Poland

On Thursday night, everyone loaded on to three buses and we took off on a ten hour (doesn’t that sound pleasant, John?) bus trip to Czestochowa. 

It was rainy and pretty gloomy when we arrived around 5:30, and we ran on over to the chapel quickly to make it in time for the unveiling of the Black Madonna. We had to get in there as soon as possible, because there is always a big crowd that comes every day for the unveiling.

It was interesting, because when they told us beforehand about “unveiling”, I was thinking curtains being pulled back. In reality, the image was covered by a gold door that slowly slid up as trumpets played in the background. It was really interesting (as I said before) and neat.

After Mass, we all walked over back to the hotel drop off place, and ate breakfast. Krista and I were lucky to get there quickly, because the line took FOREVER. It was around breakfast when I realized I was sick.

Again.

We had Mass after breakfast, but we had a little bit of kill time in between. The church itself has a really neat style, but I didn’t take any pictures because you can look it up and find better pictures than the ones I could take.

Anyways, during the kill time, I heard the Credo being sung, so I hurried on over the side chapel where I heard the music coming from, and lo and behold! A Novus Ordo Mass in Latin! YES! It was awesome! Right after that Mass, we had “our” Mass, offered by the Franciscan priest that came with us (I actually forgot his name…oops)

Communion time was interesting, because the chapel only had seats for about forty people max, so everyone else was kneeling/sitting outside of the grated area. When the priests came out to distribute Communion, everyone was scattered about and had to scurry around on knees to receive the Host.

We basically looked like a bunch of little birds waiting for the parent bird to feed us. It was really funny, but also really cool, as it was such a real image of God feeding us with Himself.  

After Mass, we had about two hours of free time. Krista and I first headed back to the hotel to pull some Zloty (Polish currency) out of an ATM. The ATM was in the mini casino the hotel had in the basement - it was kinda sketch, and stinking of cigarette smoke.

It felt SO weird pulling Zloty out, because the exchange rate is about three zloty to one US dollar, so I pulled out 300 zloty and I felt like I was really killing the bank, when it was actually about $85.

We ran into a couple other FUS students, ended up walking around with one girl, Leslie, who is really nice, and stopped in at a pastry shop.

This brings me to one of my favorite things about Poland – delicious and cheap pastries everywhere!!

 

Once free time was finished up, we got bussed to Auschwitz and then Berkenau, the Nazi concentration camps where most of the millions of executions took place.

I don’t know if I could communicate verbally about that experience, so I’m not going to try to communicate it on “paper”, aside from saying it was awesome (in the old sense of the word) to see the cell that St. Maximilian Kolbe died in.

Then we were bussed back to another hotel in Cracow, where we had dinner in and spent the next two nights in. It was about eight when dinner finished up, but it felt ridiculously late. A lot of people went out and did a bit of exploring in Cracow, but I was way too tired, so I ended up playing cards with two friends, John and Ariana.

John is super quiet and reminds me a lot of Louise – he seems to always be thinking deep, interesting thoughts, and he’s really nice. Ariana is…hard to describe. She’s very independent, and fun to talk to. I feel pretty comfortable around her when we’re in small groups together – I met her in my philosophy class.

The next morning, we had breakfast (the hotel made AMAZING little pastries) and then got a tour of Cracow. The tour guide mostly talked about the Cathedral though - I'll have to write another post with all the little tidbits she gave us. 

Pretty Polish streets.

Then we had a couple hours free time of Cracow, which was super fun. For some reason, everything is cheaper in Poland, so I got a LOT of Christmas shopping done. Now I'm just worried about how I'm gonna get everything back...
Anyways, on the weekends, Cracow has this huge market thing, with people and stand EVERYWHERE. It was so fun exploring! They also had this one building with a ton of stalls inside.

The Divine Mercy shrine was…interesting. The old chapel was beautiful and we got to see one of the original Divine Mercy paintings (THIS one). We prayed the chaplet in there with the sisters, and the chapel was prayed alternately in English and Polish and maybe another language. After the chaplet, we walked on over to the new part of the shrine, and Sister Maria Vianneya gave us a beautiful talk. She had a large picture of the Divine Mercy image on the stage with her, facing us, and she showed us the smaller copy she had on her little stand, facing her.

