Around The World In Katie Days

Today we woke up early and had to catch a bus to Auschwitz. We had some eggs for breakfast and headed to the bus station. We didn’t leave ourselves enough time so we ended up running part of the way once we got near. We ended up making it with a little time to spare. When we got there we had to get a guide since during the day you can’t visit unless you have an official guide. We were worried that we were not going to get on the 12:30 english tour and that we would have to wait an hour till the next one but thankfully they have multiple tour guides that go at one time so it doesn’t really fill up too much. There were like 150 of us. And they broke us up into groups and assigned us to tour guides. The guy we had at first you could tell struggled with his English and that he had most of the speach memorized. We decided we were going to try to switch guides, we did successfully by asking someone what channel they were on. They give you headsets so that everyone can hear the guide and you can walk a little slower with out worrying that you will miss something. It was nice, the lady we had was really good and she described it still with the terror and fright of such events. You can tell that it hasn’t become like just another place, it still is shocking to them to tell the stories. It was crazy to hear some of the stories that they have heard from survivors that they have met along the way. I couldn’t imagine returning to the place that you were imprisoned and treated so badly. It was an emotional experience for me and I don’t have any strong ties between it(as in knowing people who went through it) besides that I am a human and it was such a tragic event. It made me think of Ernie my old neighbor, who was German and lived around that time. I wish I was older when he was my neighbor that I could learn more from him, I vaguely remember any of his story, its sad how much you lose from your youth( and I’m not even old yet . This could be bad ) Walking through the camps they take you into the Barracks, into what used to be a gas chamber, and all around. It really is an intense experience and many times along the way I found my self holding back tears. I think it’s a sight to see as morbid as it is. It makes you question how something could spiral so far with out basic humanity kicking in and stopping them. It makes me super thankful for the life that I have lived and makes me wonder how strong I could have been in such a situation. As we looked at some of the pictures, there were only 2 females that were on the wall that lived longer than a year at the camp. After Auschwitz one they take you on a bus to Birkenau. Unfortunately we couldn’t fit on the bus with our tour guide, so we had to wait 20 mins before the next one arrived. We were worried we wouldn’t have a guide because none of the people on our bus were a guide. Thankfully there were two of the English guides waiting, so we didn’t get the same guide but we were able to catch a different one. Here you can see the famous platform where you always see pictures of the lines of people. He showed us the gates towards life and towards death. Its crazy when you stand there and all the films, books, stories you have read come flashing back in your mind and you imagine what it was really like less than 100 years ago. What your life would be like if you had been there just 70 yrs ago, it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it again. After the bus back to Krakow, we found a carrefour! I was in heaven, buying all the goodies I used to eat in France. For those of you who don’t know what carrefour its a type of grocery store, in France a lot of them are super stores, like walmarts in a way. I love a lot of their brand names , especially a cereal I used to always eat from there with granola and dried fruit. They also have all different types of Chocolates. I definately bought way too many sweets and maybe too much food in general, but I will be traveling on train for a few days so I figured it was worth it. Plus its so cheap being in Poland. After groceries we headed back to the hostel and indulged in a lovely sandwich with hard boiled eggs. Which I had never thought about doing when traveling before, but really its a great way to get some protein in your diet and its cheap. Plus you can have fresh ones in the am and then hard boiled ones on ur bread for lunch or dinner. After my sandwich I cleaned out my pack and completely reorganized and tried to do some laundry. As I had my stuff all sprawled out I met some guys from the netherlands who were asking if I was holding a market. Lols. They were driving from Amsterdam to China. At first I thought they were kidding, but I think they might have been serious. They are on the development team for the ipad. They were asking for suggestions. I wonder if they were serious. I will never know. I had another early night since I had a 7 am train to catch.

