Hej, it's me - your
wedding photographer travel blogger! I'm getting better at blogging right away, since that's when I have all the memories and the motivation to process photos.
I got back Saturday from POLAND, an incredible country rich in nothing quite so much as history. I learned (and forgot) so many things about Poland, about Europe, about communism and its fall, about the War. My travels in Europe make me long for an intensive European history course. If only the history books weren't so damn
boring. (Well, maybe actually visiting places is going to be more exciting than reading about it in any book).
We booked this trip a month before we took it because I realized only then that I'd have a 3-day week followed by a 2-day week in my Swedish course. That says to me ditch the last two days and take a fatty trip somewhere. So I did. Ten days in Poland and I covered a huge chunk of the country. But it was too fast. Poland is big, y'all. I'd most like to have 3 more days but if not, you'd have to cut two small cities or one large one. I'd love to have even more time to see the East as well.
I flew in on Ryan Air and out on Wizz Air and though both airlines will nickel and dime you to your dying breath, it is freakin' awesome to fly between countries for nine dollars. Thank you budget airlines!
I started the journey in Warsaw, which was completely devastated during the war. You've heard of the "Warsaw uprising" but you probably think it refers to a rebellion of Jews in the ghetto. There were actually
two uprisings in Warsaw: one in the ghetto (it was in The Pianist) and another that the "regular" citizens undertook against the Nazis at the very end of the war. In retaliation, the Nazis simply leveled the city, taking it apart brick by brick (as opposed to other cities which were just bombed to shit). The city of Warsaw lost something like 60% of its population during the war.
Warsaw also had a
massive Jewish population pre-War. I wandered through the Jewish cemetery and couldn't believe how large it was. I've taken my fair share of wanders through Jewish cemeteries in other cities and this place was enormous in comparison. The ghetto itself took up most of what one considers "downtown" Warsaw. There are maps all over town showing you that you are in what was ghetto - because most of it was, during the War.
This isn't the (apartment) building we stayed in, though AirBnB, but it did look exactly like this, but with more satellite dishes and gray, not white. It was quite Soviet, quite ugly. This abandoned monstrosity is at an incredibly busy intersection nearby.
We were only in Warsaw two days - and only one for George. He joined me after a conference in Oxford and flew straight to Warsaw. Then we hopped an early train to Krakow. For this first picture, just check out the object near the bottom of the frame. It's made of metal. I have no idea what it is
supposed to be, but we all know what it
actually is.
Krakow was indeed much prettier than Warsaw, naturally. It was spared much bombing during the War because the Nazis just liked it a lot. This is a giant head in the main square.
Some pretty great stonework / plasterwork (I'm no architect) in front of a cafe.
Check it - I think Krakow and Gothenburg must be sister cities!
Of course, we went to Auschwitz. It was a pretty moving experience, even though there were a zillion tourists there. Two things struck me most: the ignorance and hope Jewish families brought with them, and the immense and utter cruelty of their death. You know that they would separate folks coming out of rail cars into two groups - those "fit to work" and those not. Those determined not fit to work went immediately to the gas chambers. This was 90% of everyone.
It's often baffling to me how six million people could allow themselves to be slaughtered - how could no one fight back? And Auschwitz really taught me the extent to which people believed they would not be killed, that there could be hope, that they could save their families. For instance, some Jews were actually sold
train tickets to Auschwitz, on the premises that they would have a new life there and be able to start again. Almost no one who came there realized it was a death camp. That's why the words on the famous gate are so brutal: work will set you free. For literally everyone, with the exception of a handful who were "rescued" by the Soviets at the end of the war, Auschwitz was nothing more than a death camp. Those who were "lucky" enough to be selected to work only lasted two or three months before their bodies gave up and they succumbed to starvation. It's an unfathomably dark chapter in human history.
There's so much that could be said about Auschwitz, about the Holocaust, about Judaism, about genocide. But let's keep it light on the blog, amiright? If you don't know about this stuff, you need to learn. Otherwise, you know and we'll move on to fun stuff - like the Wieliczka salt mine! This thing was so fucking rad:
Yes, this is an underground
cathedral. These photos are taken from something like 60 meters underground. The salt mine is just a giant mountain of salt and nothing else - just good old NaCl - so everything that can be structurally removed is removed, leaving massive chambers behind. The miners built amazing rooms out of these chambers - cathedrals, chapels, ballrooms, etc. It's a super cool place and people have been visiting it for hundreds of years (including Copernicus!).
