Day 5

5th day: 21 October 2005

We woke up early in the morning and boiled some water in a small kettle, which I had brought in order to make tea. This was a daily routine for us. Afterwards, we would prepare another round to carry in our thermos.

Avi and I went to the hotel near the one where we stayed for a decent breakfast; mom decided to stay in the room to rest a bit longer.

We left for our journey shortly after. This time we toured Warsaw before leaving the city and then headed south. First off was the old city. It was still very early and not many people were outside. The area seemed ancient, but was actually reconstructed a few years after WWII.

On our way to the old city we passed Warsaw's Castle Square, which continues on down to the Royal Castle in Warsaw. It was the official residence of the Polish monarchs. We were visiting a day before their presidential elections. While standing there, we got to see changing of the guard ceremony outside the Royal Castle. The soldiers were rehearsing their steps in front of their officer out in front of the castle.

As we reached the old city, a few locals selling stamps approached us and tried to sell us rare stamps from the Polish era between WWI and WWII. They also had interesting stamps from the Nazi conquest. The stamps seemed real though the price they were asking was ridiculously cheap. That aroused our suspicion. One salesman asked 40 Zloti for a 2 page stamp album filled with these stamps. This was equal to 45 NIS, a worthy bargain. Mom bought stamps for her husband, Yechezkel, who is a known stamp collector. He was thrilled to receive them. I bought the stamps because of their historic value. I thought they were probably stolen or fake; otherwise they wouldn't have been so cheap.

Soon afterwards another local guy approached us trying to sell us stamps from the Communist period. After bringing him down to only 20 Zloti, Avi decided to buy a few. We continued to the Castle Square where I bought a few postcards and a book with interesting photography portraying Warsaw right after WWII had ended. It depicted Warsaw bombed and with many ruins, almost completely destroyed. The book also showed modern Warsaw, after it was reconstructed and restored. The work the Polish nation had done there was incredible.

We continued our journey and set off towards the Jewish Cemetery, named the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery. It was one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Tomash explained to us that officially there are 150,000 Jews buried in this cemetery, and unofficially 250,000, since there were also mass graves of victims from the Warsaw Ghetto (Kever Achim).

Many of these graves and crypts were overgrown, having been abandoned after the German invasion of Poland and subsequent Holocaust. Although the cemetery was closed down during World War II, it was reopened after the war and a small portion of it remains active, serving Warsaw's small remaining Jewish population. The cemetery, which has become a dense forest in the post-war period, was filled with monuments to Jewish communists, orthodox rabbis, and everyone in between. Some of the prominent Jewish citizens buried there were:

• Solomon Anski - author, playwright and researcher of Jewish folklore. He wrote "The Dybbuk;"
• Ludwik Zamenhof - doctor and inventor of Esperanto (a constructed language designed for international communication);
• Isaac Loeb Peretz - one of the most important Yiddish language writers of the 19th-20th centuries.

We passed those famous graves of Jewish notables and also passed the monument of Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician, and child pedagogue (known as "the Doctor"). We lit a memorial candle (ner neshama) for all 1.5 million kids that died during the Holocaust.

We finish our trip in Warsaw and head south towards Kraków, which is the second largest, and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Kraków is also situated on the Visla River.

On the way there we decided to drive through the town Góra Kalwaria (originally, its name was simply Góra, which means "Mountain"). It is situated about 25 km southeast of Warsaw. The town had significance for both Catholic Christians and Hasidic Jews.

In the early 19th century, the ban on Jewish settlement was lifted and Jews shortly became the predominant group in the town. Góra Kalwaria then became one of the major centers of Hasidic Judaism and home to the Ger dynasty. During the Holocaust, the Jewish population of the town was first concentrated in a small ghetto; in 1942 it was moved to the Warsaw Ghetto; and afterwards to the Treblinka extermination camp. There was a famous family of Jewish rabbis with the family name of Alter, founded by Yitzchak Meir Alter. As of today there are no Jews living in the town.

There was one Jew left, married to a non-Jewish woman who is in charge of the synagogue. We drove to his home, but unfortunately he wasn't there. We turned around and drove to the cemetery just to discover the gates were locked so we had to view it from the outside.

We continued to the synagogue and luckily found the man we were looking for, the last Jew, there on site. We entered. We could see the place was renovated and white-washed, but it did not have the appearance of a synagogue. There was nothing in the building but a long table which, as we understood, was used by the Hasidic Jews that came there to conduct their studies, or a festive meal. 

The nice old man took us up to the second floor of the synagogue, the floor that had not been renovated, to show us where they used to bake the Matzah bread for Passover. It is a cracker-like, unleavened bread made of white, plain flour and water. Matzah is the substitute for bread during the Jewish holiday of Passover, when eating chametz—bread and other leavened products—is not allowed. Eating matza on the night of the seder is considered a mitzvah (good deed). Mom developed an intense conversation with the old man in Yiddish and learned about his life and his past, asked about his family and children. We gave him a 10 USD tip and moved on as we needed to arrive in Kraków during the day and still had a long way to go.

As we continued driving, we noticed that it was already noon and began to notice our hunger. We stopped in one of the near towns to eat at McDonalds. Since Sarah keeps Kosher, she ate fish, Avi and I had chicken.

We arrive in Kraków closer to the evening and first checked-in to the Wielopole Hotel located in the city center. There wasn't much of a view from the hotel since it was next to apartments and houses in the area. Cute cats did come to greet us, however, near the bedroom window.

After setting our luggage in the room, we left the hotel for a walk in the city. Tomash took us to a vegetarian restaurant named 'Vega Bar' where we had dinner. The food was good. They served mushroom soup, vegetable soup, peppers filled with rice, and potato pancakes or "latke" (vegetable fritter), served with sauce. They also had fruit juices which were pretty tasty.

After dinner we continued to the main square of Kraków. Being a Friday, there were many tourists, most of them young. I discovered that there were plenty of cheap group packages to travel in European countries. There were many British tourists, French, Russian and others, as well as tourists who came by train to spend the weekend in this beautiful city. In Kraków, there were also archeological excavations and part of the city was closed off for their work. As we drifted by all the tourists, we window shopped and viewed our surroundings. There were quite a few performers on the streets playing music. We saw two Russians wonderfully playing the trumpet and a small organ. I decided to buy their CD, and have enjoyed their music since. Avi and I took a picture with them playing their instruments.

We returned to the hotel room, mom got ready to go to bed while Avi and I did our usual: went out for a night stroll. Tomash went to his hotel nearby. He knew the area well and recommended a night club he had heard of, but after we visited the place we saw it was noisy, with a young crowd and lots of cigarette smoke. Neither of us smokes and we prefer a quieter, more intimate option. We stepped out and searched for a cozy coffee shop. We came across a place on one of the narrow streets across from the main square called 'Siesta Café.' They had terrific Italian coffee and pleasant service. We ordered a few cakes. Avi ate some cheesecake while I had the Marrakech cake; a chocolate and cherry delight. Very tasty.

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