Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

Tonight I have been listening an old recording from some German TV programm on YouTube - Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah with a choir standing in the background under some arches.
I tried to listen to interpretations by other singers but kept coming back to Leonard Cohen himself.
Try this link, perhaps it works
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rf36v0epfmI

Over 3.8 million viewings of this particular song on YouTube!

What to See

Bogdan and Dorota were here for six days. Bogdan is a local historian with special interest in military history, but he also is very interested in the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.
So this is what we did.
Day One.
Walk through Moss: The Canal, The Industrial Museum. Moss Waterfall, the Public Library.
Dinner at Everts Cafe.
Day Two.
Visit to Fretex in Moss and Varna Evangeliesenter in nearby Vaaler - two places with secondhand stuff: clothes, furniture, books, kitchen stuff etc. etc.
Day Three.
With the ferry to Horten on the other side of the Oslofjord. Visit to the Preuss Photo Museum and to the Marine Museum.
Day Four.
With the train to Oslo. Then with a Oslo Pass for 24 hours (costs 220 kr) we could freely use public transportation and chose from a long list of museums and attractions. It was a good deal. We visited Munch Museum (using the metro), the Nobel Peace Center, The Fram ship, The Kon Tiki Museum, The Viking Ships (going by boat from the Town Hall to Bygdoe), Akershus Fortress and the Museum of the Norwegian Army.
In the evening we ate dinner at Alanya, the Turkish restaurant in Moss.
Day Five.
We took the bus to the place I work and walked back to town. Then to Raade where we visited the local bakery (wonderful cakes!), to the Roed Family Farm in Raade - a farm that has become a tourist attraction, to the Herb Garden in Rygge (one of my favorite places for a walk) and then to dinner at Rygge Hotel and to Reidun's home for a wonderful afternoon in good company.
In the evening Bogdan went down to the nearby beach and went for a swim!
Day Six.
Dorota made pirogi ruski in the morning (delicious!) and I scanned the documents Bogdan had brought along, before we hurried to our local airport. But there was no need to hurry that much - the plane was delayed 25 minutes. Bogdan later said they got to their bus in Warszawa in time and were home at one o'clock at night!

Quotes for thinking

" Life is not the way it's supposed to be,
it's the way it is.
The way you cope with it
is what makes the difference." -----Virginia Satir

"And when you cope with it by choosing to see
everything as a blessing, every single thing,
then life comes very close to being
the way it's supposed to be.
May you always recognize the blessing.
And may you always be aware that you are loved
beyond measure and a cherished blessing to me. "
---- Kate Nowak

Thank you, Jerry!

Another quote that feels right

Thanks, Jerry, for sending me this quote.

"Never forget that Life can only be
nobly inspired and rightly lived
if you take it bravely and gallantly,
as a splendid adventure in which
you are setting out
into an unknown country,
to face many a danger,
to meet many a joy,
to find many a comrade,
to win and lose many a battle."

Annie Besant

The Sky in Warszawa

This is Hotel Bristol in Warszawa one evening we were touring the newly renovated Krakowskie Przedmiescie Avenue.
The lighting of the hotel was impressive, but more amazing was the color of the sky.
It looked like a fire had started.

As we walked on, the sky got redder.
One couldn't avoid thinking of the war.

What was going on?

The answer came about half an hour later:
Rain puring down in buckets!

Another theme of my visit to Poland

Going to Poland I had made a detailed program for what I wanted to see and learn, and much of this I have shared through these blog entries.

Though there is one important theme I still have to write about, but that will not be published here, only sent to those friends and relatives who may be interested.

So with this, I close my stories from Poland.

Blue berries in the Bolimow forest

Walking into the Bolimow forest you see the signs of war - zig zag lines indicating where soldiers once had dug trenches.

Some may have been from the First World War, others from the Second World War.

Walking deeper into this quiet forest, you couldn't avoid thinking about the lives and deaths of soldiers and civilians in here.

Then I was told a story that perhaps some of you can verify.

The blue berries you see on this photo, ripe when we were there in the beginning of July, supposedly are not part of the Polish local flora, but come from Russia.
According to the story, the Russian soldiers had brought dried berries from home to make tea from.

