Sympozjum Krakow

... design of the gas chambers, the inflictions upon the individuals, the use of their personal items (including gold fillings, hair) … It is very emotional with many people weeping. Even though it is way off season, the tours are back to back but are well handled so that they infringe minimally on each other.

After 2 hours of being emotionally tormented, we take a 5 minute shuttle to Birkenau, the larger of the two camps ...

So I made it in one piece after my claustrophobic train ride with a half naked old Polish guy. The train pulled into Krakow at 6:33 this morning. Luckily my hostel is a block away from the train station. The guy at the hostel was really nice. He couldn't sign me into my room just yet, but he let me store my bags there, shower and have breakfast. This hostel is great for all the freebies. It has free breakfast, laundry, wifi/internet and free dinners! And it is only around 18 dollars a ...

... life-size displays of how they moved the salt back above ground. Most of the rooms are dedicated to famous Polish figures, so there are salt statues of them throughout the mines. There are waterfalls, rivers, and ponds of salt water throughout the mines, and they even used to give boat rides in one of the lakes until they decided it was too dangerous! The salt water trickles by you as you admire the beautiful salt creations. The main attraction is a cavernous ...

... with some translations (as no one spoke English in the town we ended up in!). Anyway, our hotel here is great and big. Really an apartment, we could live in it but only were able to get the room this afternoon. The hotel did give us breakfast when we arrived so that was good. We spent the morning looking around the square and the old Jewish quarter (where they were persecuted and ultimately killed off or sent to the concentration camps.) Kraków has traditionally been one of ...

... tired to really pay attention. It was actually quite boring, in fact. I had a bagel sandwich - the Polish variety is different. Hard, dry ... not for me! I had some juice and a vanilla cake (dipped in chocolate with coconut shavings). A little dry, but good. The juice was simply for hydration and was a pick-me-up. I'm not used to the heat anymore so 30 degrees is quite unbearable. The Cloth hall - had some sculptures, portraits, and some decent impressionist paintings ...

... the other. We were able to tour the two sites at our leisure, which turned out to be the entire day. The whole experience was quite powerful. It is hard to imagine that over 1 million people died at these camps. We were able to see the living quarters (where 5 people slept on 1 wooden pallet board), the washrooms/bathrooms; as well as the remains of the gas chambers and the crematoriums. Today (Wednesday ...

... Gdansk. My friends and I took a taxi to the train station on purchased tickets to go to Krakow. It was about 8 million degrees, no over exaggeration, in the train station and it felt like every person who ever went on semester at sea was trying to buy tickets. Well we finally got ours and we hung around town until it was time to leave. The train was so cool... it looked just like the train on Harry Potter, but not as nice. When we got to Warsaw three young people got in ...