Canadian Students Abroad

We got off a couple of stops early on the overnight train we had already booked to Freiburg to meet Russ and Sheila in Heidelberg. We met them at their hotel for a yummy German breakfast and then went out to see the city. We spent the next couple of days seeing the city and surroundings with them, and now we’re finally on our way back to Freiburg.

On our first day in the city after breakfast we went to the Heidelberg castle. It was badly damaged in a French invasion quite a long time ago, and they’ve left it that way. I think one reason was at the time there just wasn’t a lot of money for the rebuilding, but after some time the half-destroyed castle became a sort of symbol of the city, and now they actually do work to preserve it in its exact current state, which I find kind of odd. Either repair it or don’t, but it seems odd to make an effort to keep it in its current sort of half-done state. I think it has a lot to do with famous paintings of the city showing the castle this way. Either way, it was really something to see and we got a great tour of the interior from a rather funny German guide.

That evening we went to a concert at the university, which is the oldest in Germany, and got to see the Old University Hall, which was really great. Freiburg is also a beautiful and very, very old university, but the original buildings aren’t in use for classes anymore. All the buildings where we have classes are new, modern lecture halls, so you don’t really feel like you’re at a university over 500 years old.

On our second day we went for a little hike around the forest surrounding the city and made it to some really amazing ruins. For one, there was an amphitheatre on the top of the hill which was built by the Nazis in 1935 using slave labour, and was opened for propaganda presentations. Beyond this amphitheatre were ruins of a 9th century monastery, which has been abandoned since the 16th century, apparently because a roof-collapse killed the last three remaining monks. Surrounding this entire mountain were ruins of a wall which was built by the Celts in the 4th century! It was just so fascinating to see all these layers of completely unrelated history piled on top of one another, as if they had no idea at the time what they were building, and where. All this in a little academic city not in any particularly useful location.

We got rained on pretty severely on our hike down the mountain that day, and it rained again the next day. It worked out alright anyway, and we went to a “Packaging Museum”. I know, maybe doesn’t sound that interesting, but on the inside it was really cool. They had all kinds of factory equipment used for packaging different things and labels of all sorts of German brands over the years. One particularly interesting piece was a special edition tin of cigarettes made for the titanic, which a survivor carried out with them. There are three known left in the world. The museum turned out to be great and the man working there gave us a great tour; I would definitely recommend the packaging museum, as uninteresting as it may sound.

We had one last meal with Russ and Sheila before getting onto our train back to Freiburg. It’s never fun saying goodbye, but it just makes me look forward to the next time I’ll see everyone – hopefully in the summer. This was the final stop on our semester break trip and now we’re going back to Freiburg for a while. Classes start full swing on Monday, so hopefully this semester my classes will all work out. I wish we could keep travelling; there are so many more places I would love to see, but at the same time I’m excited to get settled somewhere for a little while at least and get back to school. There are quite a few holidays this semester since Baden-Württemberg gets both the Protestant and Catholic holidays, being one of the only “mixed” states, so we’ll be doing a few shorter trips later on, but for now I guess it’s time to get on our last train for a while.

This was our second time in this amazing city, and I still want to come back again! We were here in October with our group of Canadians after the “immersion” part of the year in Freiburg and got to see quite a few of the museums and sites, but I don’t think there’s enough time in one’s life to really appreciate all that Berlin has. This time around we went to the Dali exhibit and the Checkpoint Charlie museum, and took a couple of walking tours of the city to see some sides of it we hadn’t yet.

The Dali exhibit was great, and definitely worth seeing if you’re into that type of art. It’s permanent in Berlin right in Potsdamer Platz, so also convenient. Afterward we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was amazing. It should be called the “GDR escape museum”, but I guess the name suits it. Inside they have tons of things people used to escape the GDR, including cars rigged in different ways to make space and prevent sagging, all kinds of make-shift ziplines, and even a kayak a guy actually used to get out through the Ostsee. They also have a make-shift scuba tank built by someone who obviously knew what they were doing, since all diving gear was banned in the GDR to prevent people from escaping by sea. It’s insane what some people went through to get out. What’s more insane is how much worse it was in most countries, and how long it lasted. At least the East-Germans had somewhere to go; usually they’d be welcomed with citizenship, accommodations, and cash in West-Germany. It’s hard to believe what some people had to put up with.

