Season 2 Episode 3: Prague Me Baby One More Time ft. Poland

Welcome back to my blog! In this week's installment of me bragging about my sometimes exciting life, I'll be talking about my Poland and Prague trip, part of which was posted last week in my last blog post (so if you haven't read that yet, check it out!). I figured it should be seperated because the tone change would be a whiplash from "I was standing in a spot where approximately 1.5 million people died" and to "Yay look at this good Polish food and Prague was cool!"

So first up: Poland.
I was only really there for a day, maybe a day and a half. We stayed in the little town of Oswiecim, which is the town that the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum was located in. Actually, from our hotel, you could see the camp.

But it was definitely a nice area. I absolutely loved the Polish food, so why not brag about what I ate?

I mean, I've heard people rave about pierogi before but I was just like "eh. it's another kind of dumpling, what could be different?" Turns out that I should have investigated further because dumplings happen to be my favorite food and pierogis are no exception. I absolutely loved them!! While we were in Poland, I ate them at any chance I got.

The next day we had to leave for Prague. The train and then bus to Prague was around 7 hours so we decided to leave early so that we could have more time in Prague. By early, I mean 5 am. Which for a college student feels illegal. My theory has always been that if the sun isn't up, I should not be up. I love my sleep. 

But sure, I'll admit, it was a good idea, because we got to Prague around 2. The getting there part was not easy at all. We left on time, got on the right train and did everything we could to ensure that we were going to get to our bus on time. What Poland public transportation decided to do was to not be on time and show up about half an hour late, meaning we only had minutes to find and get to our bus. While we were freaking out, we were overheard by a Polish guy, who probably doubles as a saint in his spare time. 

He heard us and said that he could help us find our bus in time because we might get lost otherwise, even ran with us to our bus, when we only had a minute to get there. I could barely run (I was in the beginning phases of a nasty upper respiratory infection, of course I didn't know that yet) but had to run with a suitcase and very heavy backpack. But because of that person, we made our bus!!! We were so happy and I am eternally grateful to this person. It's one of those things I make sure to remember when I get pessimistic about the world: that there are still incredibly kind people who are willing to go the extra mile to help people they don't know at all!

But either way, after a sort of terrible long bus ride (there weren't any windows and it was so hot!!!!), we made it to Prague. I went to Prague in early January 2016, one of the last trips I went on before visiting home. I will be posting about that soon! I think my catch up posts will be on a different day than my regularly scheduled blog, so that I can eventually get caught up on my travels.

This was probably the perfect weekend to be in Prague because it was probably the first very warm weekend in Europe for a while! I had to put on sunscreen! It was very exciting for me. So we decided to celebrate this and go paddle boating on the Vlatava river, which flows directly through Prague. It was amazing and caused us to watch the sunset on the river. Absolutely amazing.

And, of course, this beautiful one of me, mid cough, with the Charles bridge in the background.

Very graceful.

So that was absolutely amazing, but so was the Czech food!!!! We asked what the most traditional food would be and he suggested goulash, pictured second. 

My stomach was so happy and so full!! We got to walk around Prague a lot and sight see. Our last day in Prague actually consisted of going to the Prague Zoo! This is probably the greatest zoo I've ever been to! It was such a beautiful, sunny day and I wanted to see some penguins.

There was also a very high lift to the top of the hill where the zoo was so you could go up and down easily, I thought it was cool but it was quite high and I got very nervous

But it's totally fine because I ended up getting this beautiful slushie for moral support.

That's all for now! Let me know if you ever have any questions!

Season 2 Episode 3: Reflections on the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

"For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe.

Auschwitz-Birkenau 

1940-1945"

Being both a German major and someone who has always loved history and taken as many history classes as possible, visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau has been something I've always wanted to do. I visited the camp on March 31st, 2017 and this is a day I will never forget. 

Please note that this post could be upsetting to read. I will not go into graphic detail, however this post may not be for everyone.

I figured the best way to explain this experience would not be to explain the historical aspects, considering most know and if not could easily look it up. I thought it would be easier to understand through my experiences and reflections.

I had known the majority of the information already, but I never comprehended the full scope of it. I also, out of respect to the victims and their families, took as little pictures as possible and decided to just experience as much as I could. 

My tour started at the famous gate. "Arbeit Macht Frei" or "work sets you free". At the beginning of the tour, I felt how I always felt when seeing memorabilia of the Holocaust: disturbed. But it's hard to grasp crimes of this nature. At the sites that I toured, approximately 1.5 million people were murdered. That number is incredibly hard to conceive in its entirety, even when you have been learning about it for years. It's almost more difficult to comprehend the devastation when you're walking along paths that the victims themselves walked. The following quote on a memorial helped me to understand it better.

