In which we go to Krakow and shout "USA" in a crowd of silent Jews.

When I found out I was going to Europe this summer, I decided I had to at least see Poland. I’ve always sort of romanced my vague Polish Jew ancestry (mom’s dad’s mom’s family lived there until the war when they moved to England) and I especially liked the idea of visiting the country with my mom.

We took the night train over from Prague (Aside: don’t take a night train anywhere if you actually want to sleep. I don’t care how cute your little compartment room is, or how many complimentary foil-topped water cups they give you—you will spend the entire night wondering what kind of livestock animal you just hit, what piece of the train was just ripped off by an alien onslaught, or how many seconds you have left to live before the murderous German men outside find you.)

Glamorous accommodations.

We arrived early in the morning, and after working out a snafu with our AMAZING hotel (Hotel Stary in Krakow, check it out; it has a DUNGEON POOL), I used a prehistoric navigation mechanism to lead us in a roundabout route to the bus station. (I think the English translation for it is “map.”)

Dungeon Pool. Ooooh.... Ahhhh....

We spent the rest of the day walking around Auschwitz. I’m glad we did it, but the experience was heavy and numbing and strange. I don’t know if anyone can come close to grappling with the atrocities that occurred there, especially in one afternoon. Walking through the barracks, the starvation cubicles, a gas chamber, and past the shooting wall felt a little like touring the set of a horror movie. Most disturbing to me was the room full of human hair the Nazis had sheered from the head’s of Jewish women to make carpets. Two tons of hair, a sea of it, on the other side of a pane of glass.

Pile of shoes taken from Auschwitz prisoners.

Clearly the first half of our Krakow trip was a sobering experience. But from there we decided to embrace the more positive aspects of the cities history and culture. We found ourselves drawn to the overall vibe of Krakow, but it was hard to put our finger on exactly what it was. It felt smaller than Prague, maybe more village like. Warmer even.

We crashed a Polish wedding. That also added to our love of the city.

A mischievous walking tour guide said something that struck me: “In Krakow, we are not soldiers, we are artists.” Perhaps this is the vibe I was drawn to. Historically, the people of this place gravitated more heavily to the arts than to war. Sculptures poke fun at bloodlust, and poets are buried next to kings in the cathedral catacombs.

My goat friend in the Market Square. (I make them wherever I go, clearly)

A Jewish heritage festival happened to be going on while we were there, so the Jewish Quarter was alive with people and sephardic rock. (It’s OK if you don’t know what that is; I didn’t either).

 Here's a youtube video about Deleon, our new favorite band!

The buildings and markets in Old Town were beautiful and bustling, but the Jewish Quarter ended up being my favorite section of Krakow. I enjoyed browsing the tiny bookstores and jewelry shoppes with tired facades. We sat at an outdoor café and ate delicious fish soup while bearded men passed by in throngs. (If you read that as "thongs," good for you).

My new favorite necklace: a dragonfly made of watch parts from the Jewish Quarter.

The second night, we came back to the Quarter for the big concert. There, we picked up on some interesting culture differences. When you think of an outdoor concert in America, what comes to mind? Beer. Dancing. Jumping. The guy smoking a rainbow bong to your left.

Mysteriously well-behaved crowd.

Not in the Krakow Jewish Quarter. Liesa and I found ourselves hoisting our vodka sodas and spinning around in a massive crowd of stationary, empty-handed Jewish music “fans.” Should this have felt awkward? Of course. Did we embrace it and dance all the more enthusiastically? Did Liesa, when a lead singer asked if anyone was from Brooklyn, pump her fist in the air and yell “U-S-A!!!” from the middle of a silent crowd? Naturally.

We only had two days in Krakow, but we left with a special appreciation for the place (and it’s soup; seriously, we ate such good soup there). I would definitely go back, just maybe not on a night train.

In which I tame a herd of goats and pick mushrooms

I didn’t wake up Tuesday morning thinking I would chase baby goats up a hillside that day, but hey. Things happen.