The next day we did a walking tour through “alternative” Berlin, which was kind of just a street art tour, but it was really interesting. It came with a lot of history, and a lot of explaining about why Berlin is the way it is today. Now it’s a top notch place to live and you’d be lucky to afford a decent apartment near the centre, but after the war it was quite a hole. For one it had been almost completely destroyed, and every building was at least damaged, and second of all Germany split up. This meant difficulties reconstructing the city and a lot of check points. West Germany always worked hard to keep Berlin, though, since they never accepted that Germany would be divided for ever, and were not about to lose their capital. Anyway, during the division of Germany Berlin wasn’t such an attractive place to be, so the government provided incentives for people to live there like low or no taxes, living subsidies, and waiving the military service requirement. Of course mostly artists and students are attracted to this kind of lifestyle and Berlin evolved into one of the most alternative cities in the world. After the wall fell half the city, and the country, was full of buildings owned by a state that no longer existed, so the hippies moved over there and Berlin is now one of the coolest cities in the world.Unfortunately the epitome of this alternative spirit of Berlin -- Tacheles -- is under serious threat of being shut down now, and the entire district surrounding it of being turned into a high class apartment block with expensive cafés and high-end art galleries. Here's hoping!

There are artist squats and make-shift galleries everywhere, although unfortunately with all the money coming into Berlin it is becoming quite “gentrified” and losing its edge. You can still find some really great street art and of course the East Side gallery, which is unfortunately slowly being torn apart to let massive buildings and apartment complexes through, but hopefully they find some way to stop it.

We had a great time in Berlin seeing this other side of it and learning more and more. There are still things there I’d love to see and do, and hopefully we’ll be back again someday. This was going to be our last stop on the trip, but it turns out my uncle and aunt Russ and Sheila are going to be in Heidelberg over the next few days, so we’re headed there next before we get back to Freiburg for a while.

We made it to Kraków in the evening. We checked-in, had some supper, then got some rest to make sure we were ready to explore the city the next day. On our first day in the city we did walking tours of the old city and then the Jewish district, and ended at Schindler’s factory, which has been converted into a museum about the Nazi occupation in Kraków.

We skipped the day trip to Auschwitz this time around and just spent our time in the city. Between having seen so many memorials everywhere in Europe to concentration camps, former torture prisons, and massacred humans, and living in Germany, we just decided it would be too much for right now. We’ve visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial site and also seen the horrors of a later regime in the former Stasi prison in East Berlin. We also saw the house of terror in Budapest where the former Hungarian fascist party headquarters were, as well as the communist party headquarters during the communist times. Seeing the actual place on this earth where actual, innocent people were literally tortured to death turns out to be a lot heavier than I was expecting. Our trip to Dachau was moving, and I think it’s so important and great that these places are now being run as memorial sites, but it can just get to be too much. I can’t imagine the strength of the survivors of this kind of hell that helps them share their stories and revisit the very sites where they spent the most terrible years any human could ever imagine living.

In Freiburg, like many other German cities, they have the golden stones in the sidewalk in front of houses where Jews used to live and were evicted from. There are five of these stones in front of the house next to our building, and we walk over countless others every day on our way to school. On the main university campus there is also a memorial to the old synagogue which was destroyed during the November pogroms in 1938, and there’s a bronze jacket hanging over the bridge we walk across every day commemorating the place where the Jews were rounded up and deported to Gurs. Many of these people faced their final fate at Auschwitz. There just seems something so wrong about walking in front of the house where someone used to live every day as a regular citizen, and then the next day going to visit the actual place where they were systematically murdered.

Anyway, I think these memorial sites are extremely important and I will definitely be back someday to visit the Auschwitz memorial, but knowing we have to go back and live in Germany, this time around the timing and circumstances just aren’t right.

We did take a walking tour of the old town and then of the Jewish districts and former ghetto. Both were really great -- the tour guides in Poland are excellent. The old city is beautiful; they converted the land where the old city wall used to be into a garden that loops around the entire old part. It's really nice.

One of the largest Jewish communities in Europe before the war was in Kraków with over 60,000 members and today there are about 150 left. The community is as alive as ever, but so small compared to before the war. The Jewish district is still really cool and has a lot going on, with tons of bars, pubs, concert halls, and music festivals hosted there. After our tour we went to Schindler’s factory which has been converted into a museum on the occupation of Kraków.

Over our next couple of days in the city we spent some time at museums, cafés, and cafeterias, basically just bumming around and enjoying our little taste of winter for the year. Next up is Berlin, which I can’t wait to see. We were there with the group of Canadians in Freiburg this year in October, but it’s just such a massive city with so much going on we’ve been set on going back ever since.

We made it to Lublin without too much trouble although on a rather crowded train. Poland has a surprisingly sophisticated train network for having been totally destroyed and then neglected, even if the trains themselves are a little less luxurious than the ones in Western Europe. We had a really short time here so our first evening after we dropped off our bags at the hostel we went out to see the old city and have a bite to eat.