Today we woke up early and had to catch a bus to Auschwitz. We had some eggs for breakfast and headed to the bus station. We didn’t leave ourselves enough time so we ended up running part of the way once we got near. We ended up making it with a little time to spare. When we got there we had to get a guide since during the day you can’t visit unless you have an official guide. We were worried that we were not going to get on the 12:30 english tour and that we would have to wait an hour till the next one but thankfully they have multiple tour guides that go at one time so it doesn’t really fill up too much. There were like 150 of us. And they broke us up into groups and assigned us to tour guides. The guy we had at first you could tell struggled with his English and that he had most of the speach memorized. We decided we were going to try to switch guides, we did successfully by asking someone what channel they were on. They give you headsets so that everyone can hear the guide and you can walk a little slower with out worrying that you will miss something. It was nice, the lady we had was really good and she described it still with the terror and fright of such events. You can tell that it hasn’t become like just another place, it still is shocking to them to tell the stories. It was crazy to hear some of the stories that they have heard from survivors that they have met along the way. I couldn’t imagine returning to the place that you were imprisoned and treated so badly. It was an emotional experience for me and I don’t have any strong ties between it(as in knowing people who went through it) besides that I am a human and it was such a tragic event. It made me think of Ernie my old neighbor, who was German and lived around that time. I wish I was older when he was my neighbor that I could learn more from him, I vaguely remember any of his story, its sad how much you lose from your youth( and I’m not even old yet . This could be bad ) Walking through the camps they take you into the Barracks, into what used to be a gas chamber, and all around. It really is an intense experience and many times along the way I found my self holding back tears. I think it’s a sight to see as morbid as it is. It makes you question how something could spiral so far with out basic humanity kicking in and stopping them. It makes me super thankful for the life that I have lived and makes me wonder how strong I could have been in such a situation. As we looked at some of the pictures, there were only 2 females that were on the wall that lived longer than a year at the camp. After Auschwitz one they take you on a bus to Birkenau. Unfortunately we couldn’t fit on the bus with our tour guide, so we had to wait 20 mins before the next one arrived. We were worried we wouldn’t have a guide because none of the people on our bus were a guide. Thankfully there were two of the English guides waiting, so we didn’t get the same guide but we were able to catch a different one. Here you can see the famous platform where you always see pictures of the lines of people. He showed us the gates towards life and towards death. Its crazy when you stand there and all the films, books, stories you have read come flashing back in your mind and you imagine what it was really like less than 100 years ago. What your life would be like if you had been there just 70 yrs ago, it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it again. After the bus back to Krakow, we found a carrefour! I was in heaven, buying all the goodies I used to eat in France. For those of you who don’t know what carrefour its a type of grocery store, in France a lot of them are super stores, like walmarts in a way. I love a lot of their brand names , especially a cereal I used to always eat from there with granola and dried fruit. They also have all different types of Chocolates. I definately bought way too many sweets and maybe too much food in general, but I will be traveling on train for a few days so I figured it was worth it. Plus its so cheap being in Poland. After groceries we headed back to the hostel and indulged in a lovely sandwich with hard boiled eggs. Which I had never thought about doing when traveling before, but really its a great way to get some protein in your diet and its cheap. Plus you can have fresh ones in the am and then hard boiled ones on ur bread for lunch or dinner. After my sandwich I cleaned out my pack and completely reorganized and tried to do some laundry. As I had my stuff all sprawled out I met some guys from the netherlands who were asking if I was holding a market. Lols. They were driving from Amsterdam to China. At first I thought they were kidding, but I think they might have been serious. They are on the development team for the ipad. They were asking for suggestions. I wonder if they were serious. I will never know. I had another early night since I had a 7 am train to catch.

We arrived to Krakow around 3:30 in the morning with bug bites all over us from waiting for our last train. The mosquitoes are quite pesky and love our blood. We were shocked that there was no announcements on our train letting us know which stops were happening the only way we knew when to get off was the approximate time. Surprisingly not that many people got off at Krakow either. Once we arrived at the station successfully with out getting stuck on the train we were all quite sleepy since the prior train was cramped and super hot. We landed us some benches in a fairly dim lit place in the train station on one of the platforms. Just as we were getting situated the lights came on and an announcement was made. Hopefully they were not telling us to not sleep there because we don’t understand Polish. Either way we decided we would give it a shot because we didn’t know where else to go and it was late in the night, or early in the morning however you look at it. So we sent up camp, I pulled my sleeping bag out and cuddled with my bag so no one could steel my stuff. I slept like a baby, only occasionally waking up when a train would roll through. At one point I woke up and some polish kids