UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Life Becomes More of Adventure

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Old Town Vilnius is now on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sights. Some graffiti seems significant in this country where a staggering 91% of the 64% of the population who turned out to vote gave a resounding yes to membership in the European Union and that just this last April became a full-fledged member of NATO: “Your Life Becomes More and More of Adventure” and “The important Thing Is To Express Yourself!” are examples of graffiti everywhere.

One of the more vivid images of Europe this year, but especially of Vilnius, is the sight of slim, long-legged beauties strutting confidently with an air of success in slip-on spike heels and showing off flat tanned bare midriffs above skin tight jeans that come within an inch of the pubic bone. There are solariums (tanning beds) on every other block…no fish-white bellies here. I asked a young woman in former East Berlin what is behind the styles in dress and she answered “It is self-expression…we want to dress according to how we feel.” I asked if the school authorities allowed the students to wear these clothes to school and she said they wouldn’t DARE prevent us from dressing the way we want to dress!

But on the other hand Sasha, our guide to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, will say “these are nice girls…not prostitutes…but they have $100 in each eye!” There will be no going back to rigidly defined socialist customs in these countries!

Interesting Lithuania

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The Baltics…Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Are these in Central Europe or do we call this Eastern Europe…where is the line? We stop a few days in Vilnius Lithuania on the way to St. Petersburg Russia. It is an interesting country that has long identified itself as European (read–not Russian).

The political centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 13th to the end of the 18th century, Vilnius has had a profound influence on the cultural and architectural development of much of eastern Europe. Despite invasions and partial destruction, it has preserved an impressive complex of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and classical buildings as well as its medieval layout and natural setting. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In 1989 an estimated 2,000,000 Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians literally joined hands in a human chain stretching the 650 kilometers between Vilnius and Tallinn to protest the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The following December 20 the Lithuanian Communist Party declares itself independent from the Communist Party of the USSR. In January 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev is heckled by 300,000 pro-independence demonstrators in Vilnius and in March the first free elections are held since 1940 but the following April Moscow imposes an economic blockade. The following January 1991 Soviet troops kill 14 unarmed civilians in an assault on Vilnius’ Television Tower. By August the Soviet putsch collapses, troops leave the buildings they’ve been occupying, and Lenin’s statue is removed from the city Center.

Lithuania is gaining status within the world community. The Dalai Lama visited Lithuania in 2001 and in 2002 George W. is the first ever US president to visit Vilnius. And of course, we NBA fans immediately think of the Trail Blazer’s own Arvydas Sabonis who put Lithuania’s basketball program on the map.

On the political front, according to the English language events magazine, “at present people are tired of populist politics, political infighting and they just want stability and peaceful life. Just this year they again voted in the conservative former President Valdad Adamkus (President 1998-2003) who everyone hopes will be a steady and successful person to “stand the test of power” as a partner in the Eu and Nato.

Warsaw

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In re-built Warsaw we view public art memorializing the Warsaw Uprising…Nazis destroyed the city while Russia watched on the other side of the Vistula River…then moved in and occupied the city for the next 50 years…the “liberators” became the occupiers… There are reminders of horrendous Polish history everywhere. There is no work and most young people want out of the country according to the young man who set us up in our apartment and who had spent two years studying Spanish and English in Britain…says most people have never been out of Poland… they have plans to work in international business in Spain. Poor Poland.

During the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, more than 85% of Warsaw’s historic centre was destroyed by Nazi troops. After the war, a five-year reconstruction campaign by its citizens resulted in today’s meticulous restoration of the Old Town, with its churches, palaces and market-place. It is an outstanding example of a near-total reconstruction of a span of history covering the 13th to the 20th century. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)

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Photos

The Germans changed the name to Auschwitz but the Polish still call it Oswiecim. We hire an English speaking guide to drive us to Auschwitz and Birkenau for the day and are predictably blown away by the scene. Bob remarks that the Poles have maintained the camp in an appropriate-simple yet austere-manner…a glimpse of history and reality without an artificial sentimentality…the scene itself supplies ample information. I find out that the Polish resistance that tried to get information to the outside world were the first to be killed. I find myself scanning the pictures and names on the walls for Mroczynski…my mother’s surname.