In almost every city, I had the pleasure of taking a "free" walking tour with the FreeWalkingTour.com people - I highly recommend them! You don't always get an amazing guide, but the structure of the tour says you can ditch out early if you think the guide sucks. And no doubt you'd pay more if you had to book something. I went on a "street art" tour in Krakow, after George had to go back to Sweden to work (hehe).
And then, as if I hadn't been busy before, I went onto the real whirlwind part of the trip. I was in Wroclaw for only a few hours on my way to Poznan.
In Wroclaw, I had the amazing experience of eating at a Milk Bar, a holdover from Communist times when folks couldn't afford food. These cafeterias are subsidized by the government still, so they are ridiculously cheap. And actually the tastiest pierogi I had on the trip. Absolutely zero English was spoken and I had to get some college students to help me order. Also, the whole place was run by these old ladies in hair nets and little blue dresses and weird orthopedic sandals. It was awesome!
I was honestly surprised how little English I found in Poland. Traveling around Europe, you of course run into plenty of folk who don't speak, but often in tourist areas - restaurants, train offices, museums, etc. - you'll find lots of folks speak lots of English. Not so in Poland. I did a whole lot of pointing. I also managed not to pick up hardly any Polish the whole time. "Hello" was too damn hard to say so I mostly gave up, though I seem to have come away alright with "thank you" and "good morning".
Old Town Wroclaw.
I had the best donut of my life in this city. I was walking into town and saw a whole bunch of people standing in line, so I figured that's what I should be doing as well. I was delighted to find they were ordering doughnuts. It was warm. It was sweet. It was enormous.
I took another free walking tour in Wroclaw. And it's like half my pictures even though I was only there maybe six hours!
The oldest street in town.
OK this is so cool. On the oldest street, they have a monument to the animals we raise and kill for food. They had a contest about who would make the monument but in the end decided they'd give each piece of it to a different artist - including someone who had to sculpt POOP. It's goat poop.
Also in Wroclaw, they have a zillion little dwarves all over town. This grew from a political protest movement towards the end of Communism here and now is a silly example of Capitalism - boom, we ... won? In any case, they're adorable and they're everywhere.
I took a late train out of Wroclaw and moved to Poznan, where I also had just a few hours. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this view out of my hostel window for my one night.
Poland likes to put their town halls and a bunch of other buildings right in the middle of their main squares.
I stayed in the light green building, in the room with the open window on the left.
Right next door is this huge building that a bunch of squatters took over at some point in the recent future. The city managed to kick them out and it actually remains to be seen what will happen - they're supposed to get a bunch of money to open a social center. It's amusing and interesting that all this could play out literally catty-corner to the main square.
This is some famous guy who is concerned about global warming. Seems wrong to erect a fountain if that's the case, but I'm no city planner.
Yet another train to Torun, a really lovely little place pretty close to Warsaw and Gdansk. I was wildly off in finding the bus station (thanks Google) but I did get to see some fun out-of-the-way stuff.
Torun wasn't bombed during the War, so many of the buildings are original. This one, for instance, is where Copernicus was born. Dude's family was straight loaded, y'all. Torun is also famous for gingerbread, which I ate lots of. I love when places are famous for cookies.
Everywhere I went, there were a thousand schoolchildren. Apparently in May Polish schoolchildren all do their fieldtrips, so literally every museum everywhere was filled to the brim. I was unable to do the gingerbread baking demonstration because it was taken up by a bunch of kids. Bummer! Here's a leaning tower thing:
Street photography by-the-way: when you're attempting to take photos of people walking by, they will often think there's something remarkable about the setting you've put them in, and they'll look away from you. There's nothing you can do about it except wait for someone more oblivious, like a baby.
And finally, I had reached my last destination: Gdansk. Gdansk looks like Amsterdam or Copenhagen, really - lots of pretty, narrow, Mannerist houses on a canal. This city also took considerable damage during the War and has been, for the most part, reconstructed.