The reason we came out to this eastern city is really to see Hrubieszów. It still amazes me how well every village in Europe is so well connected. You can get quite literally anywhere you could ever want to go, if you’ve got the patience to work with the sometimes limited train/bus schedules. Anyway, we used this convenient bus service to take a day trip out to the town one day, although unfortunately I’m completely ignorant and thought Easter was a set date, or at least always in April, and we ended up in a rural Polish village on Easter Sunday, which this year was in March.

Needless to say, the town was dead, although I’m not really sure if it ever “comes to life”. The reason we went here is because it is my great-grandmother’s hometown. I never knew her, but it was really humbling to be walking where she walked and seeing what she saw, even though the town has completely changed since WWII. She left for Canada with another Polish Jew in the early 20th century, and eventually I ended up in eastern Canada. Nearly half of the residents of the town before the war were Jewish, and now they’re virtually all gone. For me that’s the most revolting part of the whole Holocaust – that it accomplished one of its sick goals. There are virtually no Jews left in Europe. Don’t get me wrong, the extremely small communities that are left are extremely vibrant and active, but in terms of numbers they don’t compare to the pre-war situation. It’s unbelievably depressing to think of the potential that was lost and the lives that were wasted, and even more so to think that some of my relatives would have perished under such awful circumstances, but seeing the Jewish communities thriving today in Europe, Israel, and everywhere else in the world, is probably one of the most inspiring things I can think of. What else could they have possibly lost? A people reduced to living in sub-human conditions under constant starvation and torture, not only forgives their oppressors, but moves on and creates some of the most lively and successful communities we have today.

We saw the Jewish cemetery there, which was decimated by the Nazis upon the deportation of the Jews in 1942. What’s there now is a memorial to the Jews made of the smashed grave stones found after the war. The town, and the whole country, really, has been changed in irreversible, unimaginable ways, but I think the memorials in Eastern Europe really are amazing. They're always thought provoking and have so many levels of meaning.

It was really great to be able to make it out to Hrubieszów, and I’m glad everything worked out despite the fact that we probably chose the worst possible day of the year to go. We went back to Lublin after a few hours in the town and managed to find I think the only restaurant that was open to get some supper. Nothing like a proper easter feast we’d get at home, but close enough.

Next we’re going to Kraków, which is our last stop in Poland. It’ll be most of the day tomorrow getting there, but I’ve got lots of reading to keep me busy!

We made it here with no troubles and even managed to get some rest on the train. The Polish couchette wagon was a little less luxurious than the German one and a little louder, but nothing terrible. Sheets and pillows aren’t included and the couchettes are a little slanted so you tend to roll into the wall no matter how you lay, but luckily we’ve become masters at sleeping with eyemasks and earplugs in a sack with a makeshift pillow.
As a side note, those are the best things you can travel with. Eyemask, earplugs, and a spare pillowcase you can stuff with clothes to make a pillow. I’ve had many extra hours of sleep thanks to those.

Luckily the hostel in Warsaw let us check in early, so we hopped right into bed and took a nap before rolling out to catch the morning walking tour. One nice thing about travelling east, or seemingly anywhere other than Switzerland and Germany, is that things are a lot less official. If the beds are empty there’s never a problem checking in early or late. You would never be refused an empty bed in Poland just because “it’s not check-in time yet”. Anyway, there are good things that can come of all that order, too.

The walking tour in Warsaw was great. It’s a really interesting city, with such a devastating history, but I feel like that’s just the general feeling in Poland. It’s been through so much over the years but still refuses to quit. If you ever start to lose faith in humanity, travel to Poland or Bosnia and see for yourself how resilient and strong people can be. It’s always sad hearing about the sick ways of war and oppression, but it can be quite inspiring to meet people who have accomplished amazing things even in the face of others who have quite literally made it their life’s goal to see that that never happens.

On our second day in the city we went to the Warsaw Uprising museum. It’s relatively new in the city, and extremely well done. It’s massive so it’s kind of one of those all-day museums, but definitely worth it. Another great museum was the Marie Curie house. I actually didn’t know she was Polish, but it turns out she only made her life in France because of the brutal treatment of women in Poland and everywhere else in Europe at the time. The house where she was born has been converted into a small museum about her life, and they even have a few pieces of her actual equipment.

Any trip to Poland wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Warsaw; people say it’s not the best city in the country, but it definitely shouldn’t be missed. The history is rich and the city has been beautifully rebuilt; it really does look like a proper European capital. We had a great time in and around the old city seeing the memorials and monuments, and there are at least a couple of museums here worth checking out. It seems like it would be a great city to just hang around in, but a couple of days seemed to be enough to take in the main sites. Next up on our tour of Poland is Lublin. It’s a couple of hours away by train, so we’ll be heading out tomorrow.