A TRIP TO GERMANY AND POLAND
After a precarious on-and-off period of employment in toxic workplaces, I finally decided to stop working altogether for awhile. I say this honestly without exaggeration: I was physically sick of being required to work for a “boss.” I'm not trying to be funny when I say this: I strongly considered walking the earth like Sam Jackson at the end of Pulp Fiction. If there’s one Holden Caulfield thing that has remained with me in my adulthood, it’s the difficulty I have with submitting to someone. I have my own ideas about shit most of the time, and I don’t like to be “led.” How are there bosses when no one knows what the fuck is going on half the time? It’s all just a cosmic guess. We’re on a planet flying through space, explain to me how you’re “in charge” of anything?
Don’t get me wrong: it’s alright if a higher up person is good-natured, and gives great advice. But from my experience humans tend to let power get the better of them.
So on that note of the failure of humanity...I finally decided to make a journey I’ve always wanted to: Germany & Poland. I’m not sure why, but I’ve been a lifelong student of Holocaust history for as long as I can remember. It’s astounding to me how poorly humans can potentially treat each other. When I first learned about the Holocaust in school, I remember several girls crying, a couple boys walking out the class, and me sitting there wide-eyed. I knew the rest of my life wouldn’t be the same.
All the books I’ve read over the years, the documentaries I’ve watched, and University courses I took all culminated to this trip. I felt like I needed closure on the whole “being obsessed with Holocaust history” thing. The plan was to go to Berlin first, and then visit Auschwitz in Poland afterward.
When I got out the airport in Germany, it felt pretty damn strange. I don’t travel often, and for some reason I was thinking there would be more stressful shit for me to go through once exiting the airplane and getting my luggage. But no...I literally just walked out the airport like Denzel Washington leaving prison at the end of American Gangster. I stood there for a second, a brown guy in Berlin, wondering if I was committing a crime or something for exiting the airport so willy nilly. There was no intimidating customs guy to report to or anything that asked me what I wanted to do in Germany. I just walked out and found a cab.
On the way to my hotel it dawned on me how strongly Hitler’s regime had failed: there I was sitting in a cab being driven by a Muslim dude who told me, “I’ve lived in Berlin all my life.” I passed by fancy stores like we’d have where I’m from (Toronto), and kids smoking cigarettes and scrolling through Facebook sadly on their phones.
These types of reminders occurred frequently during my time in Germany. You can buy a fucking donair for five Euros, and at the same little restaurant there’ll be 70 year old German men drinking beers and a group of Muslims (who aren’t allowed to drink alcohol) hanging out and surprisingly managing to co-exist.
I’m obviously not the first one to notice, but Europe is goddamn beautiful. The architecture, the women, the culture, and the way of life there. There’s a million different Wes Anderson-y things happening every day all over Europe; at one point I knocked on a door of a building for directions to a place that should’ve been nearby, and someone’s hand popped out and pointed at another building, and then disappeared.
Just so the trip wasn’t completely depressing, I tried to break up the somber nature of history with a few lighthearted things. One night I went to a jazz club; another thing I’ve always wanted to do. As a writer, I like non-intrusive jazz music to help move things along while I work. Watching it live was a completely new experience for me! It was a tiny room full of sweaty people, and a band playing with a guy talking between songs. He had a real charm about him because he tried telling really poetic stories, but couldn’t speak English very well and kept getting frustrated. He’d say things like, “This is a song called The Wind of the Summer. It’s like...you know when you are reading a book on the beach, but maybe the wind sweeps away a page and maybe you do not notice. And then you read this page you have already read before....But it is new to you. You have already read this page, but it has taken on a new meaning now.....Ah...I don’t think I’m explaining it properly, maybe I should just play...”
I visited a museum with Anne Frank’s diary, and some of her stuff. I was amazed: there were pictures of her hanging out with a dog, and a rabbit and vacationing and doing regular shit! I thought about my cat back at home, and started missing him. I’ll never forget seeing her writing displayed with those photos. When people think about Anne Frank it tends to just be a name for a lot of people. Or they just remember the last part of her life. They don’t think about the whole story necessarily. But to stand there and be reminded that she was a living breathing person with a full life...it was overwhelming for me.
I visited another museum in Berlin, and as I was looking at a bunch of photos of the perpetrators and I started thinking seriously about what could’ve gone through their heads. I feel like hatred towards a particular group reveals more about the person who hates more than the group. Here’s what I mean by that: on another day I tested this theory. I was at a memorial for Holocaust victims, with several giant tombstones intended to represent the insane amount of people that died. There were signs put up asking people to not walk on the tombs, and to my surprise there were actually a couple people that did! They stood there standing on tombs dedicated to lives lost tragically. I have a very dark sense of humour, and in my brain when I saw people standing on the tombs and taking selfies smiling, I thought to myself, “There should be a separate Holocaust for people who disrespect Holocaust monuments.” And then I thought, “That’s too dark. What does that say about me? They might not know what these tombs are for....Maybe I should be more patient with people.”
