Jozefow and Zamosc part 2

I forgot to mention that in the woods on the way to jozefow, between cars blasting past, we could hear a cuckoo bird in the distance across the road. i tried to record it but there was too much traffic and it became shy at every passing car. you can believe me when i tell you they sound exactly as you might imagine except a little ghostly in the middle of a forest with no clocks around to house them.

we finally found our way to the small market square in the middle of the old town, but at that point it was close to two oclock and my toes were killing me especially when i panicked because we only had an hour to do everything we had planned: find the recent memorial plaque commemorating the families that had once lived in this forest village; look for family grave stones in the cemetery; and visit the memorial of those shot in the forest. we only had an hour because the train to zamosc was at four and it would take me an hour to hobble through the woods back to the "station" where we had jumped from the train. unless of course we could find a cab. 

here's a picture of the former synagogue which is now a library and hosts the recent memorial plaque to the original families of the village. i was also hoping to find the well my grandmother told me that in winter she would slip and slide around on the ice that surrounded it when she was getting water. but we didn't have time for finding that.

it's nice that they did this plaque but its missing at least two family names on my grandmother's side that lived here and were probably victims of the massacre in the forest.

now that i look through my photos i guess i didn't take one of the entire building. it's actually really pretty and very simple and bright inside. we spoke to the librarian who only moved to town in the last couple years. she's not from there but her husband's family is so they moved back to poland from the uk to jozefow. A told her we were here because my grandparents had lived here before the war, hint hint. she suggested we go to the tower where you can get views of the town. i would have liked to do that but i felt like i should see the cemetery and look for some family graves. she also told us when we asked that there were no taxis in jozefow and intimated none of these villages offer that service (another missed business opportunity for locals and global monopolies like ew-ber and gryft). at that moment i knew this trip was kind of a failure: i had no time to even be here. i might as well have just looked at pictures online. and my cousin was right: the cemetery is in very sad shape, very neglected, like so many of the jewish cemeteries in the former Pale of Settlement. the gravestones are illegible. covered with moss, the inscriptions of most are worn away. Also, they are written in hebrew and don't include surnames, only first names making identification of family members extremely difficult, especially with almost no time to spend searching for a familiar word or phrase or family name.  these are the entry gates at the edge of the old town:

and the overgrown grounds within the walls:

another important thing i wanted to do in jozefow was see the plants that grew in and around the cemetery but this was also impossible because it was alreadythree oclock and we had to start walking back to the train that was three miles away along the highway. i did manage to spot a patch of wild strawberries, and two artemisias (wormwood and mugwort) near the gates. these seem like some clues to the mysteries of my grandparents' life here before the war. my mother told me my grandfather would accompany my grandmother into the woods when she went to collect berries. when i asked my mother what kind of berries they were she didn't know. now that we've been here for a while and have seen so many of the plants that grow here it's dawned on me that this story was not about a single kind of berry, but a really extensive variety of berry plants including vacciniums, ribes, rubus and others i don't even know about. these wild strawberries (pozemkes) grow everywhere and are only now starting to flower:

and growing rightnext to them under a pine tree is Artemisia absinthium (wormwood) that "poyelen branfn" is made from:

 by the time we got to the platform i was half dead and realized i'm no spring chicken anymore. here are some chickens that were ranging freely on the way out of town... they're probably the descendants of the chickens that have been pecking in jozefow for centuries:

Jozefow and Zamosc part 1

Today was difficult but not in the ways i imagined it would be. A is an absolute wonder for going with me on this crazy journey because honestly this was not a great experience but not in how i would have thought rather in ways i didn't expect. 

I don't even know how to begin this post. maybe i should just get to the point and that is that this whole trip has been so strange and surreal and today, instead of being the intensely sad experience i had anticipated and have been avoiding, it was just another confirmation of what i've been feeling all along only this time it was in an ancestral town where so many of my own relatives had once lived for over 300 years as opposed to the abstract idea of the jews of "The Pale". But instead of feeling a deeper sadness and apprehension than i've already been experiencing, i was surprised to find that i didn't feel a connection to jozefow at all. This may be because it was so horribly difficult to get to. 

I don't have many pictures of the ride there, but it was very long. It started awkwardly because A wanted to buy tickets back to Warsaw for Sunday but those were all was sold out except for the 7 am train. the ticket woman wasn't very friendly and we weren't sure what to do because it would mean getting into Warsaw around 9 am and we would be stuck dragging out suitcases around for hours before we could check into our last apartment. but out of desperation we decided to buy them... anyways that was a stressful disappointment and annoying because in addition to lugging our luggage around we'll have to get up at five to be at the train on time. so with all that hanging over our heads we also purchased todays tickets to jozefow but still had over an hour to kill before we got that train. long story short there is no where to eat with in walking distance to the lublin train station...whaaaat?! listen closely lubliners, if you want to have a successful capitalist business in this town all you have to do is open a decent cafe over by the train station. i can't see how it could possibly fail because there is no competition. anyways, we got some pastries from a bakery counter and some juice and water at crazy busy little market and caught the train for a two plus hour ride to jozefow.

