Thursday, June 19, 2008

Back to Work

Just a quick post to keep track of things. The past 2 weeks have been nothing short of hectic. After coming back from the eastern europe trip (which i haven't even finished blogging about) and returning to the home we had in copenhagen, it was a mad 5 days of trying to sightsee around the beautiful city i was gonna leave. saying goodbye was hard, and it warrants another post altogether - a reflection of the last 5 months. streets and places were just becoming all too familiar, and new friendships were just being cemented, but time whisks us all away. the sense of reluctance was eased by the rush of packing up and trying to squeeze my danish life into 40kg, and then move to the uk and turn into a londoner for the next 2.5 months. packing was a nightmare, and getting them to the cph airport, past the baggage check-in, out of gawick airport, onto the super-backward-tube-with-neverending-flights-of-stairs-with-no-escalators-or-lifts was nothing short of a miracle, which i will probably never find the time to record down in writing.


jetted off to italy for a week and a day with mummy, sharon and david, and then came another round of goodbyes and another luggage-packing and airport-going fiasco. had a day and a half to settle into my new place, and before i knew it, i was thrown into the cycle of waking up early in the morning and getting to work.


today was my 4th day of work. today i managed to get to work in 20 minutes, but i wasn't so fortunate on the 1st day. i woke up extra early to get ready and aimed to be at canary wharf early. it was good thing, because i got so lost in the sea of tall buildings (relative to copenhagen, every building is tall). the map i had consulted before i left the house clearly marked out the building very close to the DLR (Docklands Light Railway - think LRT). Instead, i walked halfway across canary wharf (think raffles place) and landed up at the doorstep of morgan stanley. oops, wrong bank, and the security guy pointed me in the wrong direction too... grrr. it was a bad start, but things picked up after that after i made it there on time, went through the registration process feeling so foreign and attended the induction, which made me feel a lot more comfortable because everything seemed vaguely familiar.


met my bosses, who both seemed very nice, but it was another familiar person that made me feel the most welcome. one of the directors who was at the assessment centre in february, who also happened to be the same one who had called me up, recognised me instantly, and was so unbelievably friendly and helpful. He even emailed me to check if i was ok, and if i needed help, and if i knew anyone else in London. All those emails really made the 1st day a lot less scary. He also brought me around to meet some people and allowed me to sit in for a briefing he was giving another junior guy about an overview of the whole department. It also helped that the people sitting around me are really friendly as well. E, an Australian chinese showed me the staff restaurant and even offered to let me use her card to buy food since I didn't have one yet. Also met my buddy, Amee, a Kenyan Indian, for lunch, and she was really nice too. Thank God for such a great start in terms of fitting in.


Work-wise, well, i've not been using my brain much the last semester, in the financial sense, and so i'm pretty rusty about all these company analysis things. Been trying to catch up but reading up but i've a long long way to go in terms of things to do. started a bit on real work, so i'm glad for that. but you know what's the most awesome thing? i got to leave at like 5 plus for most of the days except today. they are really flexible with time i think, my boss comes in at 740 and leaves at 5pm. her boss keeps coming round and telling Amee and me to go home early since we just started. yay, i hope that if i'm efficient enough i won't have to stay at office till too late everyday...!


time flies, as usual. tomorrow's friday! besides having to meet my boss at 8.30am tomm, i've a whole week of training next week to look forward to, and meeting other people my age. there are like 200 interns, it's madness. and i really hope i don't come across as too stupid or something, if not i'm gonna leave people thinking that singaporeans are really silly. heh... or at least the only one from a singapore university. it's quite paiseh when i look at the directory of names in the intern handbook... amidst all the branded UK and european schools, there's a single 'Sin.ga.pore Mg.mt Uni.ver.si.ty'. maybe they'll despise me. we'll see... for now, i just have to worry about what i'm gonna do over the weekend. David's camping somewhere up north in the country - lake district. he's still on holiday and travelling, i'm jealous already! i really dunno how the past 5 months just evaporated... i need to do a channelnewsasia-style 'reporting' of my activities, just to make sure that at the end of it i know where all the time went.


ambitions, ambitions.


this is carol, news on the move, london.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Polish(ed)

Kraków, Poland
22-23 May 2008


Initial plans for a ‘big’ eastern Europe trip never came to fruition. Exams were standing in the way of a longer trip. We left the night of my last paper. The first leg of the journey we embarked on brought us on a flight from Copenhagen to Warsaw, the present day capital of Poland, a night train carried us to Krakow, the historical capital of Poland.

We had no idea what to expect in Poland, but it was certainly not how modern Warsaw was. The Frederick Chopin Airport in Warsaw was bright and clean, and best of all – it had an orange colour scheme. It was so nice we didn’t really want to get out after collecting our bag. The city, whose skyscrapers peeked out from behind the heavy fog came as a surprise as well. It looked a lot like Kuala Lumpur somehow. We had all of 1 hour in Warsaw, and it was midnight. We only managed to walk around a bit outside the train station and snap some pictures.

