Fulbright Adventures in Lublin

Last weekend, the Fulbright Commission organized a weekend trip to Lublin, located in southeast Poland.   For a refresher, I live in northern Poland, right on the Baltic Sea in Gdansk.

Trains in Poland are terrible and it would take about 14 hours or so to get from Gdansk to Lublin even though it's only a little over 300 miles.  AND Lublin doesn't have an airport, or an airport near by.

So I left Gdansk on Thursday evening and flew to Warsaw, then grabbed a three hour bus with the rest of the Fulbrighters on Friday morning.  This was after a mostly sleepless night because of the Swiety Mikolaj party going on across the street from where I slept.

My group outside of the Catholic University

When we got to Lublin, all the Fulbrighters were broken up into different groups.  Some visited high schools to talk about American universities, the Jewish scholars met with local experts on the Jewish community, some people visited local NGOs, and others (including yours truly) visited universities.

After the visits, we met back up in the hotel for some lunch.  Unfortunately for me, the snow that was rapidly exiting the sky was NOT on the weather forecast for the weekend.  Thus, the discovery that my boots were NOT waterproof led to a frantic dash to the mall to find something to keep my poor toes dry and cozy on Saturday during our walking tours.

While the snow melted quickly at first, it soon started to accumulate and led to a pretty good first impression of Lublin. 

Friday night allowed us the opportunity to meet Polish Fulbright alumni who lived in Lublin.  The professor at my table was from Lomza, the same city one of my great grandpa's immigrated from!  He offered to take me there in the spring and help me with some of the archives (which are in Polish) in the city hall and local church.

We also had a performance/lecture by Dr. Stan Breckenridge.  He's easily in the top 10 of most talented people I know.  Stan's a musician and expert on African-American music and its contribution to modern American music.  Parts of his performance are on YouTube.  We had some technical difficulties in the hotel's conference room, so some of us girls helped out with a live demonstration of The Temptations dancing. 

Saturday morning started out quite chilly, but close to Lublin with a visit to Majdanek.  Majdanek is a concentration camp situated almost in the Lublin city limits.  I already wrote a separate blog post about being in a death camp as well as a later visit to a theater commemorating the Jewish neighborhood of Lublin.

After Majdanek, we boarded the bus for a trip to Zamosc.  This Polish city was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1992 for its unique Renaissance architecture and city plan.  The main square, or rynek, is picturesque.  In Zamosc, we met with the vice-mayor and I subsequently fell down the stairs trying to leave the building!

The rest of the evening I spent traipsing around the city with fellow Fulbrighters Mark and William and a Fulbright alum. 

Sunday morning, I woke up very early to go to Mass at the Catholic University.  It was one of the strangest churches I've seen in Poland with modern art collages on the wall and interesting interpretations of Blessed JPII's portrait. 

After breakfast, we split into two separate groups.  I thought the tours were the same, except for one tour had an extra 15 minutes of walking to the old Jewish cemetery.   I decided to go in that group.  Unfortunately, I was incorrect in my understanding of the situation.  My tour was specifically about Jewish life in Lublin.  I was disappointed that I wasn't able to learn more about Lublin's history in general.  However, the tour was very informative and helped me understand the vast scope of the Holocaust.

In the end, it was a very fun weekend!  I was a bit skeptical about traveling so far from my host city for only a weekend, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting to hang out with my Fulbright friends in a more relaxed setting from our orientation week.  Back then we were all stressed about what our assignments would entail.  Now we were able to relax and enjoy ourselves, and it was a welcome break from life in Gdansk!