For the next good many posts I’m going to write about what I did this summer, a traditional back-to-school exercise. I’m creating a category called travel, because this will be mostly a travelogue, though Eastern Europe turned into a pilgrimage for me. I want to write about that, but I want to sort of sneak up on it. My beloved and I took a Grand Circle tour with a front-end extension in Berlin, but spiritually I think my tour began (and will always begin) in Poland. The thumbnails are live. I just don’t like the look of them with blue borders.

Here’s a picture of St. Mary’s Church in Krakow where a bugler blows the hours, standing in the tower to your right. Legend has it that the two church towers were built by two brothers; hence the difference between them. If you stand below at the right time and wave, the bugler will wave back, and he always stops halfway through the tune to honor a legend about a medieval bugler shot in the throat during a Tatar invasion.

Krakow is a lovely city. We didn’t begin to see it in the few days we were there, but loved it. I bought Kathleen a beautiful set of Amber beads, and we spend a lovely evening on the old town square eating pierogies and drinking beer, watching people, etc. We sat across from the church, on the other side of the old cloth hall, which is now filled with galleries of shops catering to tourists, and watched horse-drawn carriages queue up to solicit custom. Most of the horses seemed strong and well cared for. Some of them pranced like English carriage horses.

On the right is a view of the entrance to Oskar
Schindler’s factory. We went there one evening on our way to Kazimierz. On the left is an interior shot of the main building. The place is being turned into an arts center, though there was nothing in the galleries up these stairs at the time we were there. As nearly as I can tell, Polish emalia means enamel, or glaze, auf Englisch. Here’s an interesting link with the expression Emalienwaren in German. And there’s the very staircase I photographed in an older incarnation. If you read down the page you’ll find a mention of the conversion to an arts center that I noted. I think we were in between exhibits in the upstairs galleries. But I also think there’s still lots of work to be done before the place has a full new life. You’ll also see a plaque with the famous inscription, Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire. I photographed it, but at a bad angle because I had to elbow my way past a crowd of my fellow tourists to get an unobstructed view. Finally, we saw this remarkable memorial the same evening we visited the Schindler factory–just drove by on the bus, and I wasn’t able to get back for pictures.

more . . .