Europe Travel - Part 45

Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Memories of a Tragic Past

by Wynne Crombie

When I first saw the sign, it was a black and white photograph against a background of snow. The sun sparkled on the words that once struck so much terror … Arbeit Macht Frei. Ahead of us were brick buildings that could have come from a college campus. They were former Polish army barracks. The few birch trees adjacent to the sign were still shedding their leaves. Two adjectives came to mind: peaceful and simplistic. These were hardly words for a former concentration camp. From 1941-1945 one million people had been killed here. My husband Kent and I were at Auschwitz.

We were part of a continuous line of visitors from around the world who did not need a Silence sign. The only noise came from the shuffling of feet. We were on a tour of Poland and had been visiting Krakow. After making the one hour drive from Krakow, we arrived at Auschwitz I. (Auschwitz II or Birkenau, is a mile away). Admission is free.

Anya, our English- speaking guide, told us she felt a strong sense of responsibility in sharing the story of the camp. Someone asked if this didn’t become stressful after a time.

“It helps to know,” Anya replied, “that I am informing people about what happened here. It becomes second nature after a while. I don’t think of the deaths.”

I felt the rocks on the dirt path as we began our trek. I was wearing shoes while Auschwitz prisoners had walked in bare feet, even in winter. The kitchen building with its smokestacks was on the right. In its foreground a band had played. Anya told us this had been a way to increase camp morale. An enlarged black and white photo of the musicians was displayed next to the building. The entire perimeter of the camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and twenty-eight watch towers with armed guards. This made prisoner escapes virtually impossible. Even so, there were one hundred escapes over the four years.

During the early days, the Nazis would take pictures of each inmate. These seemingly endless 8 x 10 glass-covered photographs surrounded a long narrow hall. The inmates looked healthy, for they had just arrived. The name was printed below each photo and included the date of arrival and the date of death—sometimes just days apart. When photography became too expensive, the Nazis started tattooing numbers on the inmates’ arms.

In the next barrack was a gallery of a different sort. Sculptures and paintings of camp life were on display. The artwork had been done in secret, as it was strictly forbidden. Cameras had been smuggled in and photos out.

Those who managed to survive the “Selection Process” upon arrival were housed in unheated barracks. There was no running water and they could use the toilet only twice a day. Ventilation came from holes in the roof. The stench would become so bad, the guards would not go in. Three hundred prisoners were crammed into each barrack. The prisoners slept six to a bunk on straw mattresses. They had to lie on their sides so they would all fit .My first thought was, that’s not even enough room for one person.

Those who were not selected for the barracks were told they were to take showers. Only Zyklon-B gas was used instead. (The shower heads are still embedded in the cement wall). From there, their bodies were taken to the crematorium The Nazis destroyed evidence of the gas mass killings by blowing up the buildings. Anya told us they liked to use gas because they didn’t have to look at the person while he was being killed.

How could the guards do this every day?

“For the most part,” said Anya, “guards were ordinary people who could kill by day, and then go home and be loving fathers and husbands.”

This was confirmed by Jerzy Kowalewski, an eighty-eight-year-old Auschwitz survivor. We attended a seminar he had given in Warsaw.

He said: “I had been imprisoned for being an underground resistance fighter. Somehow I was given work at the commandant’s home. One morning he invited me to have breakfast with his family. There were eggs, bacon, real coffee….everything. He was wonderful to me. That afternoon I saw him take a pistol to a prisoner’s head and shoot him. It made no sense.”

We found ourselves looking into Room Five of the so-called, Death Block. These barracks held the “court rooms” where the prisoner was tortured into confession, tried, and sentenced to death. The table that had been a part of the “sham trials” was still there. The Gestapo found everyone guilty.

Father Maksymilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest who was interned at Auschwitz, offered to take the place of a man who was about to die The Nazis put him in the “Starvation Cell” where he remained until he died. Today, a simple bouquet of chrysanthemums and a candle mark his cell. In 1982 he was canonized by the Catholic Church.

Anya showed us where they removed the prisoners’ clothes and marched them out naked where they were shot in front of the “Death Wall. Their bodies were placed in gravel pits in and around the main camp.

At the daily roll call, the entire camp stood in their meager rags as the SS guards called out their names. The roll call was given as a collective punishment for the wrongdoing of just one prisoner. The inmates stood for up to four hours in the rain and snow. Some of the extremely weak and sick prisoners would die in the lines during the roll call. After roll call, the prisoners received their ration for breakfast. They were given 10 ounces of bread with a small piece of salami or one ounce of margarine and brown, weak coffee, with no sugar.

