Jett's Study Abroad Experience
Spring 2023
Spring 2023
Who would have guessed... Poland is by far one of the best places I was lucky enough to be able to travel to. Not only is the history rich, but the food is amazing, the people are friendly, the Soviet/European architecture is unreal, and you constantly feel the weight of the significant events that happened there. While Poland was one of the epicenters of the Holocaust, it now feels like a symbol of resilience and emphasizes the importance of never forgetting the past. During my time in Poland, which is also the last country of my trip, I stayed in Warsaw for 3 full days, took a 4.5-hour bus ride to Krakow on the 4th day, and then spent another full 3 days in Krakow before catching a flight back to London. This means that I got to spend roughly 8 days in Poland, and I loved every moment of it! Warsaw, Poland As sad as it was to leave Berlin, the moment I got to Warsaw and made it through customs, I quickly fell in love with everything having to do with Poland. I got in relatively late in the afternoon at about 3:00pm and I had to catch a train from the airport to get into the city. After the train ride I had to walk about a mile and a half to get to my hostel, and I stopped at the store on my way. Even though the walk was about 25 minutes, it felt much quicker since the entire city is filled with WWII monuments and has beautiful architecture all over the place. While the buildings are not as grand looking as buildings in Spain, for example, there is something special about old, soviet-style Coca-cola signs, old Mercedes-Benz offices, and cathedrals. Once I made it to my hostel, I was so happy to see that I finally was going to have a nice private room for the rest of my trip since my room in Krakow was also a private room. The rest of my night pretty much consisted of going for a short walk through the old town and grabbing some potato pancakes (latkes) for dinner before heading home and getting a good night of sleep. Day 1: On the first day, I pretty much had no plans like usual. Instead, I decided to just pin a bunch of things on a google maps list and just walk from place to place and see where I could get tickets. This ended up being incredibly efficient in Warsaw as a good portion of the things to see fall along a central avenue that runs down the whole downtown area. The things I saw included: 1. The Tin-Roofed Palace (and the apartment of Prince Jozef Poniatowski (pawn-yuh-tahv-ski)) 2. Sigismund's Column 3. The old town of Warsaw (also where my hostel was located) 4. Holy Cross Church 5. Had to get more potato latkes because they are one of the best things I have ever eaten. 6. The National Museum of Warsaw, which was a huge museum and had an exhibit called "Corsets Off" which celebrated contemporary paintings and portraits celebrating women's strength through history. Day 2: On my second day in Warsaw, I dedicated my time to visiting many of the monuments and museums dedicated to the Jewish people and the ghettos imposed by the Germans in WWII. I mostly went from monument to monument throughout the city and just tried to take time to recognize and remember the tragic incidents that happened there. After visiting all of the monuments, I walked over to the POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews and the Warsaw Ghetto monument. I spent a good 5-6 hours in this museum so that I could really soak in the rich history of the central European Jews and understand the history of the culture beyond just that of the WWII. While I didn't cover the most ground on this day, it was one of the most informative days I have ever had when it came to understanding a critical part of the European and Jewish History. Also, word of advice, when you visit the Jewish Museum, definitely pay the 20 Zloty fee to get the audio guide as you won't regret it. It explains all the long paragraphs dotted around the museum, in a much more comprehensible form. Day 3: Day 3 was honestly filled with mostly walking, but the things that I walked to, and saw were absolutely amazing. The first thing I knew I wanted to see was the Palace of Culture and Science. Not only was the building spectacular, but there was also a local farmers market that I found where there were barely any tourists. None of the signs were in English and I couldn't say what most of the things being sold were, but walking around and hearing everyone speaking Polish was a very special experience. The reason I really wanted to go to this building though, was that you can pay about 4 dollars' worth of Zloty to take an elevator all the way to the top of the clock tower to get a 360-degree view of Warsaw. Usually, I'm a little stingy about going to the top of buildings in their elevators, because those usually cost a lot, but this one was super cheap and super worth it. After coming down from the building and enjoying the farmer's market, I stop and ordered some Polish Sausage and fries for lunch. I can honestly say that Polish sausage was my second favorite thing I ate in Poland after the potato latkes. For the rest of the afternoon, I walked over to and toured the Royal Castle in Warsaw. While most of this castle was completely destroyed during WWII, it was rebuilt as a memorial of Polish history. The few parts that were still original though, were absolutely stunning and think about how beautiful the castle would be if the rest was never destroyed. After the castle, I pretty much had to go back to the hostel and get all my things packed for the next leg of my stay in Poland. The bus I took the next morning, left at 9 am and was on the far side of the city, so I had to wake up early and take the overground tram system to the bus station. Krakow, Poland Honestly, the bus ride itself was super smooth. I can't say much about what the ride was like though as I pretty much fell asleep the moment, I left the station. When I got to Krakow though, instantly loved it just as much as Warsaw. There was much less soviet architecture there and much more of the European style of buildings that you would expect in Germany, partially due to the German occupation during WWII. My new hostel was located right next to a busy shopping area which made the street quite noisy, but overall, the area I was staying in Krakow felt more local than in Warsaw. Unfortunately, the rest of my day was mostly spent working on schoolwork for the Fall 2023 semester, but I was so excited to be there and the things I