World War II started very near Gdansk, at Westerplatte. It was the first place shots were fired. Gdansk is also where Communism began to fall, as it was the site of the first successful strike (successful in the sense of establishing trade unions) behind the Iron Curtain. Poland was the first country to achieve independence in June, 1989.
The gate where the strikes were held that established trade unions in Poland. They had another grueling nine years ahead of them before they could step out from under the Soviet boot. Poles are incredibly proud of their Solidarity movement - and it would seem rightfully so.
And that, my friends, was my trip to Poland! I would definitely go back - I moved way too fast. My favorite city? Probably Torun. Though I really liked all of them. And considering how damn cheaply I can fly there, I'd say Gdansk is the city I'm most likely to visit again.
Until next time! (On the travel agenda for the year: Oslo, Stockholm, Malmö, Marstrand and the West Coast, Edinburgh. Then, maybe / hopefully: Croatia, Northern Italy - Lake Como, the South of France, Spain, Thailand.)
Those three glorious weeks we had in June... that was pretty much summer. It's been ok here, off and on - a day here and there where it's really pleasant out. But mostly it's been raining a lot and not all that warm. We've got our collected fingers crossed that we'll get some more good weather here in August (when we visited last year it was really warm) but for me, summer is over starting tomorrow anyway.
Yes, I start this bootcamp that will hopefully be a move into a new career tomorrow. I'm excited and a little nervous, but mostly ready to get to work. I like working and I love learning things. And I like the idea of being a coder. Starting tomorrow it's code all day every day until I know the ropes, so my days of lounging by the sea have come to an end for this year. But with summers like this, it doesn't seem like that big a sacrifice.
Obviously these images come from the Pride Parade back in June. Clearly I'm just a spectator but Gothenburg's Pride seems much more subdued than DCs. There are also way more boobs and less dick about. We saw lots of women just full-on naked in the street (some of them painted). I felt mad creepy taking pictures of them, so I didn't. But the festival itself came with all kinds of great activities, including free pap smears with bonus candies!
Actually, we found ourselves at the stage at one point and they were doing choreographed dancing and we were having *so much fun* until we realized we were inadvertently participating in an exercise class. Whoops!
Jobb = job. This is the employment agency marching. Honestly, the parade was pretty lame - it was a lot of government agencies and companies with a bunch of employees just walking down the street with rainbow things happening. I was like "where are the QUEENS?" But maybe if you have a more equal and accepting society, your parade gets really tame. It's not a bad trade-off.
All over town, these women (and a few men) sit outside the grocery stores and ask for money. They don't really do much except sit there and say "hej" to everyone that walks in or out. It's very non-aggressive. Mostly they just seem really bored. I enjoyed seeing this lady dancing and having a good time - sometimes we forget that people who have to beg on the street are *people* and they like doing fun things like dancing just like the rest of us.
I talked about this a bit on Instagram too, but one difference between Sweden and the states is that everyone is more ok with bodies here. Naked bodies on the street, pregnant ladies with their bellies way out, communal saunas and there's no such thing as a "nude" beach because it's ok to get naked at any beach. Swedes are just more comfortable in their own skin and ok with seeing other peoples' skin.
And then it was Midsommar! Lacking some kind of traditional, organized, countryside Midsommar affair, we hit up the official city celebration at a park downtown. They had make-your-own flower crowns, a giant "maypole", traditional dancers and lots of people looking cheerful and having fun. We had amazing weather that day.
The first climax of Midsommar is dancing around the pole. There's a ton of songs with choreographed dancing. Everyone forms concentric rings around the pole, then you dance left and right and do hand motions and kick a bit. It's great fun!
The second climax is going home, eating a ton, and getting shitfaced. George and I cooked a metric asston of food for a bunch of assorted friends and colleagues. I got properly wasted but it seems no one else did (or so I was told). As I understood (understand) it, Midsommar is the one time you're mandated to get properly drunk, so I did. I had a really great time, anyway.
Finally made it to Röda Sten before we moved. They had a really cool exhibit about climate change and things. This is giant plastic sheet suspended from the ceiling by a million pieces of yarn.