Now these berries may be a last greeting from many of those Russian soldiers who never made it home.

Bolimow - German Military Cemetery from WWI

The Bolimow forest southwest of Warszawa was the scene of battles in both world wars.
In the First World War German and Russian soldiers were fighting each other.

On the way to Halin where we stayed, a small German military cemetery caught my eye.

The grass was cut, but in general this cemetery looked abandoned.
I have visited German military cemeteries from that same war, in France, where the gravestones were easy to read and the cemetery well taken care of by the German authorities.
That specific war ended 90 years ago, but it is clear that only after the Iron Curtain fell, would the Germans have the opportunity to do something with this cemetery.

Most stones are impossible to read.
One stone mentioned that two unknown Russian soldiers were buried there.

Halin in Bolimow - inside

Downstairs in the renovated old dworek (minor mansion) that is now the main guest house, you find a nice spacious livingroom.

In the livingroom you find this fireplace.

There is a library with books mostly in Polish but also some in English.
I have never had that kind of summerholiday in my grownup life, but I suddenly could imagine myself sitting outside in the garden hours on end, reading books, going in to eat the delicious food, rest in my room, read some more, go for long walks.
Relaxing.....

Also downstairs was a big kitchen, though the cooked dishes were prepared in the family's own kitchen and brought to the dining hall next to the kitchen.
This is where we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Several in our family have their "specialities" when eating, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover this had been taken into consideration by the hosts.
I got my fish!

Upstairs where the bedrooms were, the whole interior very much reminded us of my aunt's summer house in Sweden.
Though this place was of course much grander and so new you smelt the wood.

You can even see how the floor shines!

A weekend in Halin near Bolimow

Out on the countryside, on the outskirts of the Bolimow forest, a very nice family is renovating their dworek - minor mansion.
During the summertime they sometimes take in boarders.
We were there for a weekend to celebrate my sister's birthday.

What was once the brick building housing animals and farm equipment, has become the new spacious family home.

What was once the family's prewar summer house and later became the family's home, has been completely renovated, using the basic plan of the rooms. This is where we stayed.



Part of our family stayed in this little house on the other side of the courtyard.

Once a house to store wheat, now this is also made into a little house.
The trees around are enormous, so look closer to see how the stairs lead up to the door, to get an impression of the size of this little sweet house.

In the background starts the Bolimow forest.

Bogdan's new house

The south eastern parts of Poland, close to the Ukrainian border, are still having economic problems. Poland may have joined the EU, and you see the changes in the big cities, but out here, not much is happening and many go abroad to improve their economical situation.

My friend Bogdan and his family still live in their small but very wellkept and cosy apartment.
But now I was happy to discover that three years ago the family had bought a piece of land with two wooden buildings - a little house for living and a farm building.
The new house under construction now has two floors, a new roof and is also much bigger than the original building.
Bogdan hopes it will be finished within a year.

The farm building will certainly be good for Bogdan too, as he is a man with good hands for practical work.

May Bogdan and his family be able to move into their new house according to their plan and then have a good life in that house!

A Ukrainian cerkiew in Poland

As you get closer to the Ukrainian border on the Polish side, you sometimes see another aspect of the effects of the "moving borders" from after World War Two.

In these areas, on both sides of the present border, there were different ethnic groups before the war - mainly Poles, Ukrainians and Jews.
Sometimes they lived in the same town.
Sometimes they lived in villages with a majority belonging to one ethnic group.

After the war, when the new borders were to be made, heavy fighting between the Ukrainians and the Poles pushed the line back and forth.

When the border was finally settled, most of the Ukrainians from what had become the Polish side, ended up in the Ukraine.
Most of the Poles having lived in what had been Poland, but was now part of the Soviet Union, moved into the "new" Poland.

So here in the borderlands of Poland you spot this part of the local history in the Russian Orthodox churches - cerkiew in Polish.

This wooden cerkiew above was seen while travelling by car from Lubaczow to Belzec.

Tarnow: An Auschwitz Memorial for Poles

Walking through Tarnow we came upon this Auschwitz Memorial.