Even after Anya had presented the evidence I still couldn’t put it all together, until we saw the barracks I call, the Evidence of Living. Then the people became real.

In the Block (or Building 5), on either side of the middle aisle, behind glass, were piles fifteen feet high of human hair on both sides. Rows of long braids popped out at me first.

Ironically, I did not see any grey or dyed hair. In a nearby case a three by five foot blanket was on display. It had been made entirely of human hair. There were also piles of eyeglasses, artificial limbs (from WWI vets) shoes and suitcases. and other items of a personal nature.

It has been sixty-five years since these atrocities occurred but with such overwhelming evidence, people will not forget. In fact, photography is encouraged, so that the world will remember. In addition to all the visitors, once a year 8,000 schoolchildren make the mile walk from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

It is fitting that Rudolf Hess, the first commandant of Auschwitz, was hanged in 1947, a few feet away from where he murdered his victims.

Auschwitz Birkenau Tour from Krakow and Evening Klezmer Music Concert with Dinner

If You Go:

♦ Auschwitz to Auschwitz II-Birkenau is a 20 minute walk, or you may take a taxi.

♦ Krakow to Auschwitz is about an hour’s bus ride. Catch the bus at the main bus depot at 18 Bosacka. You could take the train, but it is not as convenient.

♦ Auschwitz to Krakow buses can be found in the main parking lot next to the Auschwitz I entrance.

♦ Lodging: Oswiecim (the Polish name for Auschwitz) is a town of about 4,000 people and does have a few hotels. However, we found the Auschwitz experience to be so profound, we had to go back to reality to try and sort out what we had just seen. We stayed in Krakow.

♦ Food: There is both a café and cafeteria at Auschwitz I. The people at the information center are very helpful.

♦ Lodging in Krakow: We stayed at the Radisson Blu, a large chain hotel. It was rather impersonal, but featured a fantastic breakfast buffet. Very centrally located, just off the Old Town Square.

♦ Dining in Krakow: We heartily recommend the Wesele right on the Square. It reminds you of an old country inn. Polish cuisine. I had the goulash in a bread bowl. Superb.

Full-Day Auschwitz-Birkenau and Oskar Schindler Factory Tour from Krakow

About the author:
Wynne Crombie has a master’s degree in adult education. She has been published in, Travel and Leisure, Dallas Morning News Travel, Air Force Times and Senior Living. She’s a frequent contributor to Travel Thru History.

All photos are by Wynne Crombie:
Main entrance (with Arbeit Macht Frei sign)
Berkenau entrance
Bunk beds
Showers (gas came out the black pipe)
The Auschwitz “main street”
An oven as a memorial
The site of Hess hanging (on Auschwitz grounds)

Napoleon Never Slept Here

Italy and France: Sailing The Mediterranean

by Tom Koppel

Outside the door of an ancient stone house in the quaint medieval quarter of Antibes, on the Riviera, a sign in an antiquated form of French reads: “Napoleon never slept here.” There are additional words that I cannot decipher. Just then, a man approaches to enter the house. He tells us that some of the women in Napoleon’s family actually did stay there, at a time when the future Emperor was briefly imprisoned at Antibes during the turmoil of the French Revolution. In fact, he adds, Napoleon’s mother did her son’s laundry at an open-air public wash-house, just around the corner on the adjacent winding street. We head off for a look, and there it is, carefully restored as a historic site—a large stone tub, full of water, under a red tile roof. In France, it seems, even the laundry of the country’s most famous historic figure is worthy of note.

My wife and I are on a Mediterranean cruise along the coasts of Italy and France celebrating our 20th anniversary, sailing on the ultra-deluxe Norwegian ship. Sea Dream I, which carries just over 100 passengers. Sea Dream I is a magic carpet, easing us in comfort and style through a region full of fascinating history. We have been anticipating visits to some wonderful ports and are not disappointed. What we had not foreseen, though, is the many ways that Napoleon, or perhaps just his spirit, would keep making his presence felt, as if popping up unexpectedly in little cameo appearances. These underscore just how completely he dominated Europe in his brief but dramatic era of war and conquest, supreme glory and abject defeat.

This quirky pattern emerged even before we embark on our cruise, which began near Rome. We spent a few days at an exquisite boutique hotel, the Lord Byron, in a quiet neighbourhood adjacent to a large, leafy park, the Borghese Gardens. Its centrepiece is the Borghese Gallery, an art museum housing an outstanding collection. One of the most striking of many fine sculptures, in the purest of white marble, portrays a nude Venus, reclining on a sofa and holding an apple. The gallery literature explains that the model was none other than Napoleon’s sister, Pauline, who was related through marriage to the wealthy Borghese family that assembled the art collection.

