First Days in Poland.

I already have been in Poland for 3 days - can't believe it! Our Friday travels went well and nearly each moment has been jam-packed with school activities and tours. It's been great.

The school has done this trip for YEARS and so they have it pretty much down pat. We flew into Czestochowa (chez-toh-HO-va) and went straight to to a giant cathedral there. It was huge, and Poland is such a Catholic country that it’s always pretty crowded with people praying or attending a mass. 

Once we finished the cathedral we went straight to dinner and then watched “Schindler’s List” until midnight. We were up again at 6:20 to eat breakfast and get on the road to Krakòw (krAH-kohv). We were actually going specifically to a smaller town first, which is called Oświęcim (Ohs-vEE-cheem). In German, this translates to Auschwitz. The town and the concentration camp we all know are, however, differentiated strictly. One would never call the town "Auschwitz" or the camp "Oświęcim." 

Nearly each moment of each day is spent doing something productive. Even on the bus ride to the concentration camps yesterday morning, they put in a documentary for us to watch to prepare ourselves. They really wanted us all to get in the “mood,” or mode of understanding what we were experiencing. I think that coming from a community like Shaker, I was much more aware, concerned, curious, and prepared than others from my class. We saw both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). Everyone agreed that Auschwitz I was a little more formal and structured than we'd expected; it had brick buildings and was very small. Birkenau was a lot more what we'd seen in photographs and film - wooden barracks, extremely primitive, with holes in the roofing so that snow would fall in. For us, the weather was sunny and mild - they said this is only the second time in over a decade of this trip that it hasn't rained or snowed at Birkenau!

I’m choosing not to really post pictures or notes from Auschwitz for a variety of reasons. I took a pretty thorough amount of “good” photos, especially at Birkenau, but I don’t find it right to post them. I share photos - especially on the blog, which I hope is a happy, uplifting place for those who read it - of experiences that I think are “cool," or funny, or encouraging. Obviously, Auschwitz is none of those things and I don’t want to give the illusion that it is. Although it’s extremely interesting, and very important to learn about, I can not give an appropriate explanation the justice it deserves on that subject here on the blog. I'm not an authority on the subject. If you’d like to see pictures of Auschwitz, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will send you the photos I took and explain the copious notes I made during the visit as well. It’s definitely valuable to learn about and to see, I just don’t think my blog is an appropriate setting for that. For the same reasons, I chose also not to add the photographs to my Facebook album for this trip. So, like I said, if you are interested, I would love to share with you, just in a more direct medium :)

I will share only a photo of a piece of the memorial that lies at Auschwitz Birkenau. 

After our tour in Oświęcim ended, we headed to the hotel in Krakòw and checked in. After a brief down period, we headed off to explore before getting dinner on our own. Alex and I headed out with our friend, N, who went to Amsterdam and Interlaken with us. Our friend wanted pierogis, and I figured I'd get fruit and veggies at a mini mart because I avoid eating dough. I didn't want to hinder his experience by going somewhere else. Alex was indifferent - didn't care about pierogis or not.

Before the restaurant, we headed to the river where we saw several random things... River restaurant-boats, a boat with a swimming pool on top, 2 horses along the bike path, a giant floating balloon that was anchored to the ground with a giant cord, and a mini carnival with lots of sketchy-looking rides. 

Alex and our friend convinced/forced me to go on "Top Spin," which was a row of seats that turned us upside down. I don't really think my life was necessarily improved by that experience... but it wasn't worsened either!

We finally headed to the pierogi place, which had a van Gogh theme inside. All the walls were bright yellow, with replicas of his work hanging on the walls. The ceiling was Starry Night! I really want to decorate a room like that now...

There were SO MANY pierogi options! We ended up each getting a plate and sharing. I got "Hell's pierogis," which were like a burrito (red beans and corn), Alex got spinach and chicken, and our friend got apple and a kind with coconut and caramel. All were delicious. I actually only had two, and then hollowed a few more out so I wouldn't eat the doughy outside and upset my stomach. Just the insides alone were delicious!

This morning we started by going to our hotel's extremely fancy breakfast, which had just about every breakfast food you could imagine. Then we headed off to see Gestapo prison cells, and then went to the Jewish Quarter, which has been around since the Middle Ages. "Schindler's List" was filmed here, and there were some familiar settings that we just saw in the film. 

