Thursday, August 4, 2016

Traveling in Poland

It's an established fact Mickey Mouse makes the best ice cream with chocolate sauce in Rzeszow, Poland.  Apparently people queue up in a little corridor inside a building in the promenade for hours to eat this ice cream.
     You are supposed to wear your Sunday best to walk down the promenade with your partner, family, or medium size, well-behaved dog on a leash, at a perfectly synchronized stroll, pretending not to notice if anyone else is watching you.  Of course you know you're being watched, because you're wearing high heels or trendy sandals, are well-coiffed, and your outfit is casually chic. 

If you do happen to see someone you know, then hugs and kisses (three on the cheek) are acceptable, but otherwise you are totally oblivious to the other people walking next to you, sitting on benches, or in one of the numerous sidewalk cafes.  You must hold the hand of your significant other to establish ownership, stroll down to get your ice cream, and then stroll slowly back down the promenade eating it, without getting any chocolate sauce on your perfect outfit.  These are the unwritten rules for a Sunday afternoon in southeast Poland.                          
Clearly I am spending way too much time on this promenade, but short of going to church, which is right across the street from my hostel so I can hear the bells toll and the people singing day and night anyway, going to the museums and pretending to read the signs in Polish, or watching movies in Polish at the cinema, there isn't much to do other than people watch to the strumming of the street musicians.  They even speak Polish in the Irish Pub, which is aptly named the Irish Pub, and is across from the London Pub and Club.
   
This is not really a tourist city, so the only organized tour is the underground cellars beneath the town square where you can see a plastic replica of the remains of some poor Jewish person who hid there trying to escape the Nazis. Clearly they weren't successful in escaping, because only a few hundred of the 24,000 Jews in town survived.  Very little evidence remains of this once vibrant Jewish quarter.  Most of their synagogues and cemeteries were destroyed.  Only a few plaques on buildings remind us of the once infamous Rzeszow ghetto.   

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