The Death Block, a prison within the prison, was where the SS shot thousands of prisoners, mostly Poles at the Wall of Death. The Cellars, the Crematorium and Gas Chambers, the Assembly Square where prisoners were made to wait in the freezing cold while they were counted out…reality setting in by layers….minute by minute…still not into my head. Later more and more camps, Auschwitz II, III, IV were built when the decision was made to exterminate the Jews. Birkenau is the largest…10 to 15 times the size of Auschwitz.

Bob reads the memoirs of Dr. Mengele’s assistant who carried out countless experiments, many of which were cutting edge at the time, but others left many dead and maimed…especially the children-twins and dwarfs.

The curator of the Jewish Museum in Krakow warns that memory is a difficult thing…and many books of recollection are subject to hyperbole…but among the best of the Holocaust writing is surviver Halina Birenbaum’s “Hope Is The Last To Die.” She is a writer, poet and translator, born in Warsaw in 1929 who spent the occupation in the Warsaw Ghetto, and in the concentration camps at Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Neustad-Glewe from where she was freed in 1945. She emigrated to Israel in 1947 and now lives in Hertzliya with her husband and two sons. Her works are sad but devoid of hated. What emerges from them, according to the book jacket, “are peace, kindness and belief in man.” And if she can achieve this….

7/12/06:
Government officials said Wednesday that Poland and “historical truth” both had won a victory after the UN agreed to rename one of its world heritage sites “The Former Nazi German Concentration Camp at Auschwitz.” About 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, were put to death at the facility outside Oswiecim, Poland, in World War II. The German and Israeli governments also agreed to the name-change. Poland requested the change on grounds that the previous name, “Auschwitz Concentration Camp,” left a “misconception” that it was Polish-run.

The fortified walls, barbed wire, platforms, barracks, gallows, gas chambers and cremation ovens show the conditions within which the Nazi genocide took place in the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest in the Third Reich. According to historical investigations, 1.5 million people, among them a great number of Jews, were systematically starved, tortured and murdered in this camp, the symbol of humanity’s cruelty to its fellow human beings in the 20th century. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Krakow Poland

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We are out of the unusually hot and humid Czech Republic. After an all night train we are in cool Krakow Poland. We accept an offer by a young English speaking man at the train depot and end up in a hostel…six flight up…”old building…no lift!”

The historic centre of Cracow, the former capital of Poland, is situated at the foot of the Royal Wawel Castle. The 13th-century merchants’ town has Europe’s largest market square and numerous historical houses, palaces and churches with their magnificent interiors. Further evidence of the town’s fascinating history is provided by the remnants of the 14th-century fortifications and the medieval site of Kazimierz with its ancient synagogues in the southern part of town, Jagellonian University and the Gothic cathedral where the kings of Poland were buried. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first night out we look for Polish food and find ourselves in a Hungarian restaurant instead!

The next night we move to a nice little Jewish neighborhood-Kamimierz-with little cafes and jazz music up and down the street…and Internet hot spots to boot! There are fewer than 150 Jews in Krakow now. Most of the hotels in this neighborhood are full of young people from Israel visiting Auschwitz and Bzerzenka…surrounded by big burly bodyguards…

By the way In Poland, if you’re invited to dinner at someone’s house and you’ve had enough to eat, DO NOT clear your plate! This means that you want more, and your hosts will really get their feelings hurt if you refuse another helping. Same for drinking–always leave a little bit in the glass.

Czech Jazz in Cesky Krumlov

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In Prague, we phone the Chinese embassy and they suggest coming for an interview after which they would allow a visa in one week’s time to allow for the processing and paperwork. Because the embassy kept our passports for Visa registration we couldn’t leave the country as planned so we retreated to cooler Cesky Krumlov, a medieval town in the mountains in southwest Czech Republic to spend a couple days in a lovely pension owned by a charming old German man and his wife who served us breakfast in their backyard each morning. Cesky was hosting a three day Czech jazz festival so we heard some great renditions of the Beatles and BB King…the naturally conservative Czech people politely sitting…getting the hang of the Blues.