Walking through the sites where people were senselessly murdered can bring this into perspective. There is the famous exhibit of victim's hair that was forcefully chopped off before they were brought into the gas chambers. It is gathered into enormous glass tanks, weighing approximately 4,000 pounds. I saw hair of all kinds: loose and gathered into ponytails and braids too. My friend that I was traveling with saw a medium length blonde braid and said "...that looks like my hair." I could tell that that made the exhibit have more of an impact on her.  

Another exhibit that is relatively well known was one that had the same layout as the hair, but with shoes of the victims. Throughout my six hour long tour, I actually cried twice. This was one of those times. I was walking around the glass tanks, inspecting the shoes when I saw the tiniest pair: shoes belonging to a baby who most certainly couldn't even walk yet. 

The other experience that really made me break down included a big, empty room where home videos were projected on the wall. All were of victims of the holocaust only a few years before they died. There were videos of weddings, kids playing in pools, babies learning how to walk, and all sorts of regular activities that we participate in. That really helped me feel connected to these victims and humanized them as well.

Something that I found interesting was that there were a lot of Jewish men in groups walking around. I didn't notice it much until I walked through the only remaining gas chamber in Auschwitz. I was very upset walking through, so I almost tried to walk really fast. But I noticed a group of Jewish men sobbing and praying together and it made me stop and experience my surroundings more completely. It helped to realize how far-reaching these crimes were on families and the world itself, even to this day. These men did not even have the privilege of meeting many of their relatives.

After Auschwitz, I visited Birkenau. For those that don't know, Birkenau was a sub-camp of Auschwitz, whose purpose was more for killing than it was for hard labor. Its gates are incredibly famous and I got a few pictures of it from both the outside and inside.

Here I also learned more about the medical experiments conducted on victims and their living conditions, because the living conditions were a lot worse in Birkenau than in Auschwitz, because Auschwitz was a former military camp for Polish soldiers.

One of the most interesting things I did unknowingly, was that I walked the path of those who were unknowingly sentenced to die in the gas chamber.

The white sandy path to the left is the one I'm talking about. It was a weird feeling to walk the same path that many people who were soon after murdered did. As opposed to Auschwitz, the gas chambers here had been destroyed by the Nazis before the liberation of the camps.

As much as I wish that this was the extent of my feelings, I'd like to also bring up how some other people I was around dealt with this situation. I was on a tour that lasted about six hours. It was definitely a long day and quite hot out, but this considered, some people were a bit disrespectful.

Many people chose to take pictures. I am not against this at all, I just personally decided not to. I think it should be up to the person, but I didn't really appreciate that there were a few people who took pictures with their phones, cameras or tablets and had their shutter sounds on, but really loud. For some camera sounds it is completely normal, but with phones and tablets, it is not hard to turn that off. It was really intrusive and interrupted the experience for me personally. I even spotted one person who was playing games on his iPad while we were in a housing barrack! Technically this was allowed but I thought it was weird.

However, there were certain sites where taking pictures was specifically not allowed, such as where the hair exhibit was, the gas chambers and a couple of cells where people starved or were beaten to death. Even at those sites, some still took pictures.

Another weird thing I saw, that I personally consider to be disrespectful (or at the very least, super weird), were people who brought selfie sticks and took smiley pictures with their friends in front of buildings. I saw this a lot more than I imagined I would. I genuinely don't understand the appeal of this. To take a happy picture of yourself where people died is a bit weird to me. Especially in selfie style or "hey can you take a picture of me real quick?" type of picture.

Of course, tourism is important to this area because it helps funding and can help expand people's knowledge of the crimes and tragedies, but I don't understand why someone would be comfortable with having these pictures. 

It reminds me of the recent project by Israeli-German artist, Shahak Shapira, called "Yolocaust" where he photoshops pictures of people being goofy at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located in Berlin and photoshops them into pictures of concentration camps and pictures from the Holocaust. (This is something I saw when I was in Berlin, post to come!) Here is a link to an article about it, the pictures are very graphic so I decided to not include them in my post, but it's worth checking out. 

Even if you don't agree with me about taking pictures, I think we can all (or at least most of us, who have some semblance of a soul) can agree that graffiti on the walls in the museum is inappropriate. What I actually saw a lot of and almost could not believe, was that there were many swastikas carved on the walls recently by tourists. No, not by SS guards in the 40s, by people who visited the museum within the last couple of years. There were various attempts to cover it up but they were still visible, even pointed out to us by the tour guide. I don't understand, nor do I want to understand why anyone would do that. 

