Entry 3 Oct. 29, 4:40, Bus

Entry 3 Oct. 29, 4:40, bus

We are now in Warsaw, we’ve turned the movie “the Pianist” off in order to get all our stuff together and get off the bus. We’re visiting a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw central, and we’ll be gone for about two hours. I’m expecting thousands of graves.

Entry 2 Oct. 29, 2:34, Bus

So far everything looks how I imagined, only instead of black and white it’s full of colors: orange, faded green and yellow. All I can see are vast grassy fields, with patches of deciduous tree. The houses in this area are sparse, spread out and old looking. They are made of brick, wood or concrete.
It’s true that we’re in the country, so this scene could be similar to one else where, not in Poland. We’re now stopping at a gas station for a two- minute washroom break; soon we’ll start a holocaust movie. The bus ride is four hours; I may either try to sleep, or I’ll stare out my window. We aren’t allowed to eat on these nice, new buses, so I’m saving my delicious looking yoghurt for the next real pit stop. I was told that being on this trip makes you not want to eat, that the mind frame we’ll be in will be too gloomy we wont be bothered to eat. This may be my last day of feeling “normal.”

-Netanya Bushewsky

Journal Entry 1: Airport, Katowice, the first hour

It wouldn’t be the truth to say I’ve come here with no expectations, that I have no idea what I’m going to see, that I haven’t already built up the image of vast grassland and forest surrounding, that I haven’t made Poland in my head to be the gloomiest, most colorless place on earth. I would be lying if I said I haven’t taken all the black and white photos of a corrupted and destroyed Poland, with barbed wire and vast fields, endless dead leafless forests and crumbled, small houses, clumped together in small communities. I can’t help but visualize that nothing has changed, that they’ve kept everything the same, that some how, 60 years later, Post war, would be the exact same as pre and present WWII; the same clothes; the same uncertainty in their eyes; the same slightly hunched over posture. Everything I’ve imagined I’d see, will not include anything modern or futuristic, But even now I’m getting the feeling I’ve been slightly unfair in my judgment.

 I already know the cities going to be nice. No country will ever not clean its self up after being war ridden 60 years prior.  I feel slightly hungry now, but for the sake of this trip, I feel shouldn’t eat. I need to feel hungry; I need to wait for satiation, which I possibly might never feel.

-Netanya Bushewsky