Part V, Poland with Habitat for Humanity, July 4 - 7, 2011

For some unknown reason that I do not remember now, I had no photos from Monday, July 4.  I think it may be because we had the day off (Independence Day in America?) and just did not do anything special.

During a break on Tuesday, I walked around the campus of buildings here. In addition to the building we are renovating and the extended care facility for the elderly (the white building on the left in the photo), when you enter the campus you encounter this building.

Here is another view of the extended care facility from the front gate.

 The first building as you come in the gate was built in 1890.

I don't know what this building is, but it is the second one as you come on campus heading for the building we are working on.

This is the third building.

This inscription was on our building and is dated October 5, 1905 and appears to be from 1 Peter, Chapter 2, Verse 5: You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.

This is one of two cemeteries on the campus, behind the Lutheran Chapel.

This building is behind the cemetery that is behind the Lutheran Chapel.

It was built in 1894.

This addition to the building where we are working is slated for demolition (everything to the right of the green). However, because of Polish safety regulations, we could not work on the demolition.

We have made much progress in the basement. Here, the tile floor was jack-hammered out, a new drain pipe was added for a new sink and concrete was put in over the pipe.

This shower drain was dug out about 18 inches below the concrete, new large pipes were installed and today the new concrete was put in. You may remember an earlier photo of me sitting here digging out the old pipe.

This shower drain was also dug out, new drain pipes installed and today, new concrete was installed.

And the last hole was filled in over the new pipes and several of the young members of our team were allowed to leave their marks in the concrete.

We also had to take out several sections of non-load bearing walls and we saved the bricks, removed the mortar and now the bricks are ready for use in the next round of construction.

Here's Kyle plastering over cracks and holes in the wall in the entrance hall.

Today, again due to rainy weather, had lunch inside again. It has rained most everyday we have been here, we only had lunch outside twice.

 

 

Tuesday night we had a free night - I chose to stay at the hotel, read more of "Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned" (the chapter on the Scopes "Monkey" trial), and had beer and pizza. Wednesday was the last work day before we headed back to Krakow on Thursday.

 

Wednesday it was mostly time to clean up our worksite.   I remembered to take a photo of our favorite grocery store, Lidl. They were a five minute walk from our building site. If you zoom in on the billboard below the Lidl sign, you will see an ad for a new condo development on the other side of the store.

 

 

Here are some of the rooms that we finished.

 

And Wednesday evening, we had our last team dinner.
 

Latte at the local bakery at 6:15 Thursday morning, our last day in Gliwice. And yes, I did finish the book (Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned).

 

Here we are leaving our hotel, Dom Goscinny Sezam, and saying goodbye to Adam, the HFH Gliwice Director.

Today, we were told we were going to the mountains that border the Czech Republic and then on to Krakow. We thought that meant a scenic ride, getting out at vistas for 10 - 15 minutes, and then onward to the next scenic vista.

Instead they brought us to this resort that is a ski area in the winter and park in the summer.

Some of us chose to ride the ski lift up the mountain and some chose to walk.

Beautiful views from the top of the ski runs, and we had lunch at one of the cafes there.

From there is about a 20 minute walk to the border.

Left foot in the Czech Republic and right foot in Poland.

And then it was back in the bus for the ride to Krakow, where some people were leaving that evening, some staying for several days, and some like me, just staying that night and then catching an early morning flight Friday.  For me, it was the typical Friday travel, about 24 hours door to door.  And so another Habitat adventure has come to an end.

Part IV, Poland with Habitat for Humanity - Auschwitz and Birkenau, July 3, 2011

No building today, instead we went to the former concentration camps and museums at Auschwitz and Birkenaeau.

The large building is now the museum entrance and auditorium where we watched a 17 minute movie introducing us to the camps.

This sign showed some of the pictures drawn to show prisoners (those healthy enough to not be executed) marching to work and those prisoners who were musicians and were kept alive to play music in the camp orchestra.

This is a photo of the inmate orchestra playing for the guards.

These are the standard prison buildings that housed 800 - 1000 prisoners each.  They had originally been built as barracks for a military base.

