To make the best use of our limited time in Iceland we planned an afternoon flight arrival at Keflavík airport with an evening reservation at the geothermal wonder: The Blue Lagoon. We booked our reservation months earlier as we heard they limit the number of people in the pool at any one time and it can be difficult to secure a reservation on the spot.
After some delay and difficulty we finally picked up our rental car. With temperatures just above freezing we could still see traces of snow on the road as we navigated towards the distant plumes of steam rising across the stark but beautiful Icelandic landscape. We parked the car, grabbed our suits, and headed towards the spa entrance. On the way we got our first close up look at the eerily rugged and raw vocanic land that is Iceland.
We entered the spa and suited up. Those with hair (not me) were told to put copious globs of spa provided conditioner in their hair. Apparently the geothermal water at the Blue Lagoon contains high levels of silica, and while silica isn’t necesarily harmful to hair it can make it a stiff and unmanagabled mess as the minerals build up.
Greased up with conditioner we walked outside into near freezing air, where a cold rain drizzled upon us, and quickly made our way into the warm silty azure water. The super heated 38°C seawater channeled into the lagoon from over 2000 meters within the Earth was hot in some spots and pleasantly warm in others. No place in the lagoon was deep enough to be over our heads. The salty water made you bouyant and so we half floated and bobbed our way through swirling mists to the swim-up bar for a drink and a complementary silica face mask. We relaxed ourselves in the warm waters, volcanic stream rooms, and hot whirlpools, until we turned into silica soaked prunes. Sufficiently soaked we removed ourselves from the pools and dressed ourselves to make the forty minute drive to Reykjavik while it was still light.
Reykjavik is a super quaint and cute city. And the Ion City Hotel couldn’t have been more conveniently located. The small 18-room boutique hotel on Laugavegur (a main shopping and dining street) was only a few blocks from the Hallgrimskirkja church. As if in a moonage daydream we were greeted at the door by a portrait of David Bowie in Berlin (where we had just flown in from) as well as a glass of champagne while our rooms were prepared. The customer service at this hotel was impecable, especially Ricardo at reception who received us. He walked several blocks to where we had parked our car, carried a disproportionate number of our bags back to the hotel, told us where we could park for an extended period of time for free, advised us on how to find our tour the next day, and recommended to us excellent places to eat dinner that night as well as a bakery nearby for breakfast the next morning.
Following Ricardo’s suggestion we walked past Hallgrimskirkja and Tulipop (what reminded us of an Icelandic version of Tokidoki) to a restaurant called Kol. We had heard horror stories of the bleak and challenging Icelandic food; Hákarl (Fermented Shark), Súrir hrútspungar (Sour Ram’s Testicles), Svið (Sheep’s head), Slátur (Blood Pudding or Liver Sausage), Lundi (Puffin), Hvalspik (Whale blubber), to name a few. But the food at Kol was excellent, proving to be one of the best meals (and most interesting cocktails – I ordered “The Total Witch Hunt”) of our European trip. It was also one of our most expensive. Food and drink in Iceland is very expensive. When our bill came we realized why the duty free at the Keflavík airport was so popular. I highly recommend grabbing some items there, especially load up on the Icelandic chocolate and the Icelandic liquourice as well a bottle or two of wine to take back to your hotel room.
With a belly full of food and drink, and my wallet a little bit lighter, we wandered back through the streets of Reykjavik to our hotel. On the way it occured to us why there were ear-plugs placed on our bedside stands. Ion City Hotel is only a few doors down from Dillon Wiskey Bar, which that night seemed to be featuring one of Iceland’s Black Metal bands. While it was loud, and I was glad to have the earplugs, hearing the pounding double bass drumkit and gutteral retching of a metal band my first night in Reykjavik couldn’t have made me happier. I slept great.
In part, the impetus for our travels across Eastern Europe was the opportunity to educate ourselves about the Holocaust. We didn’t intentionally choose Berlin, Krakow, Vienna, and Prague for this purpose, but we did find these cities (like many across Europe) intrinsically intertwined in a shared dark history of such grisly magnitude it is hard to comprehend. We sought out memorials and museums throughout our trip to understand how such atrocities could unfold and to further our resolve to identify and curtail parallel tendencies in our own country.
On our second day in Berlin we decided to visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial starts simple, small, and unimposing, with simple concrete slabs slightly protruding from the ground like benches. There’s another Stolperstein-like cobble nearby that starts a virtual concert on your phone to listen to as your enter the memorial.
As I moved forward into the memorial it struck me how quickly I was engulled and overwhellmed by the columns which towered over me. It seemed a warning to how quickly something innocuous could become something sinister. And how, like a maze, it can be hard to find your way out.
The tall columns extended down into the earth and were revealed in a visitor center and museum below the memorial. It was like going underground into a crypt where placards detailed the historical progression of the rise of Nazi Germany and the events that led to the Holocaust. The most poignant and heartwrentching experience were the last words of the murdered printed in panels on the floor speaking to you from beyond the grave…
“Dear father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would so love to live, but they won’t let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever. I kiss you tenderly.” – 12-year old Judith Wishnyatskaya 31 July 1942
“Dearest Herta and Lore! We will see each other no more. I wish you both all the best. Think of me with love, as I do of you. Final greetings, kisses to both of you. I end.” – Death note of Richard Oschinski to his wife and daughter.