On June 14th 1940 a group of 228 Polish civilians (including 20 Jews) were brought to Auschwitz from Tarnow. This is considered the date Auschwitz "opened".

The triangle with the P was the sign they had on their prisoners' uniform in Auschwitz.

Out of these 728 persons, 200 survived.

Tarnow: The Ethnographic Museum

This technique is called Hardangersoem in Norwegian, implying it comes from Hardanger in the western part of Norway. It seems to more international :-)

Tarnow - the Ethnographic Museum

In an old beautiful building on Krakowska street 10 in Tarnow you find the Ethnographic Museum. It has two parts - one with local handcrafts, and one about the Gypsies, or the Roma people, as they prefer to call themselves.

A Roma Hymn:

I've travelled travelled long roads
Meeting with happy Roma.
Hey, Roma, from where have you come
with tents set on Fortune's Road?

For some unfortunate reason, photos I took with the flash did not come out very clear. But I can only urge you to go there yourself and study the exhibits.
The Roma seem to have started their journey from India around 1000 years ago, arriving in Europe around 500 years ago.

Their life was never easy, but during World War Two a great number of Roma were murdered according to the Nazi ideology.
What is particularly sad, is that the names and lives of those murdered are in most cases lost forever.

Seeing the map of the numbers of Roma living in the different European countries and deported to death camps, I saw that 60 Roma persons had been deported from Norway.
Who were they?
Are they remembered in Norway?

Outside the museum is a collection of old Roma waggons.

This is a place to come back to, to learn more about this ethnic group, and perhaps be there when they themselves gather to do their own Remembrance Trail in the paths of those murdered in WWII.

Two cats in the cemetery in Wroclaw

Walking through the cemetery in Wroclaw, we suddenly saw a grey cat with a yellow bell around her neck, looking quite affectionate.
One minute later another cat turned up, this one with a blue bell around the neck.
As we were leaving the cemetery, the lady cleaning the paths of the cemetery, was about to finish her day of work.
Behold, she called out, and the two cats came running to her like two wellbehaved dogs.
The day of work was finished for the cats too.

Andrychow and Wroclaw

While in Wroclaw, we looked for an old grave. The deceased was born in 1848 in a little town called Andrychow, then in the Austrian Hungarian Empire, but had died in 1898 in the German town Breslau, now the Polish town of Wroclaw.
The cemetery actually had a list of the graves.
We consulted this list before entering the cemetery, but from the list we realized that many graves had no names.

As we walked around the cemetery, we saw that many graves were hard to read because of erosion, but also that many gravestones looked like this:

Possible explanation to be confirmed from some other source:
I once heard that during World War Two the Germans needed metal for their weapons and removed metal signs from cemeteries.
Do you know if this is true?

In any case, we did not find the grave we were looking for.

A few hours later, going by train from Wroclaw to Krakow, we were sitting in the same compartment with a young man around 20 years old, and his mother.
When I asked the young man where he lived in Poland, he first said: It is a small place, you have never heard about it.
I answered: Try me.
He then said he was from Andrychow!

It was strange that Andrychow popped up twice within a few hours.

A helpful young man

In Wroclaw, looking for the Raclawicka Panorama, we asked a young man for directions. He is studying to be a paramedic, but very generously walked with us, even though it wasn't his direction. We then ate breakfast together at a place he himself sometimes eats, and later parted with a very good impression of this young man.

Raclawicka Panorama from Lwow to Wroclaw

Imagine painting a battle scene the size of 15 meter tall and 114 meter long.
Imagine this painting covering the inside of a round room so that it in fact has no beginning and no end.
Imagine that you stand in the middle of this room, as if you are on the top of a little hill, and that additional props between you and the painting itself make you feel you are there, watching the battle.

Imagine that this battle was painted during the years 1893 - 1894, and exhibited in Lwow from 1894. At that time Lwow (and Galicja) was part of the Austrian Hungarian Empire and there was no independent Poland.
Imagine that on April 4th 1794, at the Battle of Raclawicka, the Poles had won over the Russians.

