By Hannah Gordon
Czech Correspondent
If there is one thing I’ve learned from my study abroad experience so far, it’s that some things will stick with you for a lifetime and others you just hope will remain.
Two weeks ago, my friends and I traveled to Poland with a group of students from our university. After an overnight bus ride that resulted in no sleep for the night, we were shuffled into a youth center and served a Polish-style breakfast. Hint: there was a lot of sausage involved.
That morning we visited Auschwitz. It’s estimated that nearly 1.1 million people of all races and religions died on those grounds, but no one really knows the exact number. I took the “last walk” at Auschwitz II Birkenau, just as victims would have when they got off of the trains and were told they were going to shower. I could do it without fear, but not without the heaviest of hearts. It was hard to stomach.
We spent the next two days exploring Kraków, which, after a night in the city center, was able to lift our spirits a bit. On our last day in Poland we stopped at the Wieliczka Salt Mine. We descended 54 flights of stairs to explore the wealthiest industry Poland historically offered. And, yes, I did lick the salt walls.
I spent this past weekend in Berlin. I have to admit that Berlin is my least favorite place I’ve visited thus far, but that doesn’t mean it was at all bad. Berlin is an amazing city, but it was reminiscent of a generic American city. It looked like a smaller, cleaner New York City, if you will.
Although Berlin has a rich history, I didn’t feel it as I walked the streets. Even admiring the art on the Berlin wall, while a phenomenal experience, didn’t bring on the emotion that Praha and Kraków gave as I walked walk their cobblestone streets.
Every experience abroad is more vivid than at home. I feel as though I’m obligated to take everything in as much as humanly possible because I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get to experience it again.
I keep a travel journal to preserve as many details and memories as possible because I know I will forget exactly how cobblestone feels beneath my feet; the smell of bakeries on every street corner; the sounds of trams whizzing by and the foreign languages that surround me. Those are precisely the details I want to preserve. I’ll always remember where I’ve been and the best things I saw, but how I felt, how the air smelled, what I tasted and the true spirit of the place can only be kept by documenting them through various media.
I just have to hope that it’s enough to relive this experience when I’m 80 years old.
gordonhr13@bonaventure.edu