Our first port stop is Bonifacio on Corsica, the large, mountainous French island where Napoleon was born and raised. It is an amazing, clifftop walled village. Built in the middle ages, this impregnable fortress withstood centuries of threats from the Barbary pirates. Entering the old town by a drawbridge, we stroll through a warren of twisting cobbled alleys, including a narrow street with a house where Napoleon really did sleep, living there briefly in 1793, when he commanded nothing but a batallion of Corsican volunteers. That was just before his rapid rise to power, and the house had been owned by the Bonaparte family for nearly a century.

The next planned destination is the Italian island of Elba, the one place where we would expect to find sites intimately linked to Napoleon’s life. It was on Elba that he was forced into exile (along with about 1000 servants and troops as bodyguards) after a series of defeats in 1814.

Unfortunately, the weather in that area is so stormy that our captain decides to skip Elba and spend the day on the more sheltered side of Corsica, stopping at Calvi, another ancient village with a high, walled fortress. It was not quite as impregnable as Bonifacio, however. The ships of Admiral Horatio Nelson bombarded the town, assisting its capture by British land forces in 1794 during the wars against revolutionary France. Nelson lost an eye in the battle.

Some claim that Calvi was the original home of Columbus, when it belonged to the empire of Genoa. Wikipedia calls this a “legend,” explaining that “because the often subversive elements of the island gave its inhabitants a bad reputation, he would have been expected to mask his exact birthplace.” Perhaps Napoleon’s ghost is also fearful of guilt by association. He decides to take the day off, and we stumble upon no traces of the “little corporal.”

Then we anchor off Viareggio, back on the Italian coast in Tuscany, and take a day trip inland to Florence. We have arranged a walking tour to enjoy the glorious and stunning medieval and Renaissance architecture, monumental public sculptures and inviting pedestrian-only piazzas. It is far too brief, of course, but our personal guide takes us to some special places, such as the studio of a blacksmith who creates fantastic birds, fishes and other creatures in steel, and to the guide’s own favourite and funky “Cafe of the Artisans.” We stroke the snout of an iconic bronze wild boar and share a kiss, thus assuring our return to Florence some day.

Napoleon’s long shadow did not spare Florence. He passed through in 1809 during a campaign to annex Italy’s Papal States and established the short-lived Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with Florence as its capital and another sister of his, Elisa, serving as the Grand Duchess. It was a status she held only briefly, forced to flee in 1813 as Napoleon was gradually defeated (following his Russian campaign) by an Anglo-Austrian army.

Farther north on the Italian Riviera, our ship anchors off the picturesque village of Portofino, with its brightly painted old houses. Once a simple fishing village, it now has an upscale yacht harbour catering to the rich and famous. Going ashore for a few hours, we hike up to a striking castle that dominates the small bay. And sure enough, Napoleon left his mark here as well during the years when France controlled northern Italy. What we see is an ancient fortification that Napoleon modernized, greatly expanded and equipped with better cannons. Not one for modesty, he renamed the village Port Napoleon.

All too soon, after a day in Antibes, our grand voyage ends at Monaco. The town and mountainous setting are stunning, but it is too early in the morning for anything to be happening. Yet we cannot come all this way without enjoying a few extra days on the Mediterranean.

While a student, I had bunked at a unique youth hostel in a little modern castle overlooking Finale Ligure, a lovely stretch of coastal villages on the Italian Riviera only an hour east of Monaco. We decide to return to explore those intriguing shores, with their rich and diverse history. It was here that the 15-year-old Margaret Theresa of Spain stopped briefly in 1666 while on her way to Vienna to marry Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor. A triumphal arch commemorating the event dominates the central piazza, not far from ancient fortifications that marked the long-fought-over boundary between Spanish and Genoese-controlled territories. A few miles east is the village of Varigotti with its strikingly Moorish houses. These were built in the ninth and tenth centuries by the Muslim Saracens, who ruled the area for nearly 100 years. Long thereafter, they remained both a threat and a trading partner to the region, bringing such goods as salt from Ibiza when Spain was still under Moorish rule.

