Hi Gram!
I slept kinda so-so last night. There’s a motion activated light or something just outside my bedroom window and basically zero sound insulation, so I woke every time a person walked through the halls of the building, then had trouble falling back asleep with the light flashing brighter and dimmer every 30 seconds. All of this is to say I ignored my alarm and got up around 9am. I had a walking tour scheduled for 11:30, so I still had plenty of time for breakfast (I’m glad I stopped by the store last night), my journal and exercises without rushing.
The meeting point for the tour was at the old synagogue, now a museum, around 20 minutes away. I arrived early, so I circled the building to make sure I was in the right place before discovering that I had the location right when I first arrived. There were only 5 people in the group: a couple from the UK, a man from London, a professor from Brazil, and me. Kasia, the tour guide, started by giving us candies – good to bribe the customers early, I say. We started inside the museum with a little history, then headed out to walk around the building learning a little history this time.
The rest of the tour was best described like this: a sad local woman who lost grandparents to the war and had grown up seeing poverty and trauma from the war led us from memorial to memorial, explaining history along the way, then telling us where we can find more information. As we stopped at each memorial, she explained the quantity and brutality of people being moved, forced to work, starved, then ultimately killed. This hospital? Everyone was slaughtered for being unproductive. This restaurant? People tried hiding in the basement, but a bomb collapsed it and killed everyone. This bookstore? People tried to hide, but the proprietor gave them up to the nazis and they were all killed. Here’s an orphanage where children stayed after their parents died. The nazis lined the kids up to save bullets. This is the train stop where people were loaded for the concentration camps…
To be fair, there were stories of people who helped the Jewish community, how the community rebuilt after the war, and restaurant recommendations. Kasia was helpful and informative, and she had a lot of resources to back up her facts and stories. I appreciated that, because I’ve been on tours where the tour guide was very obviously making things up to sound more exciting. In fact, she asked us each what we remembered about the tour, then rewarded us for not being happy or excited about any of the facts. She emphasized that this was a hard and sad tour. We ended at the Schindler factory, then said our goodbyes.
I headed to an art museum and cafe that overlooked old town and the river for dinner and to reflect on the day. Pierogi again, not to be typical but they were really good. After dinner, I crossed a cool pedestrian bridge then wound my way back to the apartment. I passed a bicycle rave, complete with a DJ, not to mention plenty of tourist shops, bakeries, and restaurants. I hurt my knee this morning (boring long story), which I don’t think walking all day helped, so I’m planning to spend the night resting and elevating it. I’ll probably get some work on my computer done too, but staying in and being boring. I hope to get to sleep early tonight.