These steps were used in the film as part of the Jewish ghetto. In the scene in the film, a woman (who we follow throughout the movie) runs down these steps and hides beneath them.

Alex commented that the buildings in this area look like they just went through a war.

We went into the only operating synagogue in the city.

View from the women's section of the synagogue.

Lamborghini? 

We're headed here on Tuesday for second night Seder! Just me and Alex and two friends.

We also spotted "Hamsa" where we're headed for dinner tonight with our class. "Hummus and Happiness" sounds like a great thing...

Sorry for the rather rushed post...We are headed off to meet a Holocaust survivor and then dinner! Wanted to share some of our experience today, but will include more details tomorrow!

New mini-recipes and a VIDEO.

Today while running I brought my iPhone to take pictures of the many, MANY snails I see along the path. They might seem icky to you but I think they are funny. I guess the weather has been too cold over night (in the 30s) and the snails all went back into hibernating-mode because I did not see any! Instead this video happened!

Sometimes I get lonely/bored on my runs and I guess this random video is a tribute to that fact ;) I guess I do weird things to keep it entertaining for me!

I also snapped some pics by my favorite rock wall that I run past. Some houses are built into this wall and even though it's just a bunch of rock I just think the color is really beautiful in the sunlight. Another reason I've been wanting to bring my camera! I used my handy-dandy flip band to carry it :)

I guess it's becoming a theme very few weeks to post pictures of what foods I'm eating lately...recently I've been very into microwaved scrambled eggs and overnight oats. Simplicity.

If you are a college student (or just don't want to use the stove) and microwaved eggs is something that interests you, here's what you do: crack an egg into a mug (or two eggs!) and mix in whatever you want. I like mine with frozen vegetables but you can use cheese, milk, etc and get creative! Then pop in the microwave for 30-45 seconds, remove, and stir. Put it back in for another ~45 seconds and then take it out and season it with salt and pepper if you like! It takes a while to cool so be careful.

The other night I had my microwaved egg wrapped in a half-tortilla and with a very brightly colored salad! New favorite meal. 

Here are my overnight oats. I've seen recipes for this all over the Internet but haven't explored it yet. Finally, I decided to take advantage of the big bag of muesli I have in my cupboard and try it out! (For those of you who don't know - I didn't know either until I got here - muesli is just oatmeal but it has stuff mixed in already, usually nuts and raisins). 

I made my overnight oats with about ¾ cup muesli, stirred in ¾ cup of my chocolate soy milk, and added a few extra raisins and half of a sliced banana. Popped in the fridge overnight and took out in the morning! It was perfect! You can, of course, do this with regular oatmeal and you can always stick it in the microwave to take some of the cold edge off. Cold oats can take some getting used to.

I ran out of plain soy milk so I "had" to use chocolate soy milk in my teeny cup of coffee this week. I recommend this.

While here in Europe, I think about rowing all of the time and miss it a lot. Like I say over and over again, this is the longest I've gone in almost 6 years without rowing and it makes me suffer withdrawal symptoms to be away from the water for so long. So, I read lots of rowing news and articles. Recently, a friend shared an article about a 92-year old rower! He didn't even start until his 60s and he's in excellent shape.

Read about why we should all row HERE! 

Marvelous Marseille!

Just got back from another wonderful weekend in France! This time we ventured to my first non-Parisien city - Marseille. I'm thrilled that we did this; I really wanted a taste of France separate from the one that the #1 tourist city in the world gave me. Although Paris is AMAZING I wanted a more authentic experience as well. 

When I began planning our activities for this trip, I immediately became daunted by what I saw online about Marseille. Even Rick Steves himself said that Marseille "challenges you to find it's charm" and I read somewhere else online that the central train station in Marseille is "the scariest place on this earth." Intimidated, I nervously planned our activities for the weekend. I decided we should avoid being out after dark and made little day activities for us and thought we could do a day trip to Provence as well, especially if Marseille was a little too rough around the edges for us. I soon saw that I had nothing to be nervous about! Let's start at the beginning of our journey...