were staring at me through the train window, slightly awkward. We were able to sleep there until 7 am when security woke us up and shoo-ed us out. Which is quite laxed, most the time you get shoo-ed by 5 or 6. We headed to find our hostel, there was a hostel help point and the guy did not know much but he tried to be really helpful. He told us we could take any or the trams, that he wasn’t sure. Lols. We gave him a slight tip maybe equivalent to 30 cents us money and he jumped with joy, it was cute. However since he wasn’t too helpful we decided to get a taxi to be safe. It cost us 20znt which is about 6-7 dollars split between 4 of us .. Not too bad. We were standing outside the address looking slightly confused, there were no signs pointing to a hostel. Low and behold some perky lady in a red dress asked us if we were looking for the hostel, we told her yes and she led us the way. On our way up she said that people always complain about finding it, of course silly there needs to be signs of some sort. We later find a piece of paper on the stairs pointing the way but that is after you have entered the building, it would be much more helpful on the outside of the establishment. We were thankful that she was entering the same time or who knows if we would have ever figured it out. When we get in the hostel is very nicely decorated with a nice Ikea red theme. (Almost all the hostels are products of Ikea) We sit down and she is quite a spastic lady we begin to realize. She wants to help, her lack of english and our lack of Polish creates a lot of miscommunication. I have realized this with most of the Polish people, they are eager to help, with almost a sense of emergency, but the proficiency of the english language is not the best so it ends up in confusion. I appreciate the willingness to help though. We can’t officially check in until noon so we put our bags in the hall at the end and shower up and get ready for our day in Krakow. We end up stumbling upon most things. It is a rather small city and fairly easy to navigate. I find it very intriguing, especially when I think back to what it must have been like just 20 yrs ago. It still seems to be trying to recover. The city is very cheap and its not very crowded. I am happy I have decided to check it out. There is not a ton to do here but I think its definitely worth a stop, especially because it is so cheap to do. We walk around the city most of the day and a lot does not seem to be open, not sure why but a lot seems closed , especially in the main square. (Possibly we are too early). We stop in at a milk bar which is like a cafeteria that the food is subsidized by the government, which causes it to be even cheaper. Lauren tries to order perogies, but ends up with pancakes with cheese and blueberries. I end up splitting potato pancakes with mushrooms with Marina for equivalent of 2 dollars total, one per person. They were different than eny potato pancakes I’ve had but they were very delicious, greasy but great! After the milk bar we end up going to the Wawel Castel. The church at the top is composed of several different architecture styles. It was a mod podge of centuries and styles but it seemed to work. Then we tried to get into several other things but we needed a ticket to get in and according to Rick Steves it wasn’t worth it. At one point I had to go through a metal detector and I had my knives on me. I didn’t want them confiscated so I asked the police if he could hold them, he gave me a strange look and pointed me in an area which I could check my stuff. We ended up not able to get in that place anyways so I got my stuff right back. After that we stumbled upon a lady filling a water bottle from a spicket on the wall. We followed suit and then realized she was using it to water flowers and it was normally locked. But she didn’t seem to mind, unlike the lady in Barcelona. We then headed our way to the Jewish Quarters and I stopped and had some perogies, which were rather tasty I thought. The other girls didn’t seem to impressed, but I was pleased. We then went to a jewish cemetery which was quite moving. A lot of it had been reconstructed using the broken tomb stones found after nazi destruction to create a mosaic wall around the cemetery as well as a memorial to all the jews that had been buried there. Its hard for me to imagine such hate and how people could destruct tombstones, let alone millions of people. After the cemetery we headed to the bus station, where the girls tried to figure out there next stop. It was supposed to be Budapest but things got tricky when everything was really expensive or the buses didn’t line up with their schedule. We also got our bus tickets for Auschwitz. It turns out it is a lot cheaper to do it on your own then the package tours, plus its not difficult at all to do it with out a package. After our bus extravaganza it was time for a siesta. We took a nap for a little then it was Fiesta time. We went to get food on the main square, it is just way too cheap in this town to do anything less. For a nice dinner with stuffed chicken rice, veggies and salad it was less than 7 dollars on the main square. We then were walking around and we were a hot commodity all the promoters kept handing us tickets for free entry, money off drinks, it was great. They popped out of nowhere and normally would first talk to us in Polish, then would switch to English and start their whole speech again. It was quite a site to see. We decided to go to one that had live music and 20 percent off wine rates. We enjoyed a really good wine and was entertained by the king of pop. He sang some Aky Breaky heart with a Polish accent which really just brought a smile to my face. We were sitting in the VIP section, which was pretty special. After our vip treatment we were ready for an early night. On our walk home we had two guys come up to us and talk a bunch of jibberish, all we could get out of it was good boy, good girl, good club. Two guys boughi boughi boughi ( this was a sound effect he made) while insinuating two guys together.. All we could do was laugh and walk away.