On our drive out to the Czech countryside, we stopped to see some anonymous ruins. Big crumbly stone walls, grassy slopes with boulders, blah blah blah. But after we’d done a little climbing around and ducked into a hobbit home to order some Turkish coffees, we saw something magical—a little baby goat! He emerged from the top of the ruins and started making his way down, slipping on rock ledges and nibbling on violets. I was so charmed I threw my Turkish coffee sludge into a tree and started stumbling toward the thing, singing that obnoxious goat herd yodel from The Sound of Music. (Goats love that song.)

Love me, Horace!!!

I never managed to get close enough to actually touch Horace the baby goat, but I did get close enough to bask in his unbearable cuteness. And guess what? News of my presence traveled fast, and the animals just kept coming! A family of sheep and a big white billy goat also appeared over the crest of the hill and came bahh-ing towards us.

Then I got married to this guy!

Just kidding.

The Czech countryside was like nothing I’d ever seen. The Ledvinas (family friends) have a house near the German border, right next to a national forest. We hiked across terrain so loamy it felt like walking across mounds of play dough covered in moss. The silvery white of the birch trees with the electric green of the tall grass made for an enchanted trek at dusk. We capped off our first evening there by finding a WWII bunker in the woods. #481 to be exact—the red numbers were still legible on the wall. I climbed inside with Marik, one of the little Ledvina boys, and he pointed out the holes where soldiers could fire their rifles and the chimney where they could let out the smoke from cooking.

Thistles

Mushroomin'

The next morning we grabbed our baskets and went mushroom hunting. There weren’t a lot to be found, but we did gather a few hefty handfuls of tiny orange ones that we knew were edible. We took them back to the country house and scrambled them in a pan of eggs before all the girls piled in the car for Cesky Krumlov.

 

Leaping in Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov is an old world castle village where gingerbread makers tantalize you with animal cookies and women in gowns play harps by the fountain. We ate trout and potato cakes by the river, popped in and out of bookstores and bon bon shops, and enjoyed a stormy evening sipping red wine in our apartment. *Adventures also ensued that shall not be relayed here. What happens in the CK, stays in the CK.

I joined this minstrel band. Check out our website for latest tour deets.

I don’t know how all of you are celebrating the Fourth of July today, but Mumzy and I are hopping on a night train to Krakow, Poland. Prepare for us to return with an obnoxious appreciation of our Jewish roots.

In which I take really crappy pictures of Prague

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but here in Prague I find most of my photographs fall miserably short of capturing the moment in front of me. And so, in lieu of a normal blog post, I offer you a few word pictures of my first days.

1: The Flea Market.

A girl flips through a stack of old postcards and portraits. A rainbow of size D bras, hanging from a tent, swings in the wind behind her, and black dust swirls around the blue tarps. A box of dried fishes with flies buzzing in empty eye sockets glitters like silver in the sun. A seven foot man in army fatigues crosses his arms in front of a naked baby doll; a honey-brown teacup puppy shivers.

2: Vysehrad.

A gated cemetery of tombs with more individual personality, even, than the composers, writers, sculptors, and scientists now etched in gold leaf across their surfaces, blanketed with ivy, or red glass candles, or thin white women on their tiptoes. A boy looks up from his wheelchair to the sound of bells shimmering down from the top of a Gothic cathedral.

3: Casemates.

A musty stone tunnel with a mud floor hidden inside the battlements. A woman in long black wool leads a line of shadows, breath frozen like a spiderweb in front of each face, as they plod to the cavernous end.

4: The River.

A barge floating on brown water, surrounded by swans—one with a wing wrenched completely away, just four yellowed sticks of bone sticking out from its side. A foaming glass of blueberry beer casts amber light on a pale hand, and an owl-faced man laughs wildly.

5: Kampo.

Crates of dried melon and hazelnuts. A turning water wheel. White fatigues, white boots, white guns—hanging silent on the café’s four white walls.

6: Hike.

Steep uphill climb through an orchard of plum trees, green fruit dripping from the low limbs. An imitation Eiffel Tower, straddling a café, spikes into a blue, cloud-dappled sky at the top.

7: The Castle.

Hundreds of soot-stained gargoyles, like howler monkeys frozen in alarm, extend their necks from ornate ledges. Drip sandcastle spires reach out of sight into the royal blue of a dusk sky. The handful of humans at its base look up: dots at the bottom of a masterfully carved mantle figurine.

