Woe to the Selfish Traveler!

A blog post by Maria Rocha, Spring 2011

Some say that awkward is a decision. I beg to differ. Awkward and uncomfortable situations are inescapable situations that offer the opportunity for growth in virtue and a good laugh later.

Exhibit B:

“Where on earth am I?”

This is always my first thought when waking up in a hostel. Waking up in a hostel is one of the more confusing parts of traveling. You wake up bleary eyed and disoriented because the ceiling is not the Kartause ceiling and the sheets feel funny. The only familiar things in the room are your backpack and travel companions.

On this particular morning, my travel mates and I were in Prague. Hoping they wouldn’t kill me for causing a ruckus so early in the morning and that I wouldn’t do any harm to myself by toppling off of the creaky ladder of my bunk bed, I crept slowly down. As I walked to the door, I dreamt of being first in the shower, getting prime mirror space, and even having time for a coffee. My dreams flew out the window which, unlike the door, was wide open. I tugged on the door again and again and still nothing happened. The sounds of my battle with the door woke one of my companions.

“It’s a deadbolt. You have to unlock it from in here,” he said groggily.

“Well good thing there is no key,” I retorted.

“NO KEY!?” He was awake now.

“No. Key,” I repeated.

“Dear Lord. I knew I should have kept it. I gave it to the last two people up. Ask them.”

“Umm they are sleeping,” I said.

“So was I,” he answered.

“Touchè.”

I tiptoed to the nearest bed and interrogated the first suspect.

“Umm hey, good morning.”

No response.

I began to poke the sleeping suspect on the arm.

“Psst, do you have the key? I wanna get out.”

“Nooo.”

“Umm, it’s a no,” I said over my shoulder as the suspect rolled over.

“Try the others.”

“Why me??” I was forced to be that guy; that person who wakes everyone up before they are ready; the evil fairy of premature consciousness.

When he didn’t answer me, I went around the room and interrogated the remaining four suspects. All I got was four sleepy, but definitively negative responses.

While three of our group remained asleep, the four of us played detective. We spent the greater part of two hours framing and blaming everyone in the room.

“I don’t know about you, but I really NEED to get out of here,” someone said.

“We all do,” someone else retorted.

“There is no way I’m wallowing in this hostel all day when Prague awaits me,” someone else cried.

“WHERE’S THE KEY!!”

Desperation had set in.

“Give me your phone,” someone said to me.

“Why?”

“I’m calling the front desk!”

“The front desk…here? The one downstairs?”

“Yes!”

As he put the phone to his ear, the morale in the room rose a bit.

“Hi. It’s room 37.”

Pause.

“Yes. Thirty. Seven. Here. We’re upstairs.”

Pause.

“Can you let us out?”

“Yes out of our room.”

“It’s here. We just can’t find it.”

“Thanks, man!”

Five minutes later a hostel employee opened the door and we assured him that he was the most wonderful person on the planet. After the hours we spent locked inside our hostel, we enjoyed our day in Prague much more. To all of you wondering what happened to the key, don’t worry. We found it a few hours later. Someone had put it in their backpack so it wouldn’t get lost.

When you travel with people, you share more than just a train car and a hostel. Everyone shares the responsibility of keeping track of time, keys, and each other. Woe to the selfish traveler! She will travel alone and have no one to blame for a lost key but herself.

On Pilgrimage to Poland

A blog post by Brandon Otto, Spring 2011

Classes have been continuing strongly in Austria: mid-terms are this week, and so studies are getting much more intense. That doesn’t mean we don’t have amazing travel times too, though.

Two weeks ago, the school set up a bus ride to Prague (Praha), and I hopped on-board. My friends and I went on a bus tour throughout much of Prague, ending up at the castle. After seeing the castle, the residence of the president of the Czech Republic, we journeyed around the town, seeing St. Nicholas Church, a gorgeous baroque church, and the Church of Our Lady Victorious, where the Infant of Prague is located. We also ate at a café that entirely played Beatles music (I seem to have a habit of finding European restaurants that play music in English). After wandering throughout much more of Prague, we ended up eating at an Italian restaurant (not Czech, I know). Then we headed back to campus for a Sunday and another week of classes.

At the end of the week was the pilgrimage to Poland. Poland was amazing. Although I’d been there before, and I’d previously seen Kraków and Auschwitz-Birkenau, it was still an amazing trip. On the long way there, we watched the 2005 miniseries Karol: A Man Who Became Popeto prepare us to see John Paul II’s home country. The bus ride ended at 5:45 in the morning in Częstochowa, where we sprinted up the icy hill of Jasna Góra to see the unveiling of the icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa, complete with trumpet blasts. Jasna Góra is an absolutely beautiful shrine that, in addition to containing the icon, it has a set of the Stations of the Cross, by Polish artist Jerzy Duda-Gracz, that show Christ suffering alongside the modern Polish people. They are striking and powerful in their portrayal of His suffering. One example is in the Station of the Crucifixion, where all the Polish saints, including St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Hedwig (Jadwiga), and Venerable (soon to be Blessed) John Paul II, stand alongside Christ on the Cross. The next Station depicts Our Lady of Częstochowa holding Christ’s body, with His head taking the place of where the Infant is in the original icon. These Stations are just stunning: they probably rank as my favorite Stations of the Cross that I’ve ever seen. After viewing these Stations, some other students and I offered our petitions to Our Lady of Częstochowa, which involved moving around the entire shrine to reach the wall behind the icon. Did I mention that this is entirely done on one’s knees? It’s definitely a prayerful act, and penitential too. Following an English Mass and a little more free time (where yet another Mass was held: Masses are literally constant in Jasna Góra), we headed off to see Auschwitz and Birkenau (the second part of Auschwitz).