George did a lot of traveling in August, so one Saturday I made it out to Marstrand for a sailing competition. I honestly didn't understand the sailing at all - they moved back and forth and it honestly seemed like they were going kind of slow and the "track" was really small. But in the end someone won and people seemed excited. It was completely, ridiculously, windy so I didn't stick around near the sailing bit that much.
I ate crazy-delicious seafood soup in this little place.
Gothenburg has an event going on this year called "Green World." They've set up a bunch of different art installations dealing with nature. There are a bunch of "pocket parks" on the main strip downtown, a huge bamboo installation near the state theater and a number of really cool arty things in the botanical gardens. There's all kinds of crap like this in town - Gbg has a lot going on.
And then, we went to Stockholm! We had *the best* weather in Stockholm (it was 10 degrees colder in Gbg the whole time we were there). We saw tons of stuff and also managed to spend a couple hours every day just chilling drinking beers and such on patios.
City Hall:
Patio #1 was on a rooftop and it was sooooooo nice. We spent an hour or so just listening to music and completely chilling out.
Moderna Museet: meh. I've seen too many freakin' "world class" museums at this point to get excited about something with no big names or things I recognize. (Other takeaways from visiting a thousand modern museums: Picasso was damn *prolific*. Literally every modern art museum I've been in has a bunch of his stuff.)
Some kind of band concert in the Old Town's main square.
Museum Island.
Ok, Stockholm was kinda great - lots of stuff to do, pleasant to look at, lots of good patios to drink on. But the *best* part was Bunny Park. For some reason the park we walked through between our hotel and downtown had a whole family of bunnies living in it. Urban bunnies! They were out almost every time we went through, day or night, and they weren't very scared of people. They were damn adorable.
It's basically impossible to take a good picture of the Vasa, but here's a crap one. This was worth the $14 entry fee or whatever. They pulled an *entire* ship out of the harbor and built a museum for it. Crazy!
A sign maker who took his job too literally?
We did a whole bunch of stuff in Stockholm but mostly it was just a pleasant time, walking around and eating. George hates outdoor museums, apparently. He did not dig Skansen, but I liked it.
One of the coolest things we did in Stockholm was a tour of the metro art. We managed to completely screw up the meeting place the first day but they had another tour that fit right in with our train time. We got to see really neat art grottos and the like. Highly recommend and it's free!
I just haven't been taking that many "regular" photos, though I always have my camera on me. I guess I'm letting that slide for a while. So I don't have very many day-in-the-life stuff to show. Sorry! Here's some other things that happened:
Berlin and Dresden were both amazing cities and I'd gladly go back. Berlin in particular has so much going on. I was there for six days and I could have stayed double, triple that and still have been missing out. Berlin is also the only place I've ever stayed where the other people at the hostel seemed to be staying an appropriate amount of time. It might also have been the nature of the hostel I stayed at, a hippie commune of sorts.
Typically, I'd see my roommates change every single night in a constant churn of new tourists, hopping into Prague, Budapest, London for two nights, max, and partying deep into the night and sleeping all day. People in Berlin came to party but they also stayed long enough to see some freakin' stuff too.
I started the trip in Dresden because that seemed to make the most sense. A flight to Berlin is 50 minutes (you are so jealous!) but the damn train was 4 hours. I messed up - I should have taken the bus. Alas, you live and you learn.
The first day it rained and rained. I was supposed to go hiking (spoilers: I made it, see above) but had to flip things around. I read Rick Steves and saw the things.
You know Dresden from Slaughterhouse Five (by the outstanding Kurt Vonnegut) and you probably know it was fire-bombed to the ground. But they built it back up like lots of other people have done and now you can wander around lots of reconstructed pretty bits.
Interesting note for ceramicists, this super-detailed and beautiful wall is made of tile, so it survived the fire-bombing, while everything else burned up. Yay for ceramics...?
I couldn't tell if this was a piece of art or just a regular fire escape.
It's important to be able to get your ciggies without delay. (To be fair, this machine was dead, but I saw lots of others around town that weren't attached to abandoned buildings.)
In case you need to squint, it says Edward-Snowden-Platz.