We stay at a captivating small hotel, Punta Est, consisting of several elegant villas, nestled in palms and pines, and with its own olive grove, all perched on a cliff high above a long sweep of perfect beach. Deep beneath is a natural limestone cave with a large wooden hot tub, dim lighting and comfortable furniture. The dining is exceptional, including seafood specialties of the region and local Ligurian wines. When the double-doors of our room are left open, we are lulled by the song of birds and the roar of surf far below. It is a place of magic and romance.

But let’s not forget Napoleon, who left his mark here as well. While he controlled the region for a decade or so, he ordered a highly accurate survey and mapping project, the so-called Napoleonic Cadastre. Employing the recently introduced metric system, it helped his officials to take the census and collect taxes. The exquisite resulting maps, drawn in Chinese ink and water colours, are kept today in the state archive of Turin. Accessible on the Internet, they are like a 19th century version of Google Earth.

The details for Finale Ligure are so fine that all the buildings and streets adjoining the central piazza can be clearly seen, along with the triumphal arch dedicated to Margaret Theresa. It is a reminder that the local architecture pre-dates the reign of Napoleon by centuries. He was a product of the French Revolution, which overthrew much of Europe’s old order. He largely destroyed the temporal powers of the Catholic Church and was a major force for secularization. Although it may be tempting to see him as belonging to the ancient past, his era really marks the dawn of modern European history.

Private Day Trip to Antibes and Cannes by Night from Monaco

If You Go:

♦ The luxurious and intimate ships of Sea Dream Yacht Club sail the waters of Europe, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, the Amazon, and much of Asia.
♦For Rome’s five-star art-deco boutique Hotel Lord Byron
♦For the elegant and atmospheric Hotel Punta Est in Finale Ligure

Private Cinque Terre and Portofino Luxury Yacht Cruise

About the author:
Tom Koppel’s latest book is Mystery Islands: Discovering the Ancient Pacific. It is available in Canada from Black Sheep Books, www.blacksheepbooks.ca, in the US at Amazon.com, or directly (signed and dedicated).

All photographs are by Annie Palovcik.

Italy: An Unusual Adventure in Rome

by Doris Gregory

On that stifling July day, the elevator was packed with hot, sweaty people. We had just come down, by spiral staircase and then the elevator, after viewing the Eternal City from the top of St. Peter’s.

The elevator door opened and the crowd surged past nine-year old Wayne, out into the corridor. My son just stood there, with a strange look on his face. “Come on, Wayne,” I ordered, “Move!” “I can’t,” he said. “My arm’s stuck!”

Evidently his arm had been resting on the elevator door. When the door opened and slid into its pocket, it had taken his arm with it.

The elevator operator shouted something in his native Italian and pulled Wayne’s arm free. Then he grabbed him by the other hand, muttered something like “dottoro” to me and the ticket taker outside, and then took off at top speed with Wayne, while I and Linda and Brian, my other two children, one on each side of me, ran behind. We had all we could do to keep up, but had a brief pause for breath when the man stopped at a drinking fountain with the comforting sign “Aqua Pura” and shoved Wayne’s gashed and bleeding hand into the water. Then on we raced down the corridor to a short wide flight of stairs leading to heavy double doors, fronted by two colourfully uniformed Swiss Guards. As we approached, our escort shouted something to them, they moved aside, and the doors flew open. On we rushed, down another long corridor, around a corner, then up one more short wide flight of stairs, where another set of Swiss Guards moved aside and one more pair of doors flew open. One last long corridor and we arrived at what appeared to be the infirmary.

The white-coated doctor shoved a printed sheet in front of me and handed me a pen. I didn’t know a word of Italian, other than “Parla Inglesi?” (to which his answer would obviously have been “no”) but assumed that this lengthy document was one absolving any responsibility of the Vatican for my son’s unhappy plight. I signed it “Can’t read a word of this Doris Gregory” all on one line, not that I had any hope of winning a lawsuit against the Vatican.

The good doctor washed and disinfected and bandaged the hand, after first pulling on the fingers to make sure nothing was broken, which fact he somehow communicated to me by pantomime. And then he held up a bottle labeled “tetano”, at the same time holding up four fingers of his other hand. Since the children and I had all had tetanus boosters just before leaving Canada, I nodded my head. At that time, the boosters were considered to last only four months.

I have absolutely no recollection of how we got out of that maze of corridors. Presumably the elevator operator had remained with us and escorted us back the way we had come.

My children and I will never forget St. Peter’s. We didn’t have an audience with the Pope, but we did get to see areas other tourists never get into!

Footnote: Wayne’s hand healed well and he grew up to be a surgeon.

