Hej!!
So I am finally back in Denmark after spending most of the week in Warsaw, Poland. One of the amazing parts of DIS is the opportunity to take two full weeks to travel during the semester. One of the weeks is dedicated to your core course, the other is for your own personal travel, wherever your heart desires. This past week was my study week, and with my core course, we traveled to the heart of Poland, to a city rich with history and cheap food: the city of Warsaw.
When we got there, it was what you would expect Poland to look like: gray. Literally, everything was gray. The sky, the buildings, the people. Just kidding about the last one, but you get the point. I was not really surprised though. A city that laid in ruins only 70 years ago, to being taken over by Soviet Russia, and only released from communism two decades ago deserves to be sad looking. Later in the week, only when the rain subsided and the clouds gave way, did we see truly how beautiful Poland can be.
While in Poland, we got to visit some schools, organizations, and historical locations. We saw how a private school classroom runs, and we got to speak with both middle and high schoolers in a public school. You can bet that they asked about the election and if we keep people off our properties with guns. We also got to hear representatives from the Campaign Against Homophobia and a multicultural center in the city, learning about the struggles of the LGBT and immigrant community and what the Poles are doing to combat these struggles and improve the lives of the groups. I also got to see and play in the Copernicus Science Center (which is the Philly Please Touch Museum of Poland). One night, we went to a Chopin concert, played in a recreated parlor from Chopin’s time. The pianist was absolutely amazing, and the wine and homemade cakes were super delicious.
Out of all of our visitations, my favorite were the historical visits, which is surprising because I cannot stand history. The city was so rich with history, mainly from World War II. We went on a “communism tour”, and in the picture with the tall building (the Palace of Culture and Science, a gift that represents communism in the city), you can see the actual communist vans that we drove around Warsaw in. Polish drivers are terrifying; they stop for nothing, including pedestrians walking on a crosswalk. We also got to visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which is basically a depressing museum filled with pictures and stories of the Poles’ attempt to rise against the Germans after their invasion in 1944. The city of Warsaw went from 1,300,000 inhabitants to 1,000 standing among the rubble after the revolt. The population was wiped out, and the Jews were either transported to concentration camps or killed. Not only did they take over the city, but they also built the Jewish Ghetto, the largest one in all of Europe. The brick wall in the picture above is one of the original walls that stood between the Jewish people of Poland and the rest of the world. Some of the bricks are actually in the Holocaust Museum in DC for remembrance and honor for the people that suffered in those walls. It was crazy to actually walk around the city and see where the wall used to stand (they marked the wall line on the ground throughout Warsaw). It was a touching visit, and it makes me realize the insanity of some people and how lucky I am to have not lived in an era or area like Poland in the 1940s.
The best part of Poland: the food. Not only was it delicious, but it was dirt cheap. I ate cake, baked potato, burger, pasta, fish, and a bunch of other stuff. The best thing I ate: PIEROGIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Literally, Poland is beautiful just because they make pierogies. For those of you not living in a Dutch or Polish household, or for anyone living under a rock, pierogies are a dumpling style food, basically pasta dough stuffed with whatever you want. One of the most common is Russian style, stuffed with potatoes, cheese, and onions. Not only did we eat a bunch of pierogies, we also got to make our own! The last day of the trip, we went to a restaurant where we got a lesson on pierogie making from a little, old, Danish woman. The literal goal of making them is to put as much filling into each dumpling as possible. We spent maybe 10 minutes making pierogies as a class, then the kitchen prepared them for us, and we got to eat all of them for lunch. They may have been the best pierogies I’ve ever had, and I will definitely be making them at home for a very long time. The picture is of the ones we made.
I hope you guys enjoyed learning a little about Poland, because I sure did. But, at the end of the week, I was actually ready to come back to Denmark. It is my home away from home, and I missed it in the week I was gone. It felt good to return to my country, my host family, and my bed.
Again, I encourage you to check out my Facebook or other social media, because I post way more pictures on there. If not, that’s cool too! Have a great week!
Bethany
