Category Archives: road trip

Day One: On the train

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I’m sure you can imagine where my head was post-museum.

As we ride along, I can’t help but think of the cattle cars and box cars that transported Jews along these same tracks away from the Warsaw Ghetto, various towns and Schtetls, to death camps such as Sobibor and Belzec.

The city gives way to forested landscape quickly with little towns interspersed. Birch forests line the railway. The juxtaposition of the past images with such beautiful landscape is heavy on my mind.

Elie Wiesel in his book “Night” wrote, “I’m going to teach you the difference between day and night.  Always look at a window, and failing that look into the eyes of a man.  If you see a face, any face, then you can be sure that night succeeded day.  For believe me, night has a face.”

It is daytime and the sun is bright. I look out the window and see only forest.

Day One: To the train

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We left the museum to get water, some food for the 2.5hr train ride to Lublin, check out the hotel and get to the train station.

We stopped in a little market and I got yelled at (in Polish) for taking this photo of the bread display.

I had no idea what he was saying, but I could tell he was pretty upset at me. I just said, “English” and he replied, “NO PICTURES!” I gave a somewhat dismissive wave and apologized. I’m not sure why being yelled at in a language I don’t understand amused me, but it did. Quite a bit.

We ended up buying four rolls for the train ride. He wasn’t so grumpy at us when we checked out.

After gathering our things from the hotel, we made our way to the train station. We had some confusion as to which platform we needed to go to, but eventually figured it out. No thank to two ticketing agents or the random woman I asked.

Mom descends to the platform.

We are at the train station. The noise and smells  are the same as any city station. This one is not as dark as Chicago downtown Metra main station. It is more open and better lit. Chicago’s downtown Metra is one of the Nine Stages of Hell.

I understand nothing of the overhead announcer. However, in Chicago I could rarely understand the loudspeaker either. I can’t help but compare to what I know and draw similarities and differences.

The colors in this station are interesting.

Across the way, there is some mural on the far wall. I wish I knew what it says.

We are on the train. Second class here is finer than any Amtrak general admission ride I’ve taken and darn close to its first class. We have cubby seating, theoretically shared with a potential six other strangers.

We got our own room.

We had a lunch of delicious breads and pears.

Yes, I’ve been taking an inordinate amount of photos of bread. (it’s damn good here!)

A photo I took me myself

and mom reflected in our train-room mirror

. . .

5am in Warsaw

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Our little hotel room has a porch. We are on the eighth floor and could see out wonderfully if it weren’t for a privacy scrim that is dropped down on the outside of the porch. I can see out somewhat, and people on the street can not see me. Unfortunately, it makes it so I can’t take photos of my view.

It’s 5am here. Because of my delay yesterday, I won’t get to visit Warsaw. Today we leave for Lublin and hope to get connected with a tour guide from one of my mom’s University connections. He would drive, which would enable us to visit all the places we want (Lublin, Opole Lubelskie, Sobibor and Belzec death camps)

My grandmother told me that it is the Jewish holiday of Sukkot this week. She said if I see little huts around, that is what is going on. My mom and I talked about this over dinner last night. She reminded me that there are very few Jews here anymore. For some reason I had it in my head that after the war, Jews had returned, but no. The extermination made an emptiness that never was refilled.

My great-grandparents are from those two towns (Opole Lubelski and Lublin). Hopefully, we will find some of their history, if not, it will be good to step foot in their home where they walked.

I really hope I don’t start whistling from “Fiddler on the Roof”