"Can you swim in those?", "they're boardshorts, of course I can", "then dump your pack and let's go"... was how I was greeted in Krakow by a huge Queenslander. A few girls headed by a local Pole and 2 Americans were taking Harry and his two sidekicks to a nearby quarry. A tram ride and trek later we were peering over the edge at the drop which we were there to jump! It looked massive and we decided to start off with a small 4 meter cliff where we could see others taking the plunge. All 5 of the guys had a jump and I had a swim over to check out the depth beneath the big one.
The water was cold but not freezing as the Queenslanders and Western Australian in Darrin made out. Who knows how high the jump was maybe 14 or 15 meters give or take but either way high enough to get up a good adrenaline rush and cause some damage if you landed wrong... Harry might not be able to have kids and Darrin jarred his knee. Fortunately I landed spot on as evidenced by Darrin's video.
Nathan of Nathan's Villa Hostel put away his personal pool cue unable to comprehend how he got beaten by two Aussie clowns!.. and we witnessed an insane guy from Finland achieve 25 shots of different brands of vodka in 4 hours! (then pass out). Out on the town we took on the language barrier and also ran into a Brazilian guy we'd met in Bulgaria.
A quiet day and an early night ensured the next day as we both recovered and checked out some of the sights. At the centerpiece of the wonderful city is Wawel Castle and Cathedral resting atop Wawel Hill. A stunning day, the sun reflected off the Vistula river as people ran and rode along side. Winding streets of minimal incline intersect through old town passing through the unreal statues at the church of St. Peter and Paul. The Jewish quarter is not far out of old town where synagogues giving a subtle reminder of the history which we would learn and appreciate more the following day upon our visit to Auchwitz...
As we waited for the bus I looked up in awe as darkness fell over Krakow, a storm brewing on the horizon. The sun was engulfed in minutes as the wind picked up. In less than five minutes the temperature plummeted from mid-20s to the teens. Then it poured! It bucketted large drops of heavy rain, rain that drenches you in seconds, rain that I couldn't remember seeing in a long time. We found shelter in the form of a doorway before finally boarding, 45 minutes behind schedule on-route to the concentration camps at Auschwitz.
It wasn't too long before we were staring out the window at green surroundings, farming land, scattered with traditional houses, similar in their design. Eerily the actual road just before you enter the open spance of death, you drive through an avenue between relatively dense forest. The rain had subsided and the sun was trying to break through, retricted by the shadows of the folliage.
Exiting the bus at Auschwitz I, the sun had escaped its shrowd and the fresh smell only evident from grass after rainfall hit you. In any other context this would represent a motif of a new beginning and purity. Auschwitz I remains relatively intact with the Nazi Germans concentrating their rushed cover up of the evidence of their crimes on the nearby Auschwitz II - Birkenau camp. We walked through the gates with the inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes one free). Nothing could have been further for the truth.
1,950kg of human hair spanning 30 meters lies mangled on display, cut from those who met their fate in the gas chambers and onsold to German textile companies as a raw material. Also on display were countless shoes, suitcases and possessions of those taken in by the propoganda that they would be looked after and going to set up a new home. Aside from the voice of the tour guide it was so quiet that you could have been standing in the middle of the desert. Torture rooms for starvation, standing, sleep deprivation and suffocation remain in tact, boarded by "death wall" where countless Jews, Poles and Gypsies among others were shot. The gas chamber and crematoriam complete with chimneys rest along side the camp.
Open spance where roll-calls lasted as long as 20 hours in sub-0 temperatures can be identified by the small wooden boxed hut used for protection from the elements by the guards. The magnitude would take on a whole new level 3km down the road at Auschwitz II - Birkenau. Endless wooden "barns/stables" are still erected, designed to accommodate 100,000 people... compared to 16,000 at Auscwitz I. Estimates of those killed at the Auschwitz concentration camps range from 1.1 to 1.5million - the deviation alone suggests that it could be much higher. Of the 6,000 SS officers required to man the camps less than 10% would be brought to justice.
It was a sombre crew that departed the concentration camps. As the bus departed through the shadowy avenue once more, at least there was now light at the end of the tunnel... and hopefully history will remind the world time and time again of the insanity of genocide and torture, among others. Most sat quietly in their own thoughts and I remembered Elie Wiesel's depiction of the horrors of his own personal experience in his novel, "Night". People reacted in different ways. Darrin and I played a few quiet games of pool and crashed, slightly different to a guy the night before who drowned his sorrows by writing himself off, predominantly drinking alone. His tour company recommendation was sound advice.
