Poland Part 1

Our Street in Krakow

Auschwitz 1

Auschwitz - Birkenau (note all of the chimneys, and there was another side too)

The castle on Wawel Hill

Early Monday (the 25th) morning Leah and I packed our bags, walked to the metro then boarded the train to Poland. Poland turned out to be the most surprising country that we visited. I have to admit I wasn't that excited to visit Krakow at first, but Poland and Krakow more specifically turned out to be easily one of the highlights of the trip so far. There was one minor snag in our journey to Poland however; as explained in the Czech blog we had boughten our tickets from Prague to Krakow in the Czech Republic a few days earlier. The problem was that the lady gave us tickets from Prague to Krakow connecting through the Polish town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz), but gave us an iternerary that said we were to connect through the city of Katowice...we realized this mistake once we were already on the train in Poland and the ticket inspector pointed it out. This meant having to re-buy the correct tickets on the spot, which cost us more money and also meant that we went needlessly out of the way to get to Krakow (taking the long route over the short one). With that said, we got to use our Russian again as the ticket inspector didn't speak English very well, but could speak basic Russian and he turned out to be a really really nice guy. Our first impressions of Poland were very good, as the country side is very green, and unlike Russia, garbage, and delapitated dacha free. What we saw was little clusters of very nice, well kept houses. Once we arrived in Krakow, 8 hours on the train from Prague (going through Katowice) we booked our next set of tickets from Krakow to Vienna (so we wouldn't have to go back to the train station until our departure). The other thing that really struck us was how open and friendly the Polish people were. Of the three days that we were there we didn't once encounter a rude or hostile person, on the contrary they smiled, said thank you and tried to help us in any way that they could. Luckily for us train stations, unlike airports, are generally located in or near the centres of the cities, and this was again the case with Krakow. A god send when you are backpacing with backpacks that weigh twice as much as you do. After booking our tickets we made the small trek to our hostel which was, like Prague, in an excellent location right downtown almost on the historic square. Our first impressions of the hostel were quite good as well. It was very clean, the service was friendly and we didn't encounter any problems. We had booked 3 nights in a 10 bed room and so we claimed a set of bunks (Leah on top, me on the bottom) and then headed out into Krakow. Krakow is a very beautiful old city, rivalling Prague. Like Prague, Krakow was spared extensive damage during the Second World War and so many of its old buildings, castle and forts still remain in excellent condition. We strolled around for a bit, getting ourselves acquainted with the city and then found a delicious restaurant. The other great thing about Poland is that everything is very inexpensive, especially when compared with the Czech Republic. Since only recently being admitted into the EU, Poland has yet to adpot the Euro and still uses the Polish Zwoty, and prices remain quite low. For example, Leah and I ate at a very nice restaurant, on the historic town square having a beer, two ice teas, an appetizer and two main courses, which cost us less than $30 Canadian all together. Our server, carrying on in the Polish tradition was also extremely friendly and Leah liked his Polish accent. We then continued to stroll around the historic town centre, before retreating back to our hostel to rest. When we got back we also made sure to book a tour for the main reason we went to Krakow - Auschwitz, and when we went back to our room where we met some of our roommates who happened to be from Canada also. Unfortunately I don't remember both of their names, but they were two guys who were cousins, one from near Edmonton and one from near Calgary and we hit it off right away. That night unfortunately we experienced the downfall of sleeping in a 10 person dorm....around 2:00am the other two roommates showed up after drinking most of the night and stumbled their way into their beds and unfortunately the one began snoring so loud that it turns our roommates through the wall could hear him. This meant that even with earplugs and headphones Leah and I could still hear his snoring which made sleep a bit of a challenge.

We woke up early the next morning as we had booked a tour to Auschwitz departing Krakow at 8:15am. We quickly got ready and enjoyed our free breakfast at the hostel before hurrying our way to the designated meeting point. There were enough people for two seperate groups, and so we took two large coach buses to the Polish town of Oswiecim (renamed Auschwitz by the Germans) which happens to be around 1 hour and 50 minutes away by car. To keep us entertained and give us an overview of what we were going to be visiting, a film, produced by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial, which lasted just over an hour, was shown to us. It explained the history of the camp, as well as the current efforts of the museum to maintain and preserve the area. Shortly after the film ended we arrived at the camp. Auschwitz is actually divided into 3 main camps, Auschwitz 1, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz Monowitz. The tour that we were on covered the first Auschwitz camp, as well as the infamous and massive Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. We had an excellent tour guide who was very informative, describing various photos, objects and stories on top of the actual tour. We extensively toured through the first camp, seeing the living conditions that prisoners were kept in, saw the "wall of death" where the nazi's executed over a thousand people, walked through one of the gas chambers, saw the notorious prison within the camp that included a suffocation cell, 4 standing cells (4 people had to crawl into the cell and stand up all night while working all day [the guide likened it to four people standing in a phone booth]), and more, the gallows constructed to execute prisoners publicly, as well as the gallow which they used to execute Rudolph Hoss, who was the director of the camp. They took us into one of the blocks that they had converted into a museum, which explained the history of the camp, as well as housing many of the objects and possessions that had been confiscated from the prisoners. This is also where you walk through the hallways and see 80,000 shoes, thousands of suitcases with peoples names stil on them, as well as 2 tons of human hair that had been shaved off which had been used during the war to replace textile fibers. We also walked through the infamous gate which reads "Arbeit Macht Frei" or Work Will Set You Free, to enter the camp. After concluding the tour of the first camp we had a bit of a break to get something to eat, and then continued our tour at Auschwitz-Birkenau (about 3 km away.) This was by far the largest concentration camp, which was the location of the sorting platform where Nazi doctors would decide who was fit to work (the rest were sent to the gas chambers immediately). It is so difficult to fathom how many people died here as they were killing so many people that they needed over 4 gas chambers and crematoriums, and each block house (see picture, each chimmney was a block house), had around 700 people living in them. Over 1.1 million people were killed here. It is difficult to know the exact number because the vast majority of people sent to the camps, were not registered, given documents or photographed, they were simply marched to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. Our guide mentioned that about 75% of those arriving in the trains were immediately sent to the gas chambers. These were predominately women, children and the elderly. After our tour of Birkenau, we went up the main tower over the railroad tracks and got a birds eye of the sprawling camp.

Once we got back from Auschwitz, (around 2:00pm) Leah and I decided to see another one of Krakow's Jewish sights, the Oskar Schindler factory. But, on the way there we decided to see one of Krakow's most famous and most visable attractions, Wawel Hill, and the castle situated on top. We decided to forego the interior of the castle as we were quite tired of viewing state rooms but we did opt to view a really interesting side attraction on the hill called the Dragon's Den. You descend down a very deep spiral staircase into a very large, natural cave underneath the castle. The exit leads you back out down the hill near the river, and it was this cave that gave rise to myths about a dragon living under the castle during the middle ages. After the cave we took a long walk to the Schindler Factory. Immortalized in the film Schindler's List, the factory is situated just across the river from the historic town center in an industrial area that was the sight of the former Jewish ghetto. On the way back to our hostel we took a stroll through the Jewish Quarter and then treated ourselves to some delicious Polish cuisine for dinner.