The next day, I hopped on a train to the Saxon Switzerland National Park to do some "hiking" (read: moderate walking in the woods + views). From the train:
This little fucking village on the Elbe was adorable and I had to take a ferry across the river. It was so calm and peaceful and beautiful.
And then it was straight uphill for about a half hour to the top of the "mountain" and this baller bridge that was constructed specifically for tourists to hike to.
So nice I even asked a German lady to take my photo and she got it in focus! It's a German miracle.
So what happened is I was very pleased with the views and the frosty beer I had at the snack bar up top (oh yeah, isn't it great when you get to the top of a "mountain" and realize you could have taken a bus?), but I wanted more walking and couldn't jive taking a train trip and everything just to do an hour of there-and-back sightseeing. So I took a random trail and just kept going when it went downhill. And then it went downhill more and more and more and all the way down the damn mountain. Luckily, I popped out 15 minutes and an extremely pleasant river stroll back to where I started. Thanks, tiny adorable German town!
Later that day, I hopped a bus back to Berlin and arrived safe and sound at my hostel, where no one was giving two shits about the Germany game. So I watched it myself and went to bed early, because that's my way. The next day, another walking tour, another rainy day.
I put myself on a grueling rainy six-hour walking tour of Berlin, but it was a good introduction to the city. We also went inside this super weird old dance hall with legit behind-the-Wall atmosphere. And this banging ratty old couch.
We saw "Museum Island" where all the old museums and the Cathedral are. And there's the famous TV Tower at Alexanderplatz in the background. This was a very impressive statue and that's why I've included this crappy snapshot of it.
Checkpoint Charlie, which at this point is 100% tourist bullshit. There used to be a checkpoint here where people could move between East and West Berlin. By the way, I learned all about that and it was mad fascinating and you should learn about it too, if you are in Berlin or have a chance. I've learned so much about the War and the Communist era since coming to Sweden - it's fascinating!
The almost unfortunately visually-appealing Monument to the Murdered Jews of the Holocaust. So many idiots were doing disrespectful and just absurd things at this holocaust memorial: taking goofy selfies, posing like fashion models.
I stumbled across this really cool little area in Friedrichshain called RAW. It's got mad graffiti everywhere.
No idea what these ads are about but they were all over town with different characters.
The East Side Gallery (in the rain, again).
Creepy but totally banal German word (it means "the") floating over the city (and a big stretch of the Wall near the Topography of Terror).
It's so weird to see where the Wall used to be. It just cuts through regular-looking neighborhoods and you can just imagine folks having to look at each other across the "death strip" - one side in capitalism and the other in communism. Now little bits of the wall just hang out in neighborhoods, like this one in front of an apartment building.
The flea market on Sundays at Kreuzberg is so damn cool. There were buskers everywhere and people drinking (totally legal in Germany to drink whatever you want wherever you want). I bought a big beer and watched a drum troupe and wandered around looking at all the crap. It was a super-chill vibe.
One of the coolest things I did was tour the Reichstag's dome. It is really damn tall and the audio guide points out all kinds of interesting things on the horizon, plus some German history and a little explanation of how their government works.
The dome actually gathers sunlight through a complex mirror system and bounces it down into the main chamber so they have to spend less on lighting. Cool, right?
The best I can do for you of the Brandenburg Gate, which was beset on all sides by Euro Cup paraphernalia (they broadcast on a huge screen behind the Gate. I tried to go but no backpacks allowed, womp womp.)
Even better, though, you could sightsee from this bed. (wtf?)
One of the coolest things I did while in Berlin was a 
This is from the German History Museum. I don't know who this guy is or anything, I just thought he looked awesome.
And finally, soccer outside at RAW. I thought I would be watching this game in a quiet courtyard but I discovered the whole area was jam-packed with revelers. Germany crushed Northern Ireland but they weren't even that good at it, so it wasn't a great game to watch. Still, it's always fun to see such things around people who give a damn.
And that's it! I thought Berlin was my last trip before the bootcamp but now it looks like I'm headed to Stockholm and - who are we kidding - I'll probably fit in a trip to somewhere closer in the free week I have before the bootcamp starts. That is also my way.