Monday, 11. July: Zittau

We caught the 7:15 a.m. train (only the train was early and actually pulled out of the station at 7:05.  People were chasing it trying to get it to stop,and one man fell trying to reach it before it stopped again and waited until 7:10.

On the train we met a Polish college student likely in his early 20s heading to Dresden for an internship.  He was a mechanical engineering student working on his master’s degree and hoping to also get a PhD.  He knew English well but very little German and had also studied Japanese because he liked the country and Russian with his grandfather who had been a Russian teacher.  Here a a few things I remembered from our conversation, many of the answers were the complete opposite of the person we talked to the previous night:

*Yes, of course, Poland was communist.  (I had asked since the person the night before had said that Poland wasn't communist. I was curious if this kid would give the same answer.)

*Yeah, Hitler was bad, but he stopped Stalin.  And Stalin was worse.  Stalin would have taken over Europe and then the world.   (I mentioned this later to a German who looked horrified at the mention of anything positive about Hitler.) 
*America didn’t get involved soon enough in World War II.  They are right to help out in the world--in fact not just right; they have an obligation.

*Stereotype of a Pole: overly ambitious  (the person the night before hadn't given me a stereotype of  a Pole, but his view of Americans was less than flattering.)

*Stereotype of an American: lazy

*It’s important to look to the future and forget the past.  After we discussed this some more, he said that by forgetting the past he didn’t mean forgetting the lessons of the past but rather forgetting the grievances of the past.

We waited in Gorlitz for an hour then took the bus to Zittau.  Normally we would have caught a train, but the trains were on strike.  We walked from main train station to center of town—our pension was right on the main square.  Walked into courtyard.  Arrived just before noon, more than 3 hours before check in time.  We had emailed to ask if we could leave our backpacks at the reception desk. Our rooms were not ready, but we put our stuff in and got the key.  The room was very large with the typical double bed—two beds side by side with separate bedding, a deska small refrigerator with purchasable drinks—and just enough room left for the yogurts we hadn’t eaten the previous day--and a sofa which turned into a bed, not the uncomfortable pull out bed like American sofa beds, but the European ones like we slept on in Poland.   We had asked if there was internet access, and she told us no WLAN = wi fi.  But when we arrived back around 6, she came up to our room with the plug-in she used to access the internet.  She had finished for the day and we were welcome to use it until midnight and then leave it in the room for her to use the next day. 
We walked back to the main train station and took a ten minute train from Germany through Poland into Hradek nad Nisou  a very small town just inside the Czech border.  There we asked directions for the border between the 3 countries and discovered that people at this place spoke only Czech—no English, no German.  Finally we found a man who spoke a little German and got directions to Krystyna Lake and to the “Dreiländereck”—the 3 country corner.  We turned towards Krystyna Lake right before this sheep farm. (Note the sheep hiding behind the building.)We found Krystyna Lake camping ground pretty easily and asked directions to the border.  The receptionist at the campground spoke perfect English and was very helpful.  She even printed out a map for us.  We found the three country border pretty easily—a small stream between Czech Republic and Poland, and a large rushing river, swollen from the rains, separating Germany.  We looked at all the monuments (each country had something different; they had drawn up plans in 2001 to put up something grand but apparently never finished.(Zittau is the nearest German town, Hradek nad Nissau the nearest Czech town, and Bogatynia the nearest Polish town.)and then walked over an arched bridge to Germany.   Since there hadn’t been anything stopping us from entering the bridge on the Polish/Czech side, we were surprised to find the other side blocked.  Leaning over the barrier, we saw a side which told us that the bridge was forbidden because it was unsafe. (falling danger, passage forbidden)
Next we decided to walk to Grabstein Castle which was only supposed to be about a mile away.  We found the way correctly and after walking about 2 miles we saw a sign saying that it was an additional 3 kilometers, so we decided that especially since it wasn’t open on  Mondays and we might not even be allowed into the grounds, it wasn’t worth the additional walk.  So we walked back to Hradek nad Nisou, looked around the churches, the main square, and the shops.  In the middle of the main square was an ancient well with grate overtop and glass panels surrounding it with words in German and in Czech.  I didn’t know enough of the German to decipher it, and it didn’t photograph well enough to work on later, but my best guess is that during the war a bomb fell in the square and exposed the ancient well.  We took the 4:30 train back to Zittau, ate pizza and mushroom salad with sheep cheese at a Middle Eastern Restaurant and then had an ice cream cone as we walked down the pedestrian zone to the main square.  


Kristen found a Singer store and went it to see if she could purchase a square of fabric for a friend.  While I was looking at tablecloths to embroider, she found the saleslady and asked if they had any “Fabrik.” When the lady looked at her confusedly, Kristen asked me for help.   I then asked for “Stoff”  since they were unlikely to have any factories (Fabrik) in a sewing shop.  When I explained the similarity in words to the saleslady, we all had a good laugh.  I bought a really nice table runner to embroider.


After we walked around the square and looked in the churches, we went back to the hotel and had an early night.