Private Tour: Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and St Peters Basilica Guided Tour

If You Go:

ROME and VATICAN TOURS
VATICAN

About the author:
Doris Gregory was born in Vancouver, but spent almost half her life elsewhere, first as a Servicewoman in England during World War 2, then pursuing a career in psychology in the USA and Ontario. Now she is enjoying a happy retirement back in Vancouver, volunteering at Brock House and writing her war memoir, which she hopes to publish during the coming year.

Photo credit:
Image by Michael Siebert from Pixabay

Christmas Without Santa Claus

Athens, Greece

by W. Ruth Kozak

One of my most memorable Christmases was the first Christmas I spent in Athens, Greece in December 1982. It was my first Christmas away from my family and without Santa Claus. Christmas the traditional Greek way was very different than I was used to but I managed to find some decorations and tiny lights, bought a small bay-leaf tree and made myself a Christmas tree.

In the shops around Omonia and Kolonaki Squares there wasn’t a sign of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman or Santa’s Helpers. On the streets the familiar bell-ringers with their red money pots for charity and the sound of recorded Noel carols were missing. Most of the window displays didn’t have festive decorations.

Up on busy Patission Street, the big Minion Dept. store had a mechanical children’s display, a few plastic Santas and some small ornamental trees with tiny coloured lights. There was a big Christmas tree decorated with lights and bright cardboard packages in Syntagma Square. Although some of the main streets were strung with little bulbs, there wasn’t a sign of Christmas tree lights twinkling from apartment windows. And on Christmas Eve, Santa wouldn’t find any stockings hung for him to fill. In Greece, except for those who have adopted the western customs of celebrating the Yule season, the traditions are different.

For most of the western world Christmas is the central festival of the year. In Greece, Easter is of greater importance. There may be pageantry and feasting at Christmas, but none of the pre-Christmas ‘hype’ that is experienced in the western world.

For those Greeks who observe the Orthodox festivals, a short lent The Fast of the Nativity, begins this season on Nov. 17 and ends on Christmas Eve. The Presentation of the Virgin Mary on Nov 31 is the most important feast day, especially for the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

St. Nicholas isn’t the Greek Santa Claus; he is the patron saint of seamen. On Dec. 8 the little churches on the Greek Islands celebrate his day with the blessing of the ‘koliva’ a white dish made to honour the dead. This is taken on voyages to be thrown into the sea to calm stormy waters.

When the short lent, “Makree Sarakostis” ends on Christmas Eve, the Christmas bread, cakes and cookies are baked. Thee will be given to the children who come to sing the ‘kalanda’. These are the Greek carollers. Christopsomo, (hree-STOHP-soh-moh) means “Christ’s Bread,” and is a fixture in Greek Orthodox homes at Christmas. Except in homes where families celebrate western customs, the stockings are not hung on Christmas Eve. Gifts aren’t exchanged til New Years Day.

On Christmas morning, to the greeting of “Kala Hreestooyena: Merry Christmas” the family sits down to a traditional feast of delicious Greek foods and sweet. The most important feature of the day is the proportioning of the Christmas bread.

The real celebration begins on New Years Eve. It is a social evening when men play cards and gamble the night away, and children sing their carols, accompanied by the chiming of little silver triangles. Their favourite song is about Aghios Vassilis (St Basil). He will come, bringing paper and quill pens, because it is St. Basil who is the Santa Claus of Greece. St. Basil was one of the founders of the Greek Orthodox Church, famous as an educator and builder of hospitals and homes for the sick and friendless. The children singing about the benevolent Saint are rewarded with money and sweets.

On New Year’s Eve, as the bells chime in the new year, gifts are exchanged and glasses are clinked in the traditional toasts, a greeting common the world over: “Eftikhismenos oh Kaynooyio Kronios” – Happy New Year.

I was far away from my family and friends that Christmas in Greece, but it was a rich experience, one I will never forget.

Author’s Note: Today Christmas is a bit different in Greece than it was back when I spent my first Christmas away from home. Now almost everyone buys and decorates a Christmas tree, real or artificial. Greenery and branches were decorated in Greece around New Years as far back as antiquity. Sometimes little boats were decorated too.