Taking the train though, was a completely unique experience altogether. Armed with only a pathetic internet booking, we couldn’t seem to find the right train to take, as the timings on our reservation didn’t match the one on the schedule. But after some enquiries in broken English, we found the right platform. When the train finally pulled into the station, we hurried on, only to find a huge jam in the aisle. With a humongous bagpack, we managed to push our way through clumsily, only to find out seats taken. But the people who were occupying our seats were quick to vacate when we showed them the reservation with the seat numbers. We had booked 2 seats because the couchettes were too expensive. The seats were arranged such that there are 6 seats in each compartment, which had a sliding door that could be closed. Along the row of compartments in the carriage was a narrow corridor which can probably allow 1 person to pass at a time. But for some strange reason, the corridor was packed with Polish people who crammed and double-lined the corridor. They didn’t seem to have seats because whenever someone with a seat got up, they would rush for the seat. I couldn’t understand the situation at all – it was a night train, were they gonna stand all night? The conductor came by to check our tickets as well, and he squeezed through the sea of people, and didn’t seem to mind that they were there. Anyway, inside our compartment, we were starting to get comfortable and preparing to sleep, when the 4 other Polish women in our compartment started talking continuously. It was so noisy I wanted to just throw something at them so that I could go to sleep in peace. Good thing I was so tired that I was only bothered for a few minutes before I drifted off. The next time I woke up, it was about 4+am, and the corridor outside was empty. Apparently everyone there had alighted or taken over some seats somewhere. These poles are quite happening, I wonder where they went in the dead of the night. Most of them were young people too.

Corpus Christi in Poland
We arrived in Kraków at about 7am the next morning. (Actually normal day trains only take about 3 hours between Warsaw and Krakow, but we might as well save on 1 night’s accoms right. Heh.) Checked into our hostel and found that it was a public holiday in Poland that day. We have this uncanny ability to always arrive at a place on some public holiday. We were told that nothing was open, even Auschwitz, which I wanted so badly to go to, and that all we could do was walk around the town. It was Corpus Christi in Poland, a Roman Catholic celebration of the Eucharist (according to wikipedia). Poland is a religious country, so I observed from that day. Lots of Roman Catholics also make pilgrimages to Poland because it has quite a few holy sites. Pope John Paul II was also Polish who spent a large part of his life in Kraków before heading for Vatican city, so one could follow his trail and visit his school, home, monastery, etc. We observed a few processions of the sacred bread within the city, and the city’s landmark building, St Mary’s Basilica spilled onto the town square and there was an open air service. We wandered around, bought some American breakfast (also known as MacDonald’s) and hunted down the only tourist information office that was open. From there, we also found out that Auschwitz was actually open, so we caught a public bus there. The 1.5 hour journey, 70km west of Kraków, took even longer because there were many processions along the way and the bus had to stop. It was amazing that even in the countryside, there were small churches and hoards of people on the streets, dressed in their Sunday best, especially the kids in little suits and frilly dresses.

Auschwitz-Birkenau WWII Concentration Camp
Arriving first at the Auschwitz I camp, I was actually quite disappointed because it didn’t look so bad from the outside. But the rest of the visit would leave me rather disturbed and (fill in the blanks for the kind of feelings that war crimes evoke). David was rather reluctant to visit Auschwitz as he had been there once before and felt that these kind of places only required one visit. He could still vividly remember all the things he saw some 8 years ago. But he was sweet to come with me anyway. We signed up for the guided tour that took more than 3 hours. A bit about Auschwitz: it was the largest Nazi concentration camp during WWII which got its german name from a nearby Polish town called Oświęcim. It was here that the largest number of people perished via gas chambers, executions or poor living conditions. The figure has still not been finalised but stands at more than 1.5million, more than 90% Jews. In other words, the place was a massive graveyard, yet without any proper graves. Prior to this, I had visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and the Yad Vasham Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem as well as other smaller museums documenting the sufferings of the Holocaust. But nothing compared to the magnitude of atrocities committed at Auschwitz, where people were treated like how the chinese would treat a pig – every part had to be used and none wasted. The exhibitions created a huge impact, with sorted whole rooms full of human hair that was used to made cloth in germany, shoes, artificial limbs and crutches, kitchen crockery, hair brushes, confiscated suitcases, children’s clothes, etc. All the inmates were basically stripped bare, after having been lied to about being relocated to a new place for a better life. Walking through the parade squares where roll calls which lasted hours were held, and the execution wall where many were shot, being surrounded by the barbed wire + electrocuted fence that virtually made escape impossible, visiting the ‘hospital’ where no one ever came out alive because it was never for treatment but for genetic experiments; the prison cells where punishments were meted out – such as having 4 people stand in a 1m x 1 m space at night after working hard all day- was more than heart ranching. It was a rather chilly day, and it was already Spring. Imagining the place in the bitter winter cold, and the people with only thin uniforms and no shoes to protect their feet made it unimaginable how anyone actually survived. That place was basically inhumane.