Alex scheduled a night train for us. This was incredibly time efficient because now that we don't have Friday classes, we could take the train on Thursday and wake up in Marseille on Friday morning. The way the return tickets worked out, this gave us all of Friday, all of Saturday, and an early trip back to Luxembourg on Sunday with one change, which would bring us to arrive at about 2PM. I wasn't too keen on the idea of night trains...I'd heard less-than-fond reviews of them from other students who had used them in previous semesters, and I was concerned about safety and security of our belongings. Alex, on the other hand, had great memories of having gone on a night train with his family and loves the concept. 

Now, I'm thrilled that I got this experience! I'm not sure night trains are my favorite, but I'm so glad we got to do one of these while we're here this semester. It was cool.

We boarded at 7:30PM and dumped our stuff in our compartment. We were the only ones, and our compartment-mates were evidently going to join us later. The compartments are very cramped, so people typically stand in the narrow passageway and watch the view until they are ready for bed. Alex demonstrates below: 

After dark, we retreated to our room. There's no standing space in there, so we just crawled up to bed! I cracked out a new book that my host-mom recommended. It's about an ex-CIA woman named Kate whose family moves to Luxembourg. The author lived here for awhile and makes all sorts of references to familiar things - the Gare Centrale, the ubiquitous H&Ms in Europe, shopping at Cactus, train stops in Thionville, etc. I highly recommend this book! I finished it on the train back this morning, it was great.

At Metz, we picked up our suite-mates. As it turned out, they were probably the best roommates we could have! It was 2 boys and a girl together, about our age and American, and they were students studying abroad in Metz. They all went to Georgia Tech (shoutout to my Georgia readers :) and were friendly and not weird at all! It was definitely a pleasant and relieving surprise and Alex and I knew we wouldn't have to sleep with our backpacks locked to our legs or something like that. Phew!

It wasn't the best sleep of my life but it was cool to wake up in Marseille that morning! At about 6:15 we arrived, and took a Metro a couple stops down to where our hostel was located (in the center of Marseille). It was dark and cold and rainy, and we couldn't see much yet, but we made our way to our hostel and left our backpacks in storage. After vegetating for few minutes, we finally made our way out into the drizzle to find some nourishment. We found a little coffee shop where I had an espresso and Alex had his classic! A Nutella banane crêpe. 

Our first official activity of the day was to take the ferry out to the islands to see the Chateau d'If. This Chateau had once been a lookout point of protection for the old port of Marseille, and then turned into a prison. It's exactly the same idea as Alcatraz in San Francisco (and even looks pretty much the same from afar). The tourist boat takes you out, leaves you there, and lets you explore and then retrieves you again after about an hour. The boat cost us €10,10 but we got into the Chateau part for free (again because of our citizenship - sweet!). 

On the way over we saw ROWERS! I was wondering how they were managing out in the rough waves and when we got closer I saw that they have special boats with really wide gunwales. They almost look more like kayaks. I thought this was so cool! Yet another occasion here in Europe when I've wanted to dive in and swim to the boats to join practice. 

Here's Chateau d'If! It's all limestone and is really a cool color (I dressed to match!).

I like this sailboat. Looks like a pirate ship!

There's a ferris wheel right outside of the metro station! Kind of random.

Even though it was still grey, we took a bus up to the beach to experience the light blue Mediterranean waters up close. It was the most beautiful water!

Also right at the beach was this giant (and apparently well-known) imitation of Michelangelo's David, which we are going to see in Florence. Note: palm trees! 

After beaching, we decided to make the long journey back by renting bikes. We'd just signed up for a week of bike rental in Luxembourg - a Euro each for a week. Other than that euro, it was free every 30 minutes. So you could go as far as you wanted as long as you plugged your bike in and got a new one every half hour! Since the bus fare had €1,50 this was actually much more economic (and fun)! We could even ride them Saturday, too (and we did, briefly). I was really happy to get to rent these bikes, because it felt like a full circle. We'd often learned about them in our high school French class and now got to actually participate in this cultural experience!

I'm not sure I ever got used to how heavy those bikes were though...maybe need to practice more on the ones here in Luxembourg!

We went into an Italian restaurant for dinner that first night...and got seated with a super cool view over the marina! We watched the sun set and the ferris wheel lit up when it got dark. I could see rowers launching and coming in throughout our entire meal! I watched over Alex's shoulder all evening!