Athens Christmas Food Tour

If You Go To Greece For Christmas:

Traditional Greek Christmas carols

Christmas Traditions and Customs in Greece

About the author:
Ruth Kozak spent her first Christmas away from her home in Canada when she went to live in Athens, Greece in 1983. It was an experience she’s never forgotten. She remembers especially missing her family at home and the traditional Canadian turkey dinner on Christmas Day. Ruth lived in Greece most of the ‘80’s but after that first Christmas she usually went home to Canada. For more of her travel stories and blogs see www.ruthkozak.com

Photo Credits:
Athens Christmas decorations by Vouliagmeni / Public domain
Russian icon of Saint Nicholas by The original uploader was CulturalUniverse at English Wikipedia. / CC BY-SA
Madonna and child by Theophanes the Greek / Public domain

Romania: Marvelous Monasteries of Moldova

by Iolanda Scripca

I boarded Lufthansa Airlines from LAX with a certain giddiness and anticipation. I was ready for a long flight over the U.S., Canada, Iceland, the Northern Sea and Germany – my final destination being Bucharest (or Bucuresti), the capital of Romania.

I landed in the capital at 3:00 a.m. My childhood friend, Gabriela, was waiting for me at Bucuresti’s International Airport Otopeni. The next day we took the train from Bucuresti to Suceava – the main city in Moldova.

Romania’s southeastern European location holds thousands of years of history, culture and tradition. I had to decide where my visit would take me this time: the Black Sea and its luxury resorts, the beautiful Carpathian Mountains with cozy cottages and hotels, a cruise along the Danube River and the Danube Delta, Transylvania and its relentless Dracula and his castle, the cultural life of the major cities, or the Eastern Orthodox monasteries of Moldavia.

In the twenty-four years of my life I spent in Romania, I only once had the occasion to visit a unique region of Romania called Moldova and I was just nine years old then.

Moldova’s beautiful landscape takes you back to a time when life was simpler. Village houses are still built the traditional way, and the residents still wear traditional, handmade clothes decorated with colorful patterns and from cloth that originated from local fields. The villagers are particularly helpful and friendly.

Once we arrived in Suceava, we stayed in a four star hotel. From there we joined a touring bus and headed for the renowned monasteries of Moldova.

I chose a spiritual journey to the ancient Moldavian monasteries: Arbore Monastery (built in 1503), Humor (1530), Moldovita (1532), Patrauti Monastery (1487), Suceava (1522), Voronet (1487) and Sucevita (1583). Each monastery has its own personality and architectural style. Outdoor and indoor frescoes depicting religious scenes fascinate the eyes and minds of tourists.

Entering the church, you are inclined to approach solemnly and humbly. Passing two separate stands that hold hundreds of thin yellow candles lit for the souls of the departed, you head slowly towards the altar, mesmerized by Byzantine-influenced icons and priests in holy attire. It was quite a thrill to be free to explore my own religion, free from the Communist regime which totally discouraged the population to go to church and believe in a higher power.

Later we had the unique experience of dining with the nuns at a long wooden table – so long it felt like one could unroll a scroll of the entire history of Christian religion. As I ate the meal the nuns cooked, I peeked a little at their faces: so much peace and purity of the soul…so much resembling the icons with no lines of worries…as if time had stopped indefinitely.

This interesting, fulfilling trip that reunited me with my childhood friend Gabriela couldn’t help but make me become more aware of what life is all about – remembering your family and friends and how important they should be here, now, and forever!

If You Go:

♦ Romania Tourism: www.romaniatourism.com
♦ Suceava travel info: www.romaniatourism.com/suceava.html
♦ The Painted Monasteries: www.romaniatourism.com/painted-monasteries.html

Tours of Moldava Now Available:

3-Day Wine Tour of Moldova from Chisinau
2-Day Gastronomic Tour in Moldova from Chisinau

Private Soviet Era History Tour of Moldova from Chisinau

Day Trip to the True Castles of Vlad Dracula

About the author:
Iolanda Scripca is a published poet, journalist, translator, and photographer who lived in Eastern Europe for the first twenty four years of her life, in a loving family. Her mom was a teacher, a high school principal, and a cultural promoter. Her dad was a published novelist, poet and TV producer. An unforgettable moment was her collaboration with her Dad in the translation and adaptation of a children’s book by the Bulgarian author Leda Mileva. She is a graduate of Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Bucuresti/Romania. Nowadays she enjoys living in Southern California and possesses a CA Teaching Credential from Chapman University. Ms. Scripca publishes in several Romanian-American Newspapers both in Romanian and English. “Lava Of My Soul” is her recently released collection of poems and essays. Her photography has been featured recently on the national TV station HLN.

Photo Credits:
Biserica Inaltarea Sf. Cruci din Patrauti by Cezar Suceveanu / CC BY-SA
Church interior by Iolanda Scripca
Sucevita Monestry by Monikad at English Wikipedia / Public domain