“I fell beside him and his corpse turned over, | tight already as a snapping string. | Shot in the neck. – And that’s how you’ll end too, – | I whispered to myself; lie still; no moving. | Now patience flowers in death. Then I could hear – | Der springt noch auf, – above, and very near. | Blood mixed with mud was drying on my ear.” – Szentkirályszabdja, 31 Oct 1944
On our third day in Berlin we went to the Topography of Terror Museum. Housed on the site of the State Secret Police (Gestapo), SS, and Reich Security offices, the museum is a vast and meticulous archive of the rise and fall of the Nazi regime with a focus the organized and institutionalized propoganda and terrorist methodologies they used to gain and retain power. It asks the central question which seems just as relevant today in the era of Trump: “How did National Socialism, which in retrospect was such an obviously deceitful, megalomaniacal, and criminal undertaking, succeed in attaining such a high degree of acceptance in Germany? Hilter, the Nazi Party gauleiters, a majority of ministers, state secretaries, and advisors acted as classic populists attuned to shifting moods. They bought public approval or at least indifference anew every day. By giving and taking away, they built a dictatorship of consent with consistent majority appeal.” Götz Aly, Historian, 2005.
After spending several hours walking our way from historical placard to historical placard tracing the depressing arc of Nazi evil, we finally learned the fate of the many perpetrators of Nazi terror and the Holocaust. It was depressing to learn that of the tens of thousands of Nazis involved in the murder of millions, only a handful were ever held accountable.
Both the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Topography of Terror museum had ample of documentation and ominous allusions to horrors of Auschwitz and Birkenau – our next holocaust experience.
Krakow, Poland: Our day started early, where dawn met drizzle. It was an appropriately damp and somber setting for seeing Auschwitz and Birkenau. We had booked ourselves into a small tour (~20 people) and set out on the hour and a half drive from Kraków to Auschwitz bracing ourselves for what would prove to be a harrowing and spirit-crushing tour of the brutality and atrocities of the most notorious of Nazi extermination camps.
From March 1942 on until the end of WWII, trains from all across Europe arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau where over one million people were murdered by the Nazi’s. By the summer of 1944 the extermination initiative reached its peak. Of those arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau only a small number were classified as “capable of work”, while the vast majority (women, children, and the elderly) were herded into “changing rooms” and forced to undress before heading to the “delousing showers” where they are gassed to death. The killing reached 10,000 people a day with the crematoria operating day and night but still unable to keep up with the bodies. Jewish prisoners were forced to burn the bodies of their dead in the open. Approximately one million Jews, 75,000 Polish prisoners, 21,000 Sinti and Roma, 15,000 Soviets POWs, and 10,000 other prisoners of other nationalities died at Auschwitz-Brikenau complex alone.
We went to Auschwitz first. Originally a Polish military base, it had been converted by the occupying Nazis into a death camp. You start your tour by walking past double barbed wire fences and and under the banner “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Sets You Free”).
You are then brought into a small museum to see some of the belongings left behind by the Jews who died here. Jews were told they were being relocated and to pack their bags. This ruse served two purposes: 1) It gave people hope and kept the panic down as they believed they were just being resettled. 2) It brought valuables (clothing (often lined with precious stones), silverware, brushes, glasses, and other belongings) which were repurposed (along with gold from the fillings of the dead) to support the German war effort.
Our tour continued through barrack after barrack, many with walls lined with photos of the victims. Notice the twins. Joseph Mengele‘s obsession with experimenting on twins meant these poor victims received his “special” treatment. We walked through the grounds and through notorious torture cells of Block 11 and past The Black Wall where those kept in Block 11 were executed.
Lastly, we walked through the first gas chamber and crematoria where the Nazis perfected their use of Zyklon B. But the gas chamber here (and the cremetorium for burning the dead) was determined to be too small to meet their production goals.
The Nazis realized they couldn’t kill effectively enough at Auschwitz. It was then they began building Birkenau which was only a short bus ride away.
On the way to Birkenau you follow the train tracks. The same tracks hundreds of thousands of Jews were herded into before meeting their death. The train tracks go straight through the gates of Birkenau and the tracks end between the barracks and the gas chambers and cremetoria.
Nearby we toured a barrack and the adjacent latrines. Interestingly enough, the latrines were the center of Jewish resistance in the camps. Getting a job in the latrines was coveted because although the stench was unbarable and conditions unsanitary, the Nazis wouldn’t venture there. That autonomy gave the workers there the ability to become the center of black market commuications for trade and organized resistance.
The magnitude of death and the size of both Auschwitz and Birkenau are so overwhelming you are really just numb to the horror of the place. I honestly didn’t really feel anything while I was there, except perhaps stunned, angry, and a bit nauseated seeing that mountain of hair.
That was until we came to a spot where we stood by the side of the tracks. It was a place where thousands upon thousands of Jewish passengers disembarked only to be quickly inspected and separated from each other and their belongings into two groups; those who would be processed for work and those who would be processed for death. We were told to walk the gravel road to the end, towards the remains of the destroyed gas chambers and cremetoria. It was then, walking that road, I was overwhelmed with the sorrow of a million souls. Retracing those footsteps my feet became heavy, as did my heart. The drizzle intensified. Or was it my tears? I stared silently into the pit of the collapsed and suken gas chamber at the end of the road. Death lingered there still.
“FOR EVER LET THIS PLACE BE A CRY OF DESPAIR AND A WARNING TO HUMANITY, WHERE THE NAZIS MURDERED ABOUT ONE AND A HALF MILLION MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN MAINLY JEWS FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU 1940-1945”
Sabbatikos 
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