Warszawa, Polska

Today we toured the city. One striking feature of this city is its street art.

It’s all very beautiful. The first two I know nothing about, but this last one is the bridge connecting the big and small Jewish ghetto, built in 1940. There were over 400,000 Jews forced into this area of 1.3 sq miles. Out of these, 254,000 were sent to Treblinka for extermination. Here is an older famous photograph of what it looked like then.

The amount of information we took in today was overwhelming and sobering. We also visited a Jewish cemetery that held mass graves. Both of pre-Holocaust and post deaths. Toward the end, there was one mass grave that held 1,000,000,000 children. I don’t even know how to understand the size of this number, let alone that number of children murdered.

As we are experiencing and listening and waking through all these areas, I have been paying attention to the sensations of my body because that’s of personal interest into part of my mindfulness exploration. This has been by far the most beneficial journey for such feelings. I’ve already shared a small portion of sight, so here’s the rest:

Sound- a faint child cry that struck me because no other people were around at the cemetery today, and it was right before we walked past the mass child grave

Touch- planting my feet in the ground and connecting with the earth. But really connecting because this area of earth held thousands of people. I tried to be attentive of that with every step we took

Smell- the linden trees fill the air with such a sweet smell, but the sewer that was used in the Polish Underground inside of the cemetery had such a nauseating draft

Taste(!!!!!)- PIEROGIS!!!! And more pierogis!!! They are delicious, but only in small doses.

This photo does absolutely no justice to how amazing the spinach & goat cheese was. That was my third round of pierogis in 2 days and I think my last for a long while…..

More importantly, dessert: coffee & lavender crème brûlée with a Polish beer. Fascinating combination, but it did me well before bedtime

Previously to leaving for this trip, I thought I’d do more ‘in the moment’ blogging, but it’s extremely hard and quite disrespectful to our tour guides. So before these feelings pass, I take short notes and type later. Tomorrow is Treblinka and Lublin, so this will need all the brain power and strength as possible.

Goodnight, friends & family!

KH

PS. European cigarettes are so cute & lush