We decided to start Saturday like we'd started Friday - at the café! We walked in and sit down and the owner just walked by us and said as he passed "Un café et une crêpe nutella banane?" One day there and we were already regulars! He brought it right over and even brought the glass of water as well. Made me smile :) 

Next stop was the street markets. Before coming to Europe, when I thought of France I always pictured getting fruits and vegetables from giant street Farmer's Markets. It just seemed so...French! I don't know how that image of France originally got into my mind but I'm thrilled that we ended up finding these markets to experience. They had everything from antiques to fish to clothing to books to pizzas...and of course lots of organic fruits and veggies. 

The weather was beautiful! It was in the low 70s and sunny ALL day. 

A lavender macaroon. It was delicious and a classic Marseille/Provence-themed treat!

So many strawberries at the fresh fruits/veggies market!

After the markets, we decided to eat sandwiches on the beach. We made our way up there past the marina, and ended up staying at the beach (after putting on lots of sunscreen!) for hours! We pretty much made a day of it.

To me, the sight of many masts is one of the prettiest sights in the world :)

On the way there, we found the entrance to the boathouse. I could see all the rowers washing their boats and really wanted to run down and join!

I think this is the bluest water I've ever seen. 

At the beach, people watched the sailboats, lay out tanning, and played volleyball (we watched a couple matches, the recreational volleyball players are really good here). Many people were swimming, especially kids. We saw 2 people with wetsuits but there were recreational swimmers with just a Speedo! We were surprised it wasn't freezing and eventually went down and stuck our toes in and it was COLD! These people are tough stuff for playing/swimming in that water! For now I'll stick to land (or boats :)

He likes playing in the sand :)

I'm having the same "is this real?" feeling as when I look at my pictures from Interlaken!

Our view from our restaurant on the second night. Amazing.

When I walked in the door this afternoon, I had the rare run-in with my host mom. We had a nice conversation and she agreed that Marseille is a good place to go to see "real" French people. She thinks it was good for me. I agree, and I don't think I would've had as good of an experience if I'd gone here after having gone to somewhere a little more classic South of France-y like Cannes or Nice or even Provence or Monaco (not France but very close!). I'm happy to announce that Marseille - as unique as it is - turned into one of my favorite trips so far. I loved how authentic and non-touristy it was and as much as I love Paris, I love this too.

This was my final trip to France for the semester and I am very nostalgic about that but also so proud of how it went. In mere months here, Alex and I have increased to a proficient level of fluency after 8 years of study. We both agree that now we're at the point where we can understand everything that's said (with few exceptions), and our only weakness sometimes lies in communicating back - just because we don't know all of the vocabulary or can't summon it quickly enough. (Our listening is particularly strong from hearing it everywhere; on the train, in the metro, on the streets, from our French professor, from my host mom, etc.) However, I think we both feel that we could get by in France at this point. People understand us perfectly well and we have normal human interactions and conversations in French. I think this is so great - and it just makes me want to do more to better my language abilities and not to lose the progress I've made. It makes me grateful not only that I stuck with it, but also that I had such an amazing French program to guide me through my early years in middle school when I began, and particularly in high school. 

Then my host mom offered me some tomato sauce! She said I could put it on my rice pasta or just eat it. I opted to save it for dinner and do the latter - it's so thick it's like a stew, with a giant yummy carrot right in the middle! Lucky me!

Well, I'm almost literally in a state of shock when I realize that it's time to start getting ready for Poland and to finalize our Italy plans this week. We head on our second and final study tour with our class on Friday, and will be going all together to see Cracow, Poland, with a featured visit to Auschwitz. I feel lucky to have a trip like this orchestrated by my professor and the assistant dead - this is something I am definitely interested in seeing but would be intimidated to plan on my own. I know that it'll be a difficult yet very informative and interesting trip and I do look forward to it!

That'll be next Friday-Wednesday and then we go off on our own and arrive in Rome on Wednesday evening where we'll do our own thing (a much "lighter" trip than Cracow!) - 2 days in Rome, 2 days Florence, and then back home! I can't believe that this spring trip is already nearly upon us!