Kraków...

Well here we are back from another weekend rampage. This one took place in Kraków, Poland. What a FABULOUS city, just teeming with life, bursting at the seams with all kinds of people and things to do... apparently its also the city in Europe with the most bars per square km... we had a fabulous time and were really sad to leave. We got there late Friday night due to a flight delay in Köln. We stayed three nights in the Flamingo Hostel and loved every minute (except how smelly the guys in our room were, YUCK!) They had a great breakfast for free, super clean bathrooms, friendly staff, free internet, and all for $20 a night!!

Saturday was our day to explore the city. We started off at Wawel Castle, then wandered through the Jewish quarter which was really neat. We found Schindler's former factory and some remnants of the old Kraków Ghetto wall... after heading back to the castle area, we visited the "dragon's den" which sounded really cool in the description we had, but we were somewhat disappointed because it was just a walk through a manmade cave, lol. But Lea was a great travel buddy, so we had a fun time no matter what we were doing.

Next, we happened to by chance catch a bus going to the Wieliczka Salt Mines, a Kraków must-see, paid a freakin' CHEAP $1.15 for the bus and went on out there. It was really really cool! We first went down 380 steps way way down into the earth. 2.5 km of the mine is for visitors, and the mine in its entirety is so huge, that 2.5 km is only 1% of the whole thing!!! We were so hungry by the time we were done and we were lucky there was a restaurant down there. And it was sooo neat to eat that far underground. I ordered a porkchop and some pierogies, both of which were just oh-SO-tasty!! Lea ate french fries (or "chips", as I have learned to call them). Afterward we rode with a crazy crazy old Polish dude back into the city on a bus. Not just some random Polish guy, lol.

Ummm and then we hung out and saw more of the city. The town square is HUMONGOUS, allegedly the biggest in Europe and there is so much going on there. There are so many bars and restaurants and clubs in Kraków, I wish we could have stayed longer just to eat and drink in this cool city. It just has such FLAIR!

We were also smart to have gone to the Salt Mines when we did, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten it done. The original plan was to go to the concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau the same day as the mines, but after spending ALL DAY Sunday traveling to Oswiecim, visiting both camps (3 km apart from one another) and traveling back on a hot, sweaty, terrible, 2-hour-long city bus ride that we would like to forget over time but unfortunately won't be able to, we finally made it back to Kraków in time to take a shower (we sweat buckets all day, it was SO HOT) and meet David, our old "tutor" from the winter semester and his friend to watch football (soccer, for the uneducated, lol... just kidding) at a local Irish pub. I was hoping for Spain to win, and they did, finally... and I'm wondering, is it wrong to support the country with the hottest players (and best looking temporary residents, if you get my drift)?... because Italy's guys were a bunch of whiney babies, ha ha ha... anyway this was the first time I had ever watched an entire professional soccer game on television... you get into it, I guess :-)

Well anyway, then we went to bed and this morning after breakfast and a strange discussion with an old Australian guy in a Switzerland shirt and an Irish womanizer, we set out to sweat through our shirts for a couple hours before catching our bus back to the airport... which came a few minutes late and really had us wondering there for a while whether we would need to find other means of transportation... but the guy finally showed up and the way there was funny because there was a younger nun sitting behind us who asked Lea to wake her up when we got to the airport, and the nun spread out over three seats and just ZONKED out... I got a picture. We just thought it was hilarious because before we left we said to each other how neat it would be to meet a nun and to see what her life is like... and we rode with one to the airport... apparently, they're people, too, just like us!!

We were happy the flight was on time and in general that we had such amazing luck with the buses and transportation we had to work with for the whole weekend. Seemed like we made good timing each time we needed to get somewhere. It is fun to travel like that, it makes it exciting and almost like a big maze each time you go someplace.

Oh yeah I guess I should mention a few things about the camps... skipped over that a tad, didn't I? Well, Auschwitz was "fancier", for lack of a better word, than we both expected... there were several two story buildings and nothing like we had really imagined... the museum there was really good and informative, plus we had a guide we got for like $2 at the shop and watched a film. The pictures I took will explain more of what we saw. When we got to Birkenau, that was when we both said that this is how we had imagined the camps looked like back then. It was just so... systematic, the way it was set up. symmetrical and efficiently laid out, one could really get a picture of what took place there over 60 years ago. I really can't put this into a description, though, so check out the pics and there will be a few words from me there. And in a way we felt blessed to be able to speak German, because there were just a lot of papers there written in German that the English descriptions just did not do justice to... we saw a lot of "Meldungen", which were requests from officers to their bosses to punish inmates... for the most ridiculous reasons too... someone was putting vegetable waste and old bones in their pockets and he was sentenced to six weeks of nights spent in the Stehzelle, which was a tiny cell not tall enough to stand in, and since he would be put in with three other people, he wouldn't be able to sit, either... they spent their nights there and were expected to work as usual each day afterward. the people got two bowls of soup a day, about 1300 calories. They worked for 12 hours each day or more, and each day they had to drag back the bodies of those who died that day. There are just so many horrific things they did and seemed to ENJOY doing to the poor prisoners, it was overwhelming. Did you know that the Nazis sold train tickets to the Jews before they were literally herded off on that train to Auschwitz? They sold them fake land, gave them fake jobs, and took all of their stuff once they got there. There was a painting of a guy who had just gotten off a deportee train and the SS man took his wedding ring right off his finger :-(. It was all just so overwhelming... but more so after the fact, I noticed... it all seems so incredibly unreal when you are there. Then it all starts to sink in.


The weekend went by soooooooooo fast and I just wish we could have stayed longer :-( A weekend really wasn't enough in this case. I will have to go back someday...


And now I am swamped with a bunch of little things I gotta do and I just gotta fit it all in somehow.................

Caitlin