After a few days in Germany, it was finally time for Poland. Even though I was visiting one of the darkest places humanity has ever gone, I was impressed with how gorgeous Poland has become. You can’t go longer than a couple of seconds without a pretty girl walking past you. Even the old ladies have a beauty to them. I must’ve fallen in love about 100 times just walking around in Krakow. The girl that worked at my hotel was absolutely stunning. She had the nicest smile I’ve ever seen. And she spoke in a bit of a Borat accent with Polish mixed in her English that only made me love her more. “Yakshemash,” and “Chinqui” are real Polish phrases they say all the time there: I was in heaven with this girl.
But there was a small problem: she was 19, and I’m 25. I have a rule that I don’t date girls younger than me, but I started rationalizing, “It’s only 6 years. You were 19 in 2011, that’s not a big deal. You should ask her out.” I started coming up with excuses to go visit her at the front desk even though I didn’t need to at all. For a brief period I even flirted with the idea of transcending language barriers like Colin Firth in Love Actually and somehow communicating with her and eventually convincing her to move to Toronto with me and starting a whole life. The fantasy became a whole thing...But then I realized I had watched the movie Love Actually too many fucking times to distinguish life from fantasy. After all the rejection I’ve faced from people over the years, why the fuck would it magically change? Also: the song “Just My Imagination” by The Temptations coming on my iPhone on shuffle sent a clear message to me. I was being optimistic and fucking dumb.
Whenever you travel there’s always this idea lurking that you can completely start over. And that maybe people will see you a different way and you can be a completely new person. At home in Toronto, full days go by without any communication from anyone whatsoever, except maybe a meow from my cat. Full days go by where I don’t hear my voice, and I forget I have the ability to even smile. In Poland, the girls were so friendly and kind to me I almost felt this idea of “starting over” being a reality.
But getting laid is not what the trip was for. “Sex tourism” is obviously a real thing, but that’s another trip for another time. It was time to get real. I was fucking headed to Auschwitz: I couldn’t get hard even if I tried.
On the bus ride there we watched a documentary that was really graphic.
It was one of the most eye opening, surreal experiences in my goddamn life. I don’t know how comfortable I’d be giving a Yelp-styled “review” of the tour, because that’s completely inappropriate. But what I can say is: the tour is absolutely worth doing. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering why on earth anyone would spend their summer months wanting to visit such an awful reminder of what humanity is capable of. I’m 25: I should’ve chosen a beach somewhere sunny and pranced around half naked with other idiots my age getting drunk. Somewhere with coconuts cut in half that they dump vodka in and give you a straw. Cuba, Punta Cana, Panama, Florida. I feel like I’ve done those types of vacations so many fucking times. It’s just basic fun for people that have a little bit of money. But seriously, how many times can you drink alcohol in the sun? There should be a point where you do something new.
I wanted more. At Auschwitz I saw things I’ve never seen before. There is nothing as eye-opening as taking the same walk prisoners were forced to make. Seeing the horrific living conditions they were forced to live in. Seeing a pile of shoes that once belonged to people just like you. A gigantic pile of stolen belongings. Or a giant display of all the shaved off hair that has been preserved. You’re standing there looking at all this stuff, and feeling all of these emotions, and you think, “This only happened in the fucking 1940s. That’s not even that long ago.” A chill goes up and down your goddamn spine as you walk through the gas chambers where your fellow species killed your fellow species in the worst ways.
My tour guide mentioned that in the period of time the tour has been around, not many people have visited. It’s understandable, but it’s also sad that so many people aren’t making the journey. I walked out of there feeling different. I could write all day, but words can’t describe what it’s like walking on dirt that was once drenched in blood. I stood in a courtyard where people were literally forced to face a brick wall and shot not so long ago.
It’s awful, but it’s worth experiencing. It’s the closest thing we have to witnessing the history of human cruelty firsthand, and it’s very valuable. The whole time I was in there I kept thinking, “This is where ignorance winds up.” Humans are always pushing the envelope: that doesn’t just go for technology, it unfortunately includes hatred as well. I think it’s very important to remember how awful humans can be in order to move forward. By seeing what complete pieces of shit humans can potentially be, it helps you to think clearly about the type of person you’d like to be instead, the impact you want to have, and maybe how you can leave the world a better place than when you found it.
