Non-Linear

After a month where the posts poured out of me, I am finding it hard to get going on this Eastern Europe trip theme. I am immersed in the topic but yet somehow I can't seem to figure out what or how to post.

There are many rational reasons for that: The trip was a long time ago. I didn't write about it at the time, my photos are a jumble, I don't have many souvenirs or other prompts. We didn't speak the languages of the places we visited and rarely had a common language with those we met. Everything was a little vague even as it unfolded. And then, of course, here in the present, I am busy, tired, sick and otherwise occupied by my day-to-day life.

But, I don't think that my lack of direction is about anything rational. My hunch is that the real issue is that revisiting this trip taps into forces far greater than anything I can describe in words or photographs. On this trip, we witnessed so much: the end of the Cold War and the unraveling of Soviet domination; the strange repercussions of command economies gone awry; the tail end of more than 50 years of war and oppression, difficult years that followed centuries of conquests and struggles for independence; the palpable and recent memory of World War II; the ghost of a culture almost completely obliterated; the remains of unspeakable horror, death and destruction. It was astonishing yet almost ordinary, foreign yet so close. We were there exploring our roots, and we found traces of roots that never really belonged where they had grown, but yet can never be wholly uprooted from that ground.

Our trip began in Czechoslovakia where it wasn't so personal, where the oppression was milder, the destruction lighter. I keep thinking that writing about Bruno should be simple...and maybe it will be, but so far I haven't been able to find any ease. I am realizing that I need to take some steps back and find a new approach. I cannot simply rely on telling this story in a linear or chronological fashion, but instead I need to try to capture a little of the swirling thoughts and sensations within. It feels important to go beyond the details of our itinerary or the images in the photographs. It feels essential to pay attention to the silent spaces and the ineffable currents.

And so, I restart this re-telling with a drawing. An image drawn from my mind's eye of Oświęcim, Poland, the town whose name in German is Auschwitz (the camp was on its outskirts).

"There are sunlit roads woven within the dark places."  11.14.13

12 Kislev 5774

Quick Update

Between a weekend jaunt to New York City with my mother to attend my aunt's art opening and a cold that has my family in its grip, blog posts are taking a back seat. Nevertheless, I didn't want 11.12.13 to go by without some official mention. Cool date, huh?

While in New York, we had dinner with a cousin who has been doing a lot of research about family history. Her parents were born in Galicia, Poland, and survived World War II by making their way to Soviet Georgia. Quite a tale! We also spent a while at brunch with my aunt and uncle reminiscing about our trip to Eastern Europe. It was fun to remember with them and to fill in some details that I had forgotten.

When I'm feeling better, I'll be back with more. 

Until then, a photo of Grand Central Station taken with my new camera!

Grand Central Station, 11.10.13

10 Kislev 5774 

Out of the Jumble

I'm sorting through my photos, postcards, and other artifacts from my trip, and it's a bigger task than I had thought it would be despite the limited collection. I broke my grandparents' cardinal rule and didn't label my photos. They're all in a jumble, so I'm having to go back to the negatives to attempt to put them in chronological order.  

I thought I'd start out with a photo (not my own) of our transportation... 

Opel Omega (ours was blue) -photo: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Omega

and our lodging... 

Somehow we all five fit in there fairly comfortably. We stayed in a pension in Vienna the first two nights, and then drove to this campground outside of Bruno. It was pretty nice with a big bath house and a restaurant nearby where we ate most of our meals. We didn't realize it at the time, but they were some of the best meals we would have during the trip. 

The first evening there we went up to a castle with a broad overlook. Bruno was, at the time, the 3rd largest city in Czechoslovakia, (now it's the 2nd largest in the Czech Republic). Although it was clearly a relatively large city, my memory is that it was very quiet, almost deserted by evening. It seemed that we were some of the only tourists in town, certainly the only Americans.

More from Bruno soon... 

5 Kislev 5774 

An Invitation to Travel

Early in 1990 when I was a sophomore in college, I received an invitation from my aunt Ruth, my mother's sister, to accompany her and her family on a trip to Eastern Europe that summer. She and my uncle thought the moment in history (just after the collapse of the Berlin Wall) was not to be missed, and they wanted an extra set of hands to help out with their two young sons, 9 and almost 6. I was only too happy to accept their invitation! 

I applied for a passport and the necessary visas and got plane tickets to meet them in Vienna at the end of June. The plan was to rent a car and make a two-week loop through parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Other than wanting to see Eastern Europe during this pivotal point in history, the highlights of the trip were to be two-fold: first, a stop in Bruno, Czechoslovakia to see where Gregor Mendel conducted his famous experiments on pea plants and helped to establish modern genetics (my uncle is a geneticist); and second, a journey through Galicia, the region in now-Poland where two of my great-grandparents were born. We would also spend a few days in the Tatras mountains, which are on the border between now-Slovakia and Poland, before returning to Vienna.

I thought I was signing up for a fun, interesting little trip. I had no idea what a strong influence it would have on me, on my Jewish identity, and on my world view. I returned changed and eager to explore more about what I had seen and experienced, but I did not find much information available to me. There were no courses about Eastern Europe (other than the Soviet Union) at my college, and I didn't know where else to seek information or who to talk to about the big questions I was trying to formulate.

Twenty-three years later, not only have the places we visited changed drastically, but much of the information I sought then is now probably at my fingertips. I am excited to spend some time re-acquainting myself with the questions that this trip stirred in me.

 3 Kislev 5774

Transition

It felt good to take a little break from this space after the intense process of writing daily in October. As it happens, this evening also marks the beginning of the new Hebrew month of Kislev, so the calendar gave me a seamless return to the Jewish calendar for the next chapter in this sabbatical. 

One morning last week, I awoke with an unbidden thought: what if I write next about my trip to Eastern Europe in the summer of 1990? It is another life-changing event in my life that I have not yet taken the time to curate for myself. It was a long time ago, and I didn't write much about it at the time, but I did take one or two rolls of film, so I have some sort of jumping off point. 

I don't have a clear vision of where this topic will take me, but I am excited by the idea. It is likely to provide a nice bridge to some of the explorations about my ancestors that I am interested in doing, and maybe it will also provide a bridge to a future trip back to Eastern Europe that I would love to take in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile, I am also feeling a strong pull to get back to creating art on a somewhat regular basis. Especially with all this writing about memories, I'm finding that I need to do something to ground myself in the here and now. (In that spirit, I include some images from this past week.)

My idea for the month of Kislev (and perhaps Tevet) is to alternate between writing about the trip, and related topics, and making some kind of artwork. I am thinking that I wil try to produce/create something six days a week, and return to taking a proper Shabbat on the seventh. I am not sure yet if that means I will have three or six posts a week, or something else entirely. Stay tuned!

1 Kislev 5774