had planned for this city were going to be amazing. Day 1: Day 1, like always, was my day without a plan. I pretty much decided to spend the whole day going to visit Wawel (Va-vel) Royal Castle, and while I was there, I was there I saw the State Rooms, Royal Apartments, Crown Treasury, Armory, Royal Garden, and Thieves Tower. This castle was the original, besides the parts that got burned down in one of those great fires that every city in Europe has had at some point. After touring all of the best parts of the castle, I walked around, took tons of pictures, and came across a music festival that was happening in the old city. There were tons of street stalls where vendors were selling local snacks, ice cream, and different types of hand-made items, and there were tons of different live music being performed in more languages than I could even count. I ended up walking around and enjoying the music while indulging in multiple kinds of ice cream that I could not say the names of; however, they were much less sweet than what I am used to, and they tasted much more natural. While the festival was fun, there was one thing that I did not like. While I was walking around, I noticed people were taking advantage of the tourists by wearing Ukrainian flags and claiming they were refugees asking for money. This would make perfect sense except for that many of them had iPads and were saying that they accept credit cards or cash, which doesn't make much sense, but to make it worse, when you say no, they become really rude. I don't know for sure that this is a scam, but it is something I saw a lot and it seemed like an odd way for refugees to take donations. Overall, I absolutely loved the city even just from one day of walking around and I was already excited for the next couple days. Day 2: Day 2 in Krakow was honestly one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life, as I chose to visit Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenau. I hired a guide to take me and explain everything that we saw, and that same guide also picked me up from my hostel, which was very nice. Having a really good guide made the experience a lot more complete in my opinion, and it helped me understand everything that I was seeing. We first walked around Auschwitz I, which was the smaller of the 2 concentration camps, but it was also much more intact as the German's were not able to destroy much of this one. We then got to tour Auschwitz II Birkenau, which was much more destroyed as the Germans blew up a good portion of the buildings so that no one would ever know what all they were doing. This camp was also immensely bigger than Auschwitz I, as all you see are building (or their foundations) for as far as your eyes can see. To me the best part of the tour was the philosophy that the guide gave us though. We were told a lot about German's mistreating Jews and Jews mistreating each other, and many people think that this mistreatment of others dehumanized the Jews and Germans. Many people may say that they would have tried to help prisoners escape or would have been kind to all the people they were around or would have even disobeyed order secretly. Our guide said this "you never know if you would have been the good guy or the bad guy, and until you are truly immersed in a tragedy, you will never find out." When we were told this, I immediately wrote it down because it truly stuck with me when you think about how there is no way to know for sure if you would have even survived, much less have the audacity to disobey orders when your life is on the line. Day 3: On Day 3, my big plan was going to visit Oskar Schindler's Factor and to walk around the Jewish Quarter of Krakow. I bought tickets for 10 am, so I had to get up pretty early to make the walk over to the museum since it was about 3.5 miles away from where I was staying. While it seemed like a far walk, the route took me directly through the Jewish quarter of the city, which was absolutely beautiful, and the walk ended up only taking about 40 minutes. Once I got to the museum, I realized how fortunate I was that I had planned out my trip to Poland way ahead of time. I had thought ahead to buy my ticket to the museum in March, so when I got there and saw the huge line of people waiting to go in, I was very pleased as I go to go right in. The museum itself was more about the holocaust in general rather than Schindler's Factory; however, the layout of the museum basically created a symbolic timeline from the peaceful age in Krakow all the way through the end of WWII. It was definitely one of the better museums I saw during my trip, and the location in the Jewish quarter and in the actual factory was really special. On my way back, I did some shopping for some polish snacks and the music festival was still going strong, so I enjoyed some more ice cream and music. The very last thing I did in Krakow was visit the St. Mary's Basilica, which was also the last church building that I visited before coming back to the US. It was less grand than some of the other's I had seen, which could be because of its location in a large Jewish area, but it was still a very nice accent to such a beautiful old city. It was certainly a great way to end such an amazing month of traveling. After my last day in Krakow, I had an early flight back to London Heathrow the next morning. It was very bitter-sweet that my trip had come to an end, but I was also so excited to get ready to go back to the US. I, of course, did not want to leave Europe since I knew that it is where I want to live for my career, but I was also so excited to get see everyone back home and to tell everyone about my time studying abroad. This trip is one that I will never forget, and the experiences I had while traveling around in May were unlike anything I have done before!
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July 2023
While I attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I was born in Littleton Colorado and grew up in a rural area. When I moved out to Hawaii for school, I quickly found my groove in Shidler College of Business as a triple major studying Marketing, International Business, and Quantitative Economics, and I was later chosen to be one of the Shidler Global Leaders. This and several other scholarships, including the Johnson Scholarship, gave me the amazing opportunity to go spend a semester abroad in the United Kingdom.
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