 

 

This map of Europe showed where prisoners and those to be executed where shipped in from - Athens was the furthest at 2150 KM and taking 10-11 days.

Here are some of the stats of the camp.

 

 

I  have visited Dachau (near Munich) in the late 1960s and again in 2006. Auschwitz is much larger, and Birkeneau is about 6-7 times as big as Auschwitz. While our tour continued, we were not allowed to take any more pictures.

After visiting both camps, we were soaked. It was a cold, rainy day - our tour guide said it was the coldest, rainiest summer day he had ever seen. The temp was about 55 and the wind was blowing constantly. It was nice to get inside to have lunch.

This was a very sobering experience - it is hard to believe that people could do the things we saw, from medical experiments, to removing gold and silver fillings from teeth, to shaving heads to get the hair to use in manufacturing.  It was gruesome.  Seeing things like this make me wonder how anyone can deny the Holocaust.

Part III, Poland with Habitat for Humanity, June 29 - July 1, 2011

Inspired by our group's purchase and donation of a shop vac and other tools, HFH Gliwice's director convinced a local vendor to give a 20% discount and he purchased a concrete saw. Damian (in red shirt) is our onsite construction manager and he was very happy with all the new equipment.  Here he is on Thursday opening up the saw.

At our now daily stop at Castorama, we bought some files so that we could return a sharp edge to our paint scrapers and putty knives.

When painting the windows, some paint got on the panes of glass - so we scraped the paint off the glass before reinstalling the windows.

Left to right: Samantha, Matt and John. Today was an unusual day. Another NGO that Habitat works with asked for help painting the room of a handicapped man. So Samantha, Matt and Ruth spent the day there working on the project. After work we went to the Polish version of a Chinese restaurant.

On Friday, we saw that this building was built in 1905 and was in use as an orphanage until 1995. It has been sitting vacant since then. The cobwebs, dirt and dust are unbelievable. I was vacuuming walls and ceilings. The white is where I have cleaned, the gray is the undisturbed dust and dirt.

Same here, the white is where I have vacuumed the walls and ceiling, the gray is what it looked like when we got there.

Heavy rains Thursday night and Friday morning cause more damage. This is looking up at the plaster between two of the beams (in the main room, the beautiful beams are exposed like this). The brown spots are from earlier damage, but the gray spot is the most recent leak.

I noticed that while we have the 20 liter bottles of water in the water fountain at the work site and are using our own refillable bottles for drinks, we have bought some six-packs of large water bottles. Strangely enough, Saguaro is the brand of the Polish company that bottles and sells water and carbonated beverages. And I thought Saguaros were only in the Sonoran Desert in AZ and Mexico.

Here are John and Jim scraping walls before plastering. This corner had water damage and some mold - all has been removed now.

"Asha" and "Mihal" at work on a stairwell window. Asha is an HFH volunteer from Warsaw. She took the day off from work Friday, allowing her to take the train here Thursday evening. Her parents live in Gliwice. She hopes to lead a Global Village HFH team to the USA.

Ryan, Matt, Ashley and I continue to dig out the concrete floor to access a drain pipe which needs to be replaced.

Even though it is destructive, there is something nice about swinging a hammer and making visible progress.

After showers and clean clothes, Asha led us into town for dinner at a restaurant she likes.

Along the way, we passed this pleasant park. I would have more pictures of the evening, but my camera stopped working. As usual, I later found out that the camera operator had not been properly recharging the battery.

This is our hotel: Sezam Guest House. It is part of Silesia Polytechnic University. The little mark over the first S and under the first A makes the pronunciation "Schlonska."

Jim and I are the bad boys who always sat in the back of the bus.

Jim and I always want to stop at Castorama, the big boys' toy store.

Saturday, we only worked half the day.

After working Saturday until 1:00, we had lunch and then went to visit the neighborhood built by HFH. Starting in 1992, they have built all 9 of these buildings which house anywhere from 6 to 12 families in separate condos.  We were able to tour the inside of one condo - while not large, it was comparable to what you would see in many cities in the USA, two bedrooms, one bath, kitchen, dining room,living room, laundry room and storage room.

After the tour, Saturday evening we went out for dinner and celebrated our week of work.