Honestly, I don’t remember most of the talk, but I keep remembering how while she talked, she was constantly looking at and pointing to Jesus, and whenever she mentioned him, you could tell she was talking about the person she loved the most, HER spouse. It was really beautiful.

She told us one story I remember; she was walking around the chapel grounds one day, and she told Jesus “You are my spouse. Now show me you love me.” A few minutes later, she walked into three Hungarian singers, and they asked her if they could sing to her. She said the singing was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever heard, and afterwards (this is her reenacting the scene) she looked up to the heavens, smiled and said “thank you.”

After she finished her talk, we had a little over an hour to wander around, and I spent most of that time waiting to talk with/talking with Sister. Then we had Mass in the old church, and headed back to the hotel.

Now, the new shrine….it is quite…interesting. Here’s a picture (not mine)

Basically it reminded me of the U.S.S. Immaculate Conception. Some of the kids made some really funny remarks about it looking like a spaceship, but I can’t remember any aside from Krista’s “Hail Mary full of grace, let us go to outer space” and “the spirit was willing, but the architect was crap.”

Anyways, Saturday night, Krista and I decided to go back to the Center and see if any of the shops were open. We walked in the wrong direction for quite a while, backtracked a bit until we found some students walking around and then asked them for directions.

We took some more wrong turns after that, but we eventually made our way to the market.

Most of the stalls were closed, but we enjoyed some yummy Polish street food (much better than the Viennese street food, and cheaper too!). We got a kebab (different than the Gaming kebab), and then some super delicioso perogies. I also found some bowties/cenci, and it was so nice! I don’t remember what its Polish name is, and I thought it was an Italian pastry, so I’m a little confused.

The kebab - David, you would have LOVED this!

We stopped in at a tiny grocery store on our way back, where the employees looked at me really suspiciously. I got some Milka chocolate milk mix though (I’m super excited to try it!) and this yummy treat…

It tasted like a graham cracker wafer thing topped with chocolate and a touch of honey.

That night was a rather uncomfortable night, as the kebab food didn’t sit well with me.

The next morning, we went to Mass in the Cathedral that we visited the day before. It was another Latin Novus Ordo Mass, but since the altar was in the middle of the church and we could only see the back of it, Mass was a little confusing. Still, it was glorious to be singing the Latin Gloria, Credo, etc.

After Mass, we had over three hours of free time. Krista and I walked off with a large group, including the Student Life director Mr. Pipp, and one of the RA’s, Sarah, but we eventually ended up walking around by ourselves. I got some cool gifts and a nice bag, but after a while, I got really homesick and sick of people and tired and I just wanted to be home, but Krista was very patient with my being a baby and an unpleasant traveling companion, so she probably gained a lot of graces during that.

A little bit before we walked/ran back to the bus, Krista and I watched three break dancers that had a big crowd watching them in the middle of the square. Whenever Krista has enough internet to upload it, I'll link it – it was super random and funny and made me think of Vincent break dancing at Chuckie and Katie’s wedding.

When our free time was up, we were bussed over to the hometown of JPII, Wasovic. It was actually a really nice little town, and I swung on one of the playgrounds until someone passing by mentioned that Sarah said we shouldn’t swing. Oops.

The church itself was nice, but confusing for me. I liked how much light the church had, but the altars and the placement of the various articles/relics made my already scattered brain more confuzzled. I did a Holy Hour there, which helped SO. MUCH.

After the Holy Hour, we only had about half hour to piddle around. Mr. Pipp told us about pope cake, a certain type of cake that JPII always requested whenever he stayed in Poland, so it came to be known as pope cake. He said it was overpriced and overrated, but Krista and I found a really nice little bakery that had it super cheap, and it was DELICIOUS. I had about 1.53 zl left, and since you can’t exchange coins, I spend it on a bag of pink fluffy little macaroon things. They tasted kinda like airy dried cotton candy. Pretty yummy, but at that point, my sore throat was begging for something that did NOT involve sugar.

No idea what this is, but it was super yummy

No idea what this is either, but also yummy and EXTREMELY sugary.

We left Wasovic, stopped at a hotel for an authentic Polish meal of fries and fried chicken, then made our way back to Gaming, where we arrived at 2:40 in the morning. I actually slept pretty solidly most of the trip, which made getting up for Mass the next morning much easier. 

And that's Poland in a nutshell, ladies and gents!