8: Charles Bridge.
A girl with long blonde hair rubs a section of the statue raw: eyes closed, praying she won’t die of drowning. City lights, in reds and yellows, scintillate on the river’s surface. A girl pushes a boy’s hair out of his eyes.

And OK, here are some real pictures for you too.

Iridescent cathedral door.

My first panorama! Don't even know what bridge this is.

Breakfast in Beth's adorable apartment with a view of the park.

Czech play money.

In which the Pope blesses my bar of hotel soap

Earlier this week, Liz’s deacon father pulled his Catholic strings and got her four tickets to see the Pope in Rome. She asked if I was interested, and I said something sophisticated like “Ooh ooh—pick me, pick MEEE!”

I may have zero connections to the Catholic Church (wait, my freshman year roommate was Catholic—does that count?) but I got super worked up about this Pope date.  What was I going to wear? What language should I speak to him in? (My Spanish is better than my Italian, but there would be less chance of me accidentally calling him “The Potato” if I spoke English.) What items should I bring to have blessed? Does a marble count as a sacred relic? What about a bar of soap you took from a hotel?

Fast forward to St. Peter’s Basilica, after we finally found Father Jim (Liz’s contact aka man with the plan):

tickets

We had our golden tickets and could finally enter the holy Willa Wonka factory! Except for one small problem: all of the security people kept shooing us away from the VIP area and back out into the giant sea of humanity that was wearing neon caps and waving Pope flags. After trying about six times, we were forced to accept our fate among them.

We tried to push as close as we could to one of the path barricades; we may be super far away from the stage, but he would make rounds in his Jeep and we would see him then.

People pressed against me on all sides, trying to force themselves ahead. “My daughter is up there,” one woman lied as she attempted to squeeze through a gap the size of a rabbit eyelash. The two Italian women in front of me actually started fighting, pushing each others’ shoulders as violently as they could in the limited space. The sun beat down relentlessly on our faces and seared into my eyes. I shedded the cardigan I had worn to be respectful; the Catholic aversion to shoulders is ridiculous anyway. The prong of an umbrella scratched the side of my face.

Sea of people in front of me

Only one more hour to go.

I squatted down to the level of cobblestone and bruised feet so I could breathe.  Father Jim continued on an endless rant about his life and research. After what seemed like forever, I heard a man shout “Eccolo! Eccolo!” (There he is!) and stood up, but I couldn’t see anything but chaos. The sea of people held their ipads, iphones, disposable kodaks, and snap-happys as high as they could over their heads. A man crowd-surfed his infant daughter up to the front to get kissed, but she didn’t make it in time. Pope Francis, when I saw him, was nothing but a glimpse of white cap on the other side of a stampeding zoo. When he passed, the woman directly behind me took to shouting “FRANCESCO!” as loud as she possibly could, as if he might hear her, turn his Pope-mobile around, and then venture into the crowd to find her. Then she lunged herself after him, sending me sprawling into the arms of short, dark-skinned priest. It was there, in frontal grind with that priest, that something broke in me. My eyes started to fill with tears, and I left the crowd to sit on the steps and listen to the Pope’s address from there.

 

Man trying to pass his baby up to the front

Father Jim took this for me because I was too short

Pope Francis spoke in Italian, but I found I could understand a good bit of what he was saying. It was particularly touching when he looked up from his notes and repeated “Tutti siamo eguale” (We are all equal). Simple, but nice to hear from the lips of a man whose mere presence inspires mass hysteria. He blessed us, our families, and all our sacred relics (yes, I have decided that marbles and hotel soaps do, in fact, count) and then disappeared.

 

The whole gane featuring silent brother and Father Jim

Before we left, Father Jim turned Steph’s plastic water bottle into holy water and sprinkled us with it. The rest of the day progressed in a comedy of errors that involved breaking fancy bottles of wine while running to catch our train, getting on the wrong train, and not realizing we were on aforementioned wrong train until its final stop.

So that was the Catholic misadventure. Now it’s time to talk about my more euphoric brush with Catholicism.

I mentioned a while back that I met a sister and she invited me to come jump on the convent trampoline whenever I wanted. Well, in typical Gabby form, I chickened out of going until our very last night in Tuscania, when I invited Liz and Dan to accompany me.