Young Czech Prime Minister

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The Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Stanislav Gross, is 32 years old and looks 20! We are realizing how little information we have gotten in the US in the last 15 years about the dynamics in and among Europe and the former communist satellites! “Our new Czech Prime Minister is very clever,” the young waitress says. “He and I went to the same school and we all liked his ideas and his speaking ability.” But I made the catastaphic mistake of calling her country “Czechoslovakia!” “You have made a big mistake, she says,” because we have been the Czech Republic since 1992!”

I have to quote a description out of “History Of The Present” by Timothy Garton Ash…written in the 1994: “The sleeping beauty of Central Europe has not merely been awakened by a prince’s velvet kiss. She has put on black tights and gone off to the disco. While Budapest developed gradually into a modern consumer city starting in the 1970’s, Prague has emerged from its time warp suddenly and explosively. Instead of the magical museum, lovely but decaying, there is color, noise, action: street performers, traffic jams, building works, thousands of young Americans…would-be Hemingways or Scott Fitzgeralds…millions of German tourists, betting shops, reserved parking places for France Telecom and Mitsubishi Corporation, beggars, junkies, Skpenritter of all countries, car alarms, trendy bars, gangsteers, whores galore, Bierstuben, litter, graffiti, video shops and Franz Kafka T-shirts.” We didn’t notice any American kids in this year of 2004…maybe they have moved on to other frontiers…the son of a friend brought one back to the US to marry a few years ago.

Built between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Old Town, the Lesser Town and the New Town speak of the great architectural and cultural influence enjoyed by this city since the Middle Ages. The many magnificent monuments, such as Hradcani Castle, St Vitus Cathedral, Charles Bridge and numerous churches and palaces, built mostly in the 14th century under the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. The historic center of Prague is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We took a city walking tour and when I commented to our leader that she knew a lot about the city’s architecture and architecture in general, she shared that yes, she was a civil engineer…but that it wasn’t her first choice because when the new government vetted the former communist members, of which her father was one, she said she was kept, by association, from choosing what she wanted to study in school. (It was common for people to belong to the communist party in order to get a good job, but not believe in it.) She said she would have preferred social science and psychology but she was told she had a choice of civil engineering. Bob thinks there is more to this story but it is a fact that the Czech parliament voted in a “lustration”law, that Vaclav Havel reluctantly signed, to vet all former Communist members. In any case, her husband is an artist and she showed us little noticed public art and memorials…like the small burial plot of a student shot by police in an early resistance demonstration and who is now honored as a hero on each anniversary. We get the feeling there are cautious watchers of this new democracy.
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Christmas In Patagonia 2003

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Bob begins his Patagonia leg…making his way through through Baliroche and Califate Argentina. He visited the Los Glaciares National Park by bus, which is an area of exceptional natural beauty, with rugged, towering mountains and numerous glacial lakes, including Lake Argentino, which is 160 km long. At its farthest end, three glaciers meet to dump their effluvia into the milky grey glacial water, launching massive igloo icebergs into the lake with thunderous splashes. Then he moved on through the Pampas to Puerto Montt, Chile.

The Magellanic “Jackass” penguins swimming out of the sea to mate were fascinating, he said.

It was cold, visibility was zero and tours into the Andes were expensive so Bob elected to take a lonely boat trip through the Fjords of Tierra del Fuego. He took a short hop down to Punta Arenas, the southernmost tip of Chile, at the strait of Magellan, where he spent Christmas watching it snow through his guesthouse window. Then two days on a boat chugging through the Fjords back up to Puerto Natales. Then flew back to Buenos Aires.

Naxi Old Town-Lijiang

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Lijiang has been designated a World Cultural Heritage Site by the United Nations. There are two kinds of Naxi dwellings built with wood, clay tiles, earth bricks and hard work…one is a courtyard enclosed by three dwellings and a wall and the other a courtyard enclosed by four buildings with a courtyard on each corner. If one story there will be three rooms….if two story there will be six rooms. The center room is used as a living room and the two side rooms are reserved as bedrooms for the elderly of the family. We watched the construction of one of these houses on a side street…after the pieces were laid out on the ground the villagers all came together for the house raising with ropes and manpower…the pieces being fitted together without the use of nails. We understand that after this the workers throw down candy and money and firecrackers are set off…then all work stops and the villagers share a meal together.

