Girls of Krakow

I asked the girls of Krakow if I could take their picture. They were so sweet and so tough looking all at the same time and seemed to be having so much fun, traveling through Poland by bus and train, playing music in the streets and in little clubs.

They said yes, but made me promise to take it in black-and-white.

I'd just come from the Jewish Temple in the old quarter and had stopped at the McDonald's in the big new mall across from the Ibis hotel for a cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake.

Fortified, I strolled through the mall searching for the English-language bookstore I'd been told was there, purchasing Milosz's "The Captive Mind," a book I'd started to read in 1984 but never finished.

Hi girls, do you remember me? The old American guy who'd spent most of the day wandering around the Jewish quarter taking in the sights with a heavy heart, realizing he'd been born only five years after Hitler offed himself in his bunker in Berlin and only three years before Stalin died of a rupture in his brain.

Let's stay in touch.