 

Sister Habib running back to class

We walked into the convent, and a young sister in blue (Habib from Egypt) saw us and giggled uncontrollably. When we asked her if we could jump on the trampoline, she giggled even more; then she led us through a library where nuns were taking their final exams and out into a beautiful yard starring, sure enough, a trampoline!

 

euphoria

Probably one of the top ten most euphoric experiences of my life, jumping on that convent trampoline. I felt like a little kid. It was also really fun to imagine nuns jumping on it. Gradually, news spread through the convent that there were three Americans jumping on the trampoline, and all the English speaking sisters started coming outside to meet us. Two of them offered to give us a tour.

 

nun chickens

They showed us their gardens, chickens, and pigs. We saw the laundry room where they handwash all their clothes. We said an Our Father in the chapel, poked around the “museum,” and studied a world map that marks all of their missions. Everywhere we went sisters would smile and fawn over us. I have never been around so many happy women in my life. Where had I gotten the idea that nuns were dour types?

 

pigs

The sisters at this convent come from all over the world. We met women from the Ukraine, South America, Australia… you name it. We also got to meet a ninety-year-old nun who hasn’t left the convent walls since she was fourteen! She says she wants to die there.

 

Liz meeting a laundry nun (they all have different vocations at the convent)

It was an incredibly eye opening and delightful experience. I’m so glad I finally got up to courage to go visit them, even if I did wait until my very last day in Tuscania to do it.

With our tour guides (and Dan's shadowy presence)

This post is long enough... I think I'll wait and tell you about Prague later. Stay gold, readerfolk!

In which Capri Sun is not a child's beverage served in an aluminum pouch.

The views in Sorrento and Capri are almost too beautiful for your mind to accept. You shouldn’t be able to afford, as a college student, a hotel with a view of a giant volcano plunging upward from the sea, framed by sunset. You shouldn’t be walking under lemon trees and lush, fuchsia vines on your way to buy a beer. It makes no sense that the water would be that blue, or that clear.

 

Sunrise from my hotel window

I didn’t get much sleep this weekend because I couldn’t bear to miss anything. I must have gotten out of bed eight times that first night in Sorrento, just to look out the window. Once, for fireworks. Another time to look at all the city lights on the ridge. Several phases of sunrise.

Port at Capri

We left for Capri at 6:30 in the morning, and we didn’t stop moving all day. We started with a boat tour that took us around the perimeter of the island—into grottos, under giant rock arches, and past light houses. The guide pointed out mansions dangling off the cliffs. “You know Dolce and Gabbana, the desginers? They live there.” or “The Gerbers, aka The Emperors of All Things Baby, own that one.”

At one point we climbed off the big boat and into four-person row boats. The water was low enough for us to squeeze through a small opening in the famous Blue Grotto and swim inside. Some strange feat of nature makes the entire cavern glow an electric blue, and the effect of the color and the Italian boat rower’s singing made the whole experience pretty surreal.

After taking a dip in the glowy water.

All in all the excursions in Capri are overpriced, but worth every penny at the same time. With salt crystals dried on our skin and in our hair, we climbed out of the boat and set out for Anacapri. After a terrifying bus ride, in which we all felt sure we would go toppling off the edge and onto the rocks, we hopped on a chair lift that took us all the way to the very top of the mountain. The views were hideous, as you can imagine. We soaked up as much of the panorama as possible, chugged some lemon ice water, and then commenced our descent to the bottom. Mad props to the girls who wore flip flops; I don’t think I would have made it without my fancy hiking shoes.

Two thumbs up for the top of the mountain.

We browsed lemoncello stands, grabbed the most affordable food we could find, and then spent time on a small pebble beach until it was time to catch our ferry back to Sorrento.

But the party didn’t stop there. In fact, it didn’t stop until about 2 am when we decided we couldn’t dance at the English Club anymore without dissolving entirely into sweat.

Sunday we hiked down to a little beach, where we laid out and jumped off cliffs to cool off. Normally I do not engage in such adventuresome activities, but I suppose the Sorrento sun worked some witch magic on me because I found myself willingly hurling my body off of ledges.

 

Proof of my uncharacteristic adventuresomeness

Synopsis: I think we sucked as much marrow out of our last weekend in Italy as humanly possible.