The following day involved a tour of Kraków, along with free time to explore all the many shops, cafés, churches, museums, and open-air shopping. My favorite part of Kraków on this visit was my favorite part from the last visit as well: the Wawel Cathedral. I sometimes jokingly refer to it as the “ADD Cathedral,” because there was a total of five or six different architectural styles used in the building of this cathedral as it was added on to throughout the centuries. From the outside, it very much looks like an odd conglomeration of different styles without any particular order. The inside of the cathedral is beautiful though, full of chapels to different Polish devotions, including Our Lady of Częstochowa and the Divine Mercy, tombs of royalty, tapestries, and relics, including the relics of the 11^th-century saint Stanisław (Stanislaus) and the 14^th-century saint Jadwiga (Hedwig). John Paul II loved this cathedral: he actually celebrated his first Mass as a priest there. Exploration of Kraków included eating at a café, seeing remnants of the medieval fortifications, and finding a bakery whose owners share the last name of one of my friends.

We left Kraków in the middle of the day to head to the Shrine of Divine Mercy, where the relics of St. Faustina Kowalska are located. The Shrine is very interestingly shaped: some people say it resembles a spaceship. The convent chapel, where St. Faustina’s relics are housed, was a much more traditional shape: it included the original Divine Mercy image. There we prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet in Polish, with some bits of English and French interspersed as well. We heard a talk on St. Faustina and Divine Mercy from a sister there, and we celebrated Mass in the Basilica. Shortly thereafter, we returned to Kraków. A group of us went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday at a nice restaurant, where the food included Borscht (beetroot soup) and fruit pierogies served with sweetened sour cream.

The final day in Poland began with a Latin Novus Ordo Mass at Wawel Cathedral in front of the relics of St. Stanisław (which I was a big fan of, since that might be my favorite cathedral I’ve ever been to). A group of us then went to Nowa Huta, a town on the outskirts of Kraków founded to be a communist utopia. They had a long struggle to eventually get a church in the town, including many lives lost defending a six-foot-tall wooden cross marking consecrated land. Another aspect of Nowa Huta is that the workers at the steel mill there made a giant cross at the mill after hours (illegally, of course), and they used it when Karol Wojtyła, then bishop of Kraków, would celebrate Christmas Eve Mass every year. Now there are two churches in Nowa Huta, one at the spot of the wooden cross, and one built on a cornerstone from St. Peter’s Basilica, blessed by Pope Paul VI, that Karol Wojtyła brought from Rome specifically to be a cornerstone. After seeing these two churches, we returned to Kraków for about an hour before heading to Wadowice, the hometown of John Paul II.

This small town was a great place to visit. We saw the baptismal font where Karol Wojtyła was baptized and the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help where he first heard the call to the priesthood. We also saw a museum featuring many photographs and artifacts from John Paul II’s early life. At a souvenir shop in town, my friends and I met a Polish woman who lived in Chicago for a few years…and coincidentally, she knew the bakery owned by the grandparents of one of my friends! Talk about coincidences!

After only a few hours in Wadowice, we headed off on our long journey back the Kartause, listening to many people recount amazing experiences from over the weekend. Overall, the weekend in Poland was an absolutely amazing weekend, one that I would consider the highlight of the Austria experience so far.

This past week has been all studying as we prepare for mid-terms next week and then the 10-day pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi after that. I’ll write another post when we return from that pilgrimage. Until next time, God bless! Auf wiedersehen!

A student reflection about Prague

Traveling, I thought, was no big deal. I was definitely excited to travel

around Europe and to do so with my peers, but the idea of trekking across

a country, wasn’t entirely new to me. Or so I thought. My family’s

version of travel is to have an end destination and a basic idea of how to

get there before we set out. We don’t have an itinerary for every moment

but simply general ideas. With this in mind, I thought traveling around

Europe would be fairly similar. To say the least, I have come to a

different conclusion after only the first week of independent travel.

Planning isn’t essential, but it is helpful. For example, I bought my

train ticket to Prague the night before we left. Had I planned it out

sooner, I could’ve gotten roundtrip on the bus from Vienna to Prague.

Since that didn’t happen, my traveling was a little less cut and dry. The

way to Prague was via train and the way back was a bus and train

combination. Getting the bus ticket back was a little more interesting

and since there was no other way to do it, I got my return ticket when I

was in Prague. I’ll just say that my faith in God was increased and I

came to realize how praying to the Communion of Saints helps take one’s

mind off all of the bad possibilities. Nevertheless, I was able to go to

Prague and return safely.

Prague was so wonderful, that I would do it all over simply to have that

experience again. At the Church of Our Lady Victorious (home of the

Infant of Prague), the group I traveled with was able to receive a

blessing from a Carmelite priest. Following the Mass in Czech we looked

around at the church. A friend and I went to the priest to ask him to

bless some of the articles we had purchased but before we could ask, he

said we could get the whole group together and he would bless us in the

chapel. The blessing we received was beautiful. He prayed that we

wouldn’t encounter any troubles in our travels and that we would increase

in devotion to the Holy Infant of Prague, among other things. At this

point, I was fairly certain that God would get me home that night. That

was one of the highlights of the day.

Gaming, thus far, has been a wonderful experience. I’ve heard people say

that if they went home today, they would be satisfied. As I thought about

that statement, I at first thought that it was extreme and that I wouldn’t

assert that. But then I realized that perhaps that should be my attitude.

It is all a gift and if the giving were to cease, I should be happy with

all I have received so far. If I had to return home today, I hope I would

be able to go with the attitude that all I have received is a blessing.

With that in mind, I have been so richly blessed with beautiful scenery,

friends, family, God’s love, and the experience of living, studying, and

praying in place of such depth.

Written by Trish Irvine, Spring 2010