Fast forward:
Lwow was part of independent Poland between the two world wars, but was occupied by the Soviet Union from the autumn of 1939 till the summer of 1941, and then again from the end of World War Two.
Today Lwow is the city of Lviv in Ukraine.

So the fact that this painting still exists and has been exhibited in Wroclaw since 1985, is as much of the story as the painting itself.

Seventy persons at a time enter the exhibition and for half an hour get the explanations of the battle as it unfolds in the painting.
The explanations are in Polish, but we received a small tape and listened to the English version.

It was definitely worth the visit.

PS. The two main artists behind the Raclawicka Panorama were Jan Styka (1858-1925) and Wojciech Kossak (1857 - 1942).

Lwow in Wroclaw

Before WWII Wroclaw was the German city of Breslau.

After the Second World War Poland's borders changed, and the territory of Poland in general "moved" westwards.
Many of the Poles who had earlier lived in Lwow (Lemberg, now Lviv) and other places that became the Soviet Union, moved westwards.
Many settled in areas the German citizens had left because Germany's new borders were further west.

So for this reason, Wroclaw became the home of many Polish citizens who once lived in Lwow.

My main interest for my one day visit to Wroclaw was to see two attractions that had once been in Lwow and were now displayed in Wroclaw.

Unfortunately, one of these attractions, a model of the city of Lwow, as it looked in the mid-18th century, was closed down, so I never got to see that.

That model was made by Lwow architect and art historian Janusz Witwicki and is the size of 4 meter X 3.6 meter.
It was built during the years 1931 to 1946. The story around it, is as interesting as the model itself.

I hope I will be able to see it on some other occassion.

Intercity train from Warszawa to Wroclaw

Most of the trains we used were older trains,
but the train from Warszawa to Wroclaw was
a fast Intercity train where you needed
a place reservation (included in the price
of the Railway Pass).
The trip itself took nearly five hours.
A pleasant surprise:
a trolley with free coffee and tea passed
through the train three times
during those five hours.

On none of the other trains did we see anything like that.

1-week Polish Railway Pass

As I knew that I would be travelling one week around Poland by train, I checked the internet for timetables and prices, and made a fairly detailed schedule suiting my plans.
http://rozklad.pkp.pl/bin/query.exe/en

The combined price for all the trips I intended to do, came out about the same as a one week Railway Pass (390 zloty + shipping) , but the convenience of entering any train with the pass made me decide to go for that option.
No standing in queues to obtain tickets!
http://www.polrail.com/sections/store/rail_passes.html


If you look on the map of Poland, trace my route by train from Warszawa to Wroclaw to Krakow to Tarnow to Lubaczow, from Belzec to Warszawa and see what distances I covered.

Norwegian.no going to Poland

I have already mentioned that this low cost airline is Norwegian. :-)

But after going with them back and forth to Poland, I found that the crew on both planes was Polish, and not Norwegian.

That was probably also practical, as I estimate that 90 per cent of the passengers, at least on the flight to Poland, were Polish citizens.
As I told on another occassion, there are so many Polish citizens working in Norway just now, particularly in the building business, that these cheap flights must be a real blessing when they go home for visits and holidays.

Norwegian.no

The truth:
Before returning to Norway in 2006 I had never heard about a low cost Norwegian airline called Norwegian.

Fact:
A few months ago the military airport near Moss also became a civilian airport. Official name Moss Airport Rygge. Sometimes written down as Oslo - Rygge, something I feel is misleading and completely wrong.

Personal angle:
The possibility to buy cheap airtickets from this airport to destinations norwegian.no has, is a real blessing for me and many others.
The prices vary, but if you are lucky you can get some incredibly cheap tickets.
Now in July I flew to Warszawa with Norwegian and the ticket back and forth cost only 714 Norwegian kroner!

The Ideal World of a Traveler

In an ideal world I would travel and absorb knowledge and have interesting experiences during the day, and sit at the hotel with internet and write blog entries at night.
But tonight, in Tarnow in southern Poland when I do have an internet connection at my hotel, I find I am tired and prefer the hot shower and the clean nice bed.
No energy for writing down what has happened for the last six days just now.
Sorry!