on the train we struck up s conversation with two students from Łodz who had a cat in a backpack carrier and were really friendly. when they heard where we were going they looked horrified and asked if someone was going yo meet us at the station. at the time i don't think we understood their concern. now that i'm writing this i can see they were wondering how we were going to get from the train "station" into the village. and they were right to be worried. this is where we detrained:

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. from this "platform" that is about two feet lower than the train steps, we had to walk three miles into town on a terrifying two lane highway with no shoulder and with woods on both sides of the road but no trails and what plowed up path that was there was like this ashy soil that was impossible to walk on. we survived to tell the tale but this road was marked for 40mph and every vehicle that used it was going at least double that speed. you might be relieved to know people were biking in this road so we were in goodish company but it was no less terrifying. 

yes, this town is in the middle of nowhere, in the woods with nothing around for miles. all i could think of was my grandparents who i knew in philadelphia had lived out here in this remote little village that had no electricity or running water before the second world war. i just couldn't reconcile this in my mind as we trudged along with cars and trucks whizzing by:

the first bend in the road we came to is the outskirts and once called Borowina, but it's basically a long street into town. everyone has a dog in their yard with warning signs but mostly the dogs are small and the ones that were wandering around seemed sublimely uninterested in us. the first thing i noticed on this long stretch into town was how affluent these houses were. freshly painted with pretty gardens and some with working fields behind them. 

Because it was a hot day, we thought it would be nice to walk on the shady side of the street even though the sidewalk was on the sunny side. No sooner had we crossed over than a little helmeted man on a stinky old scooter skidded up to us and started yelling to get back on the sidewalk. Luckily he went away after we obeyed him and very shortly thereafter A found a cut through into town along a creek:

as we wended our way around the creek  and its attached lake we came upon a boy and his father who were fishing. we sat down on a bench in the shade and ate one of our pastries. we still had a far way to walk into town. after that short rest we continued into town to look for the market square and a recent monument A had read about. the first thing you notice are very expensive modern large houses and gated communities that are under construction along these newer streets approaching the old part of town. my cousin had made this trip seven years before and i didn't remember him saying anything about these and in fact they were all still actively being built as we passed them on our way into jozefow. 

wandering through lublin

These are the quick snaps I took while we were trying to reach some destinations that are away from the main square and promenade, which are exceptionally beautiful and call to mind the photographs of roman vishniac although i'm not sure his were taken here in Lublin and of course my pictures are nowhere near as haunting or well composed. 

Parts of Lublin reminded me of Manayunk, not architecturally, maybe it was the setting on a hill or just the feeling of being in a rural place in the middle of the city? 

This place is definitely more mysterious than the other towns we have spent time in so far. It has its own scent that follows you (me) around. Almost like a bakery smell but with unfamiliar grains and seasonings. Also people here vape like crazy and that mingles with the other aroma making the olfactory experience here for me a little overpowering for all of my other senses and consequently difficult to fully appreciate the sights and sounds. I'm probably too sensitive but I can't seem to shake this scent that clings to everything... anyways here are some pictures of Lublin:

the view from this meh apartment:

an absndoned boxen:

posted here without comment:

more abandoned boxens:

the view from a street nearby:

i know these photos seem kind of strange, i guess this is how i orient myself to a place. below is from a walk up a hill that on one side of the street has these houses and on the other is overgrown foliage and this is the part that reminds me of Manayunk but it's hard to get that sense from this photo:

i can't remember why i took this one:

a bakery we meant to get breakfast in but it only had sweet stuff. we got a couple of coffees and some pastries - a honey cake and a horn with poppy seeds inside and dried fruit on top:

this place is very 19th century. we sat upstairs in the proper cafe. 

people walking up the promenade to the old town square:

in the old town:

a typewriter is in that window:

another abandoned boxen:

there is an election coming up here and this was a candidate's rally:

we went in search of this milk bar. i'm actually glad it was closed because it was pretty grim:

a meat store sign:

a children's clothing store:

another abandoned boxen:

a theater:

we went in search of a garden labyrinth:

by way of a canal walk:

that has a lot of pedestrian bridges:

one part of the park looking towards a large conference center:

the labyrinth was completely overgrown:

so we walked back along the canal which had a large area dedicated to well tended allotment gardens with their own little houses and people were out for May Day having parties and cookouts and gardening:

we had come here earlier to this restaurant near the apartment but there were super long lines so we ended up eating somewhere else (a chain we had eaten at in Poznan). but later we thought we'd try this place again. it was just ok. i think the lines were long because they have huge portions and it's not that expensive. i had a soup and A got this bialy with cheese and a salad on top that was enormous:

It's late and I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. We're taking a train to my grandparents' town. There's a new monument with all the names of the families killed in the forest which we will probably take a walk to. I might not blog tomorrow so don't be surprised if there's no post for a day or so. Sending hugs and love to you...