Just as the blood circulates through the human body, says the text on the back of the Lijiang map, so does the water, that originates just north of Lijiang from the springs at Black Dragon Pool, that runs through the Old Town. There are three main arteries of water that divide into succeding other arteries and veins that have been channeled by vertical concrete banks….the pebbled bottom visible through the crystal clear water. Restaurants, cafes and shops charmingly line these canals and the bridges over them.

On each trip to the center of town, the Square Market, we passed one of the many three-pit wells of the town. Granite walls separate the spring water into three separate picture perfect pits…the first used strictly for drinking water, the second for washing vegetables…the third for washing clothes. When the night falls, the local Naxi residents spontaneously gather for a circle dance around a bonfire…the Alili Dance that a woman pulled me into but was never able to master.

The town’s reconstruction after the earthquake coupled with the construction of a new airport has brought in an influx of Han Chinese entrepreneurs running tourist shops and restaurants for Han tourists that are pushing out the Naxi stalls. What used to be the preserve of hardy backpackers, Lonely Planet says, is now a major tourist destination for Han Chinese who only since the end of the Cultural Revolution have had an opportunity to travel the far reaches of their own country.

Lijiang & The Naxi People

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Once in Lijiang, we dumped our luggage at the Shangira Hotel (Y80 or about $10 for a double) that was recommended by Echo. I suspect she was getting a kickback for sending tourists there because it wasn’t anything special. Old Town Lijiang is charming and geared for Western tourists, which, after roughing it for a week was pretty OK with us…in fact I could have spent several weeks here…easy.

The Old Town of Lijiang, which an UNESCO World Heritage Site, is perfectly adapted to the uneven topography of this key commercial and strategic site, has retained a historic townscape of high quality and authenticity. Its architecture is noteworthy for the blending of elements from several cultures that have come together over many centuries. Lijiang also possesses an ancient water-supply system of great complexity and ingenuity that still functions effectively today.
We ate dinner at the Blue Papaya Italian Restaurant. There were two girls at the table next to us that were deep in conversation all through dinner; we wondered how they knew each other and what they were talking about…still sitting there when we left…

Sunday Dec 8
While eating breakfast on the street, I bartered with a Naxi woman for a bracelet…she asked Y250 I responded with 50 and we ended up at Y150. She recognized my earrings from Sapa Vietnam and gave me a thumbs up.

The internet terminals seemed to be divided up into one per cafe so I used the internet at Sakuras while Jana went to another cafe. I drank a 16 ounce Dali beer for Y6 or less than a dollar and emailed Jana at the next cafe that I was higher than a kite. She said she laughed out loud when she read it.

A guy from Canada and a guy from Texas were working at Sakura �s to help out the Chinese waitresses with the English speaking clientele…I said, hey you are from Canada…you’re supposed to be saying…and he finished my sentence…”aboot” and we laughed. And we said the guy from Texas was supposed to be talking in a drawl like a Texan…and he laughed too.

In the town square, Jana sat down to visit with a girl from Denmark while I listened to Naxi people chanting and singing under the trees.

We ate dinner at comfortable and cozy Sakuras that is owned by a Chinese/Korean couple…I had Hot Pot Naxi Noodles and Jana had Curry Beef Fried Rice. Later in the evening we met with Echo at our hotel…she shared her information about the matriarcal minority group that lives on Luku Lake east of Lijian and urged us to join her the next morning for the six hour bus ride there. We were still tired from our travels the week before so we declined. It is usually the guys who like going there as there is no such thing as marriage in the group and at the evening dances the girl invites her chosen man to come home with her by gently scratching the inside of his palm as she holds his hand. Children seldom know who their fathers are.

When I am back home and think about China, instead of remembering the Cultural Revolution and Tianenman Square I hope I remember the wonderful Naxi people I met here.