Overall, my experience at the museum was incredibly important to me. To be able to even sort of comprehend what it must have been like (there's no way I ever could entirely, of course) was very important and a very impactful day overall.

What do you think? Should pictures be allowed at this sorts of places? Should there be more restrictions? Less restrictions? Let me know what you think! Have a great week, see you next Wednesday!

Season 2 Episode 2: Revenge of the Ski Lift

Hello loyal blog followers!

I simultaneously can and also cannot believe that it has been such a long time since I've written anything! I've been doing a lot of traveling recently and am now back in my apartment in Graz! I'll try to get caught up on old posts that I might have missed as well. Stay tuned for my trips to places such as Berlin, Prague, Auschwitz, and a whole lot of Italy.

You may remember one of my posts where I detailed my skiing experiences and how I'm absolutely terrible at skiing. I decided to give that another shot one weekend! This was March 24th-26th.

I took ski lessons once again, but it went a little differently this time.

So here I am, it's my second time on a ski lift ever.

This high in the air!

I didn't notice, but one of my ski poles got caught in the lift. As we were getting off (or supposed to at least) I was caught in the top part of the ski lift but unknowingly, tried to ski off anyway. I fell really hard forward and my pole came loose, but in the process I twisted my knee. (Graceful, I know.) This all happened quite fast but what happened faster was the next group of people trying to get off the ski lift behind me. They were about to, essentially, ski over my face and all looked horrified.

Me, with my knee still twisted, laying in the snow and with my skis still attached to my ski boots, had to crawl out of the way, twisting my knee even further but the alternative wasn't much better. I finally got myself up and was freaking out. I was incredibly glad that I didn't get more seriously injured but was very certain that I wouldn't be able to ski for the rest of the day. I expected to be mad that I couldn't ski, but as I was on the lift back down, I felt weirdly relieved.

I reflected on this for a while, why I would be glad to have been slightly injured, when I realized that I don't actually like skiing.

I know. After a lot of money spent and another day of lessons and ski rentals staring me in the face, I realized that I'd rather hike and sit in the snow than ski. So I took it easy the rest of the day and the next day went back to the mountain, this time only doing what I actually wanted to do.

During my last ski trip, I had wondered if I really like skiing or was just doing it because it was an "experience" that I wanted to try. After three days of it last time, I was moderately relieved when it was over. This time I barely lasted a day.

Maybe everything is worth a shot once or twice. But I realized that I shouldn't spend time on things that don't genuinely make me happy, even when seemingly everyone around me was having the time of their lives. Maybe this is just coming from the mindset of someone who only has a few months left here, but I think it's important to spend time doing things that you actually want to do. (Excluding responsibilities, you know what I'm saying. Don't use this as an excuse to not take out the garbage!)

When I finally spent time on the mountain relaxing and walking around and eating a lot, I found myself to be much more at peace and grateful for my experiences, even if it was not what anyone else there was doing.

This weekend not only made me realize this seemingly obvious lesson, but also allowed me to meet some really great people (who I can hopefully just hang out with and not ski...)

And now...the pictures! Hope you enjoy these courtesy of the new camera I got for Christmas from my parents!

See you in my next post!

Season 2 Episode 1: Jet Lag, Home, More Jet Lag

Hi everyone!

I'm finally back! I apologize for not blogging for a while but between finals, getting ready to go home, being home and then coming back, my blog didn't quite feel like a priority. I figured I'd have fun and report back when I'm done. Since I traveled a little bit in January as well, I'll make those into their own posts. Also, I'll add little FAQs throughout the post because I got asked a the same questions a lot!

In February, after 5 months of not seeing anyone from back home, I finally got to visit!

My flight was around 10 am that morning so I stayed the night in Vienna in my very own hotel room! It felt very adult. I had a really hard time sleeping because I was so excited so I took a walk around the area I was in after I had dinner. 

I definitely didn't realize I'd be experiencing some of the last of the snow for a really long time!

But the next morning at 7 am, I left for the airport, equipped with about 50 pounds of luggage.

I didn't need nearly that much for so short of a time back home, but I figured I should start bringing some things home so I wouldn't have to pack as much come July.

My flight was broken down into two parts: the first being a two hour flight to Paris, a two hour layover and then an eight hour flight to Newark.

This is Charles Degaulle Airport (CDG), where I had my layover. My flight got delayed so it added an extra hour to my layover, but I still somehow managed to get to Newark at the same time they predicted before the delay. Weird.