But 5 minutes away, in the Birkenau campsite, things were much worse. The newer concentration camp, built from scratch by lay prisoners after it was evident that there was insufficient room at Auschwitz I had worse conditions. The buildings were mostly made of wood, with dirt floors. There was no running water and sanitary conditions were unimaginable. But what was different about this camp was the landing platform, where incoming prisoners were sorted like sheep according to their ability to work. After a 7 day train ride, weak prisoners are examined by nazi doctors if they were fit for work. Of course, if they were Jew, that didn’t really matter because about 90% got sent straight to the gas chambers anyway. If they were deemed unfit for work, they had to walk about 1-2km to the end of the platform, where the gas chambers awaited. We visited one at Auschwitz I, because the Nazis had destroyed all the newer gas chambers at Birkenau before the Soviets arrived in attempts to cover up traces of their horrific crimes. It was only a rather small room, and it’s hard to imagine that each time, 2000 people could die in 10 minutes, with just a little Cyclone B. The crematoriums were conveniently located next to the gas chambers, and the lakes beside them are still filled with human ashes.

We had spent longer than we had wanted to at Auschwitz, but it made such a dark period in recent human history so real.
a bit about WWII and poland: Of all the countries involved in the war, Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizens: over six million perished, half of them Polish Jews. Poland made the fourth-largest troop contribution to the Allied war effort, after the Soviets, the British and the Americans. The main German Nazi death camps were in Poland. Of a pre-war population of 3,300,000 Polish Jews, 3,000,000 were killed during the Holocaust. (wikipedia.org)

Weiliczka Salt Mine
The next morning, we ventured out of Kraków again, this time about 30km south-east, to a mining town called Weiliczka. Its salt mine is one of the world’s oldest (started in the 13th century) and only stopped operations a few years ago. There are 2000 underground chambers and goes down 300+metres. The tour lasted about 3 hours and only covered 3.5km (less than 1% of the entire place). We descended 398 (thereabouts) steps before we reached the first level of the mine. It was a real experience. Apparently, the air is bacteria free because no bacteria can survive under such salty conditions (don’t know about viruses though, heh), and the wood brought down to help hold up the ceilings have been very well-preserved. Even paintings and sculptures have their colours preserved, unlike those we see around the cities in europe, reduced to white. You can even lick salt off the walls (it tasted like normal table salt- because they mine the salt for domestic consumption, when it used to be such an expensive commodity). There were salt lakes in the darkness, and even a beautiful cathedral (St Kinga’s Chapel) made of salt. The chandeliers were made out of salt crystals, and ‘tiled’ floors, and the works of art. It was awesome. The pictures didn’t turn out so nicely to do justice to the place but you’ll get a rough idea.

Wawel Castle and the Rest of Kraków
We had only budgeted 2 short days here, and apart from the trips we took, we managed to squeeze in some time to take in the sights of the city. Wawel Castle used to be the residence of Polish rulers. We visited the state apartments but were none too impressed with anything but were rather amused with the ‘Wawel heads’ in one of the rooms. On the ceiling of a particular room, there were about 30 wooden heads, and one of them has a gag in his mouth. Apparently one day when the King was passing judgment to someone, one of the heads started talking. It’s legends like this that make these places interesting. At the foot of Wawel Hill lies a cave, also known as dragon’s cave. Once again, legend has it that a dragon moved under the castle one day, and the king offered a reward of his daughter’s hand in marriage for getting rid of the dragon. So, one man killed a ram, stuffed it with sulphur and placed it outside the dragon’s lair. The dragon came out, ate it and was very thirsty, so he went to the river and drank until his stomach burst. Haha. How cute right.

The rest of Kraków was very pretty as well. The old town is very european, with its characteristic town square with a church towering over it. On every hour, a trumpet signal - called the hejnał (pronounced hey-now) - is played from the top of the taller of St. Mary's two towers. The plaintive tune breaks off in mid-stream, to commemorate the famous 13th century trumpeter, who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before the Mongol attack on the city. (wikipedia.org) Another interesting concept they had was the buggy tours. It’s the first I’ve seen so far, because it’s always the cliché horse carriages. We didn’t have enough time to visit Schindler’s factory, from the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Schindler’s list’ on the holocaust. We had to zoom off to Budapest! We were so happy that we got the overnight train tickets for half-price, which still came up to like S$70. dunno why tickets out of poland are so expensive K

Commuting from Kraków to Budapest
We had heard horror stories of polish trains, so we were rather scared at first. Previous SMU students have recounted experiences of being gassed in their compartments and then people breaking in and stealing their things. This time, we had beds. There were 6 beds in each compartment, 3 on each side. The whole time, we were just praying that no one else would come in, because it was a 10 hour train ride. We made sure we locked the door and closed all the windows. David tried to study for his exam, and I tried to read up on Budapest (having left CPH in such a hurry after exams I wasn’t adequately prepared for this trip). But before long, we started to get really sleepy and went to bed. The next thing we knew, the conductor was knocking on the door, waking us up, with half and hour to go. I love overnight trains with beds. Another night’s accoms saved. Haha.

click here for photos or view the small version below: