Yesterday we started off our morning with a visit to Wociechow to visit one of the most famous Black Smith's in Poland. Good thing we have Jacek (our GSE coordinator) to translate for us, as for when you get out of the city it becomes more and more apparent that we are outsiders who do not speak any Polish. The visit to the shop was very interesting because I had never really taken the time to imagine where fancy iron fencing comes from and how it is made. At this shop all the iron is heated and made by hand by the Black Smith. He was quite the colorful guy!
We then made our way to Kazimier. We stopped off for a cup of coffee, Kim and I's first time having "real" espresso, and some delicious cheesecake and apple cake. We all remarked how this would be the life if we could do this in our every day lives back at home! We then made our way up to see an old church and the Kasimiers Castle which was built by King Kazimierz in the 14th Century. There is not much of it left these days other than the outside wall, but it offers tourists a wonderful view of the city down below.
On our way back to Lublin we made a stop at one of the Catholic cemetaries to meet up with the Lublin Center Rotary Club (the club that is hosting us this visit) to honor the founder of the club who died exactly one year ago. The members all honored him by placing candles at his site. You'll notice the grave sites in Poland are above ground and many of them had fresh flowers on them, a noticable sign to us that the Polish place more importance on honoring the decesased than we do in America.
From the cemetary we made our way to Old Town where we had dinner and a pony keg of beer. Every where we have gone we have been offered beer or Vodka. The Polish are very hospitable!
Day 3:
Today we spent the day in Old Town visiting the Lublin Castle which was used to house more than 40,000 Polish Prisoners during WWII, an underground tunnel museum to learn about the history of the city and then to Majdanek concentration camp.
Visiting Majdanek was the hardest part of today and a real eye opener. This is the first of at least 3 concentration camp visits that have been placed on our itinerary and I don't think it's going to get any easier as we go. Before we had even made our way through the first building I cried. We walked through the shower chambers, the barracks and the crematorium.
It's completey unimaginable to think about what happened here. Artifacts have been preserved from some of the prisoners and photos are even on file. In total more than 78,000 people were killed here and only 512 escaped. It led to some good discussion among members of our team, but I think we can all agree that this is a human tragedy that we will just never completely comprehend.
It's completey unimaginable to think about what happened here. Artifacts have been preserved from some of the prisoners and photos are even on file. In total more than 78,000 people were killed here and only 512 escaped. It led to some good discussion among members of our team, but I think we can all agree that this is a human tragedy that we will just never completely comprehend.
Tomorrow we will spend more time in Lublin, making our first club presentation and then transfer to new host families in Zamosc.
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