Pole Position
First an update on my sister, Andrea. Thanks again to all of you who have inquired. She did not need to have the surgery after all, which was a great relief and an answer to prayer. However, it turns out that her problems themselves originated from a stroke. Fortunately, she’s in good spirits and is progressing well. She still suffers from vertigo and double vision and is working on becoming ambulatory. With effort, she’s able to move around with the use of a cane. For those of you who know Andrea, the thought of her requirinig even a cane seems incomprehensible. She’s otherwise so fit and active you’d expect her to be on the cover of an aerobics DVD. Anyway, she should be out of the hospital later this week and will be in rehab for some months. She and her husband Paul very much appreciate the outpouring of concern and support and the continued prayers for her complete recovery.
Meanwhile, I changed “Pole positions” on Friday, October 12, leaving Warsaw and arriving in Krakow. My hostel reservation was at a place called “Bling Bling,” which made me wish I’d packed my thick gold chains and other gangsta attire. (Like Kip.) Probably unrelated to that foux pas, they mistakenly filled my spot and instead arranged for me to stay at a sister–er, sista–hostel and paid for my taxi ride over there.
The new hostel was near the Jewish district, and I spent the first night strolling through that area, encountering more pubs and discos than anything recognizingly Jewish. (For example, the discos did NOT segregate the women from the men.) It was only when I returned in the daylight a couple days later that I realized I had walked by significant Jewish monuments, including the oldest synagogue in Europe and a memorial to the many Jews in Krakow killed by the Nazis.
While in Krakow I reconnected with Sarah (my self-described “stalker”). On Sunday we took a bus to the Auschwitz concentration camps. Words cannot adequately describe the experience and I dare not even make an attempt. I will just say that there were three such camps in Auschwitz, the third of which was utterly destroyed. The first houses exhibits and remnants of the horror. But the second, Auschwitz-Birkenau, is shocking due to its sheer immensity. Many groups of Israeli teenagers were taking a pilgrimage to these sites. As they moved through the camps wearing prayer shawls and clothes proudly displaying the Star of David, they sang in Hebrew and waved Israeli flags. “We are still here,” they proclaimed in effect, a testimony to the resilience of the Jewish people and the faithfulness of God to never leave nor forsake His Chosen People.
Krakow’s beauty is striking. In the center is Europe’s largest public square. An arcade that once housed cloth vendors stands in the middle. On one corner St. Mary’s Basilica (Bazylika Mariacka) towers gothically 81 meters above the square. It was built from the end of the 13th century to the beginning of the 15th century–obviously by a unionized construction crew. It’s easy to become blase about churches in Europe, there are so many. But the interior of this cathedral is so bright and colorful and so abundantly adorned in gold that it cannot be easily forgotten. Inside is a huge medieval sculpture (a monument to Mary), the largest of its kind in Europe.
Not far from the square looms the castle on a hill, Wawel Hill. A deep cave hewned in rock on the castle premises, quite close to the banks of the River Vistula, is considered Krakow’s oldest residence because people inhabited it from the Stone Age through the 16th century. But according to legend, the cave once had a unique and fearsome resident, a fire-breathing dragon. (The cave is called, Smocza Jama, or Dragon’s Cave.)
Many, many years ago, the old folks warned the youths to stay away from the cave because of the dangerous beast. But some brazen boys scoffed at the advice and tested fate by creeping into the cave with torches. Once inside, they heard the sound of heavy breathing and saw through the flickering light a mass of scales. They fled, but the dragon, now awake, turned on them and exhaled in their direction, scorching their heels and backs. The boys survived and the townspeople marveled at the boys’ story and the sight of their burns. (Both direct and circumstantial evidence.) Apparently quite spiteful, the dragon then began to visit the village and eat sheep and carry off young virgins. (Any dragon will tell you that virgins taste like sheep. Incidentally, one of the virgins was roughly 40 years old and bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Carell. Or so the legend goes.) It took the bravery of a man named Krak (for whom Krakow is named) to devise a plan to rid the villagers of the dragon. There is some disagreement as to whether he was a shoemaker or a shoemaker’s apprentice, and for this one reason alone, many doubt the veracity of the tale. Anyway, Krac concocted a mixture of thick, yellow paste from sulfur and smeared the gunk on some sheep and placed them outside the cave’s entrance. The gluttonous dragon saw or maybe heard the bleatin’ sheep, roared and devoured them. (Mind you, no virgins were harmed or even enlisted in this ploy.) The paste made the beast very thirsty, so he rushed to the Vistula River and began to drink. He drank and drank and could not stop. He began to swell and eventually exploded. Krak’s plan worked! There was great rejoicing in the town. The townspeople built the castle on Wawel Hill and made Krak their king. And what, you might be wondering, is the moral of the story? It’s quite simple and quite relevant for young people even today:
Krak kills.
One final detail related to dragons. I spent Saturday night in a pub watching England defeat France in rugby. I’d never watched an entire game, but the mostly British crowd was so riled up–and had so effectively wedged me in at the bar–that I stayed until the end and really got into it. Stag parties comprised much of the crowd, including a group dressed in white sailor uniforms. One group from Wales defiantly cheered for the French. Mindful that the symbol of Wales is a dragon, the majority broke into the chant, “Take your @#$% dragon and shove it up your arse!” Four lads from Liverpool befriended me in their drunken stupors. One of them (Ringo?) had trouble standing. At one point he left for the WC and we never saw him again. Obviously, he needed a little help from his friends.Tags: Auschwitz, Krakow, Poland, Travel, Warsaw
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Your dragon story was awesome. (Even better than Alvie the Racist Dragon. Krak gives a tour de force performance! A must read!)
That said, I can’t believe anyone using the term “faux pas” would actually misspell it. Idiotte.