On a gray and misty morning, my heart was broken and mended again on a long walk.

The air was thick and damp, heavy. The further I walked, the heavier I became.


This was Auschwitz.

A death camp where over 1.1 million people perished through no fault of their own.

From this “factory of death,” crumbling two hours outside of Krakow, Poland, three crematoriums, gas chambers, barracks, watch towers, and barbed wire fences remain.

The evil and hatred that once claimed this site is still palapable here. It’s alive even in death. The walls, the cobblestones, the towers, the gates, everything on the grounds is worn raw from the suffering of four years spent in hell.

Walking beneath the rusted entrance gate brandished with the words “Arbeit Macht Fret,” “Work Brings Freedom,” I can only imagine standing here 60 years earlier; staring at those scarring words overhead, hopeful I was being “resettled,” and holding on to a sliver of hope that I may one day be free.

Any able working person 13 years and older would have passed through here. The other 70 to 75 percent of people too old, young, or weak to work were killed upon arrival.

I am not the first 22-year-old girl to pass under these gates. I imagine tracing the steps of the girl walking here 60 years ago. Same steps, but different walks. My walk was a tour, hers was a march to death.

Only time made the difference.

We approached a gas chamber that doubled as a crematorium, and as we filed through in a single line, I flashed to the time when those who walked in to this cold and gray crumbling coffin would never come out. Yet I did.

Only time made the difference.

Kicking my feet through the dust, shuffling from barrack to watchtower in the gray drizzle, watching the dark fragments settle on the earth, I wondered if there were human remains still among the ruins.

Ashes from dead prisoners were used as fertilizer on the grounds.

I scanned the rooms within the retired prisoner cell blocks that held saved artifacts from the camp. Two tons of prisoners’ hair, only a fraction of the true amount collected by the Nazis, lie in dusty tangled heaps beyond the glass.

Hair was used to make cloth.

My nails scratch along the thick window panes which hold the confiscated suitcases, baby shoes, eyeglasses, brushes, and other personal belongings of prisoners.

These are real things. These were real people. This really happened…here.

Yet I come out the other side.

All because of time.

It is time that has caused us to realize what we’ve done to each other. Time that’s allowed us to preserve this part of history. And through time, we can only learn to not repeat our past.

I’m thinking of that scene where Jack partakes in a black tie dinner with Kate and fellow “old money” folk in first class. He explains how he is a wanderer, slumming his way from place to place, never knowing where he’ll end up. Under a bridge one night, first class on a ship the next.

That’s our story, too. And I love it. I thrive on the fact that my whole world can change in a day and I can be in a totally new, totally foreign, uncomfortable, comfortable, satisfying or unsatisfying place. No two days are alike. In fact, they’re worlds apart.

The several days leading up to tonight’s ride were brutal to say the least, but wonderful. En route to Piraeus from Romania could have been the roughest travel segment I’ve experienced yet.

I was sick from the coffin, or sleeping couchette, we crammed into with five other people for ten hours, I was throwing up in and outside of the train, on a bus to the airport, in the airport, Sierra’s daypack was stolen in Piraeus, we were nearly thrown off a train by Hungarian police at 4 a.m., Cody lost his favorite hat, we were hot and uncomfortable and dehydrated trekking around the city all day with our bags until we were herded like cattle on the cruise liner at midnight.

But on this journey I also found my fairytale castle, felt the rain on my face running in the Alps, got lost in a world all my own in the most magical green gardens I’d ever seen, spun in a human whirlpool, tasted gelato as it’s meant to be tasted…

….

Sorry, slight pause. Sierra and I just snuck downstairs into the “nice cabins’’” bathrooms to execute a ‘face wipes shower’ in the sinks…our first in three days. Awesome.

And why is this wonderful? Because it’s chaos. It’s foreign and uncomfortable and comfortable and strange and exciting and tiring and trying all at the same time. When I’m pulled at so much every day, confronted with new trials and roadblocks and lucky breaks and let downs and tiny miracles all at once I sometimes feel like I’ll just explode; every emotion I own, some I didn’t even know I possess, is brought to the surface at the same time. I don’t think I can feel any more alive than when I do this.

Just several weeks ago, we were in a five-star apartment driving a baller Escalade around one of the nicest cities in Europe. In Eichenbichel I slept on a cloud at an Austrian bed and breakfast, I bunked in a ten person room in a hostel/club in Prague, and here I am now on the water under the stars.

Do we know where we’re staying in Santorini? Not really. Maybe a hostel, if there’s room, the beach is always an option, camp grounds could be close by, some places rent out apartment rooms…

But wherever we end up is where we’re supposed to be. (I just formed and digested this opinion, it’s kind of liberating). The people you meet, travelers you come across, locals you encounter, train buddies you bunk with, they all are part of your journey that shape your unique experience in a place and when and how you arrive at your next destination. Doors open wherever you are. Wherever they lead, roll with it, hang on, and just love it.

“I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby–i just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to– I just don’t care.”
“Eat, Pray, Love” Elizabeth Gilbert

Amen sister.

Look Forward To…

- Auschwitz Concentration Camp