Aww Auschwitz

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.