You may notice that CDG is beautiful. It's hard to appreciate this beauty when it is so big and impossible to navigate sometimes. I'm so glad this flight was in the same terminal as the one I got off of...it was a different story for my return trip when it took me over 45 minutes to get to the right terminal. Not as pretty then. 

Finally, they call my row number, I get up to scan my ticket and a quietish alarm goes off. As I'm about to say "I'm not a criminal, I swear" the flight attendant informs me, in her very French accent, that my seat was changed. "We upgraded you to Delta+ for free. It's an aisle seat, you're gonna love it!!" So I get to my seat and she was right! I had enough room to stretch my legs all the way out! This was never before experienced.

Despite the deliciously comfortable seat, I had to keep myself awake, despite having gotten up at 6, after I went to bed at 3 am. I figured if I stayed awake, it would ease the jet lag later on since Austria is six hours ahead of the US. But after 8 hours of watching Deadpool, Bob's Burgers and being occasionally interrupted by flight attendants handing me weird food, I made it to New Jersey!!!

My friends picked me up and I stayed up at Montclair for a few days. It was so great to catch up with everyone and tell them all about my journey.

FAQ: How did it feel to be back in the USA? 

WEIRD. It felt weird at first but I readjusted quickly. I'd often find myself almost answering people in German, despite the fact that most of the time, someone was not speaking German to me. Also restaurants are weird when you're used to the European restaurant way. Not in the I'm so cultured and used to a fine European dining experience way, because trust me, Austria still has McDonald's and I still go there. Just in the way that because the servers here do not have wages that are tip-based, you have a completely different atmosphere. That was probably the only thing that confused me for a little bit.

FAQ: How did it feel to see your (friends, family, boyfriend) again?

Friends/boyfriend: 

When I first saw them, I expected to cry or scream or jump up and down. Maybe it was that I had been awake for almost 24 hours, but my reaction was more one of peace and pure happiness. Of course I hugged everyone for probably too long, but over all it felt like I had never even left in the first place. Also, being able to spend their birthday and Valentine's Day with your significant other after not having seen them for five months is an amazing experience. Definitely one of the highlights of me coming back. The picture below is from my Galentine's Dinner. I missed american sushi so much!

Family:

My parents and sisters came to pick me up because we were going to visit my Grandma for her birthday. I remember waiting on the sidewalk in the sun (it was so warm in Jersey!) and seeing the car pull up and smiling really big. As soon as the car came to a stop, my sisters ran out and hug-tackled me. My parents were right behind. That was an awesome feeling. After that, we drove to my grandmas. I thought we'd be having lunch with my grandma, but in attendance were also my cousins and my Aunts and Uncles!! It was so great to see everyone, especially my adorable younger cousins because the last time I saw my youngest cousin, he was only a few days old and he got so big! Being so immediately surrounded with so many of my family members was really nice. Plus they're almost all dedicated followers of this blog, so I got a little yelled at for not posting for a while.

The picture below is one my grandma showed me. This time when all four Toich sisters hung out, we didn't make Julia cry...hopefully. (From left to right: Margaret, Julia, Laurie, me)

Most importantly, my dog:

I'm not kidding. I missed my dog so much! She's so fat and old and sassy. Normally, she does not like me unless she's bored or I'm sad and she gives me some pity cuddles. (I'll take them, I'm not above it.) She was MILDLY EXCITED TO SEE ME. I know that doesn't sound like a big deal but compared to outright ignoring me, this was a huge step up. 

After being home for about a week, she went back to ignoring me, just like old times.

I found myself wishing that my time at home had moved more slowly as I was packing my things to head back to Graz. Which brings me to my next FAQ.

FAQ: How did it feel to go back to Graz? Did you have trouble? Did you want to go back?

It was difficult to say goodbye again. That I can say for sure.  But I didn't fall back into my usual routine that I had when I was in Jersey for about 20 years straight (new high score?). Part of me always knew it would soon be time to go back, but that I needed to still be in the moment and see as many people as I could before I went back. It was a hectic time but I don't regret it at all. I really feel like I needed that time back home to decompress and relax, especially after finals, and see all of my loved ones. The goodbyes were bittersweet and being back in Graz was weird at first, but I was also glad to go back because last semester has just made me want to travel all the time and that's really hard to do in the US. 

So I was on my way, sad to go but excited for the new semester. 

This has been a great way for me to welcome my next four months in Graz. This week has flown by and I'm sure the coming weeks will fly by too. But I'll keep you updated!

Here are some pictures I've taken since I've been back in Graz or on the way back.