Fall Break

Ciao. My apologies for the extended time without an update. October got away from me. The most exciting part of October was Fall Break. After a stressful week of midterms we were off for a week to travel to our hearts desires. The University organized a study trip to Poland and that is where I spent the first seven days of my break.

We began in Warsaw, the capital. The airport was an hour and a half outside the city (thank you cheap airlines) so we had to take a cab into the city center. My friend and I ended up in a cab with a Polish couple recently returning from their honeymoon. The groom is working on his doctorate in History, so he was telling us all about Polish history, especially during World War II. It was a interesting and unexpected introduction to our trip. We spent two night in Warsaw, spending time wandering around the city center and old square. The Polish food is fabulous and a welcome change from the pasta, pasta, and more pasta of Rome. My favorite dish was probably beet soup with beef dumplings, yum. We went to the Warsaw Uprising museum and learned about the Pole’s attempt to liberate themselves at the end of the war as the Soviets invaded from the east. They were unsuccessful, and the Western part of Warsaw was obliterated by the Nazi army. Not a building was left intact. You would never know it from the way the city looks now, modern and bustling.

We took a train to Torun, in the North of Poland, home to Nicholas Copernicus University and the only city left untouched during WWII. There we attended a Human Rights Symposium on Human Trafficking. Sunday evening we watched a sobering film called Sisters, that explicitly depicted the life of girls who are trafficked for sex slavery. Monday morning we came together with a study abroad program from Spring Hill in Louisiana and other law students from the host university to listen to two speakers. The first gave us many statistics on human trafficking. The second speaker, Iana Matei, runs a shelter in Romania for repatriated women who have been trafficked. She also works on the political level lobbying for laws against traffickers. Her presentation was an interactive discussion, answering our questions about human trafficking. She was a very dynamic speaker and impassioned activist. The conference was altogether too short and there was no follow up discussion on what we had learned, but I consider myself more educated on the issues of human trafficking.

We then took a very long train ride to Krakow. Spending most of our free time wandering around the old square admiring the architecture and browsing the markets. The group went to the Schindler Museum which was a comprehensive overview of life in Krakow during WWII for Jews, Poles, and Germans. Wednesday we went to the Auschwitz and Birkineau concentration camps. There are not any good adjectives to describe that experience except for that it was in fact an experience. After studying the war and the Holocaust for a long time in grade and high school, being in the camps was a bit surreal. The most incredible experience for me was walking into a still intact gas chamber where thousands of people had been killed. It was important to see the camps. It is important to know what human beings are capable of and to ensure that no such massacre can be allowed to happen again.

Overall I very much enjoyed my time in Poland. The weather was cold and foggy and all the leaves were changing colors. I was happy to get a taste of fall that I will not have in Rome. With a weekend of break left, I went with my friends to Paris.

The weekend was jam packed with tourist destinations: the Louvre, Notre Dame, Pompadour, the Eiffel Tour, Versailles, Sacre Coure, and Musee de Orsay. My favorite destination was the gardens at Versailles. O they were so beautiful! Miles of tailored green space with fountains and sculptures. Versailles was every bit as extravagant as you would expect it to be, just ridiculous really. The Eiffel Tour is just how you’d imagine it as well. I ate raw beef, not on purpose, but I had forgotten what “tartar” meant. It actually just tasted like a hamburger, a very rare hamburger.

I was exhausted after a week of traveling. But I have only six weeks left in Rome and I intend to enjoy every one of them.  Happy November!