to Lodz for the day where we visited a factory turned into mall that was owned by a wealthy Jewish Family before the war, a large Jewish cemetery with one of the largest tombs built in honor of the same family who owned the factory, and finally, one of the most incredible Holocaust memorials I have seen. You can see pictures of it below. Monday night we arrived to Warsaw where we checked into our Communist style hotel. Needless to say it was interesting experiencing so much communist architecture. Our time in Warsaw was spent with a lovely walking tour of the Old Town as well as a bus tour of the larger, former Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw. We also had a meeting with the Rabbi of Poland, played with kids at the Lauder Jewish School, visited the Jewish Cemetery of Warsaw, met with a genealogist who spends his time connecting people around the world with their Jewish roots in Eastern and Central Europe (it’s quite incredible we even got to see the actual Schindler's List...it gave me chills), and visited the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The capital of Poland is quite a remarkable city to see. Warsaw itself was nearly taken off the map because of destruction after World War II; however, you would not be able to tell that now. Part of the city is filled with high-rises, hotels, skyscrapers, and new, modern buildings making you feel like you have just stepped into the Eastern European version of NYC, yet the Old Town portion is like as some of my peers put, walking into Disney. The Old Town portion has been completely reconstructed to resemble as accurately as possible the former World War II city. It was quite incredible see, especially to see that so much of the work was accomplished during Communism. Warsaw was really a unique city in this aspect. To see now what exists of a once leveled city and to think that merely a few inches below under all of this new construction is levels and levels of former buildings…it’s really mind blowing.

After our three days in Warsaw we headed to Wroclaw for our last day where we met with another Rabbi and then spent the rest of the day exploring the Old Town there and having dinner. The rest of our night was spent relaxing in our hotel, pretty much counting down the hours until we could return to the Czech Republic – I can say with confidence we were Poland-ed Out!

So ends our trip to Poland. I never realized how exhausted one could become from all of the touring and traveling. All in all I must say it was an incredible trip because of the things we experienced and were able to see. Things that I would not necessarily want to do again, but am so glad that I had the opportunity to experience them and be able to share them everyone who reads this.

Now for some much needed rest!! Ahoy!