Back..

So here I am, back in the UK after a hectic couple of weeks. It all started a few Tuesdays back. After a full day of teaching I went home, only to return to school at 12 midnight to meet 64 children a 6 colleagues for a trip down to Dover and then onwards to the battlefields of WW1.

We travelled through the night, stealing bits of sleep here and there. After a trouble free crossing we went to the 'Trench of Death' in Belgium. I had been told that I'd be feeling reasonably OK despite being up all night and this was pretty much true. I was on working on adrenaline and the repetitive counting of kids and trench exploration meant that tirednes ddin't catch up with me until about 10. I was even happy to have a few beers that evening in the main square in Ypres. The reconstruction has been immaculate (comparisons could be drawn with Warsaw - my residence over last weekend).

So we visited 'the usuals' - Vimy Ridge, the Somme etc.. very interesting to visit the places I've studied (and taught about) for a good while - one worrying point though. A few of the kids said 'it isn't as bad as I thought it would be'. I suppose that this is one of the main differences between a place like the Somme and Auschwitz (my next port of call). The WW1 battlefields have been maintained in pristine condition and, quite frankly, look 'beautiful'. Graves are tended with flowers and grass is diligently mown. The trenches themselves, if they have not been filled with concrete, are covered in thick grass which hides the mud, the rats, the barbed wire and general shit that the trip was supposed to give pupils an insight into. Regrettably, I still think that some of the pupils don't quite recognise the 'horror' of the trenches. Ironic, really considering we have visited the sights themselves. What more is a teacher to do?

So bearely 10 hours after arriving back in Manchester I was out on the road again, this time to Krakow, Poland. I visited with Mike and Owen in 2007 for a 'Lad's break' and we did the usual touristy things - Wieliczka (?) salt mine (crap) and Auschwitz. But of course, this week has taught me one thing - tourism and Auschwitz are uneasy bedfellows. Of course this is a site of mass murder and I visited on two occasions this week, not as a 'tourist' but as a Freelance Educator with the Holocaust Educational Trust. I applied for the post back in May and was successful (thankfully my current employer, Crompton House School, doesn't mind about the time off that this role will entail). What I've just done is a week's on the job training. We studied at both camps (Auschwitz I and Birkenau) with the intention of bringing 16-18 year olds on one day visits over the next year. We also spent a lot of time in the town of Auschwitz (or, to use its correct Polish name - Oswiencim), the Jewish Kazimierz district of Krakow and various Synagogues here and there. Overall it was a rewading, albeit tiring experiences and I look forward to working with HET on its LFA and Outreach programme over the coming year.

At the weekend I got the train up to Warsaw and continued my 'Jewish journey' - finding a surviving section of ghetto wall and visiting the only surviving Synagogue in a city that suffered like no other in WW2. After two days of this and monging in the hostel/drinking Zywiec off Nowy Swiat it was back down to Krakow for the flight home.

Overall a very rewarding two weeks - which is that same amount of time that I have to wait until Bucharest-Istanbul. It is going to be interesting!