Luckily, my first full week of holidays was followed by the winter holidays. Two weeks of paid vacation, yay! I'm not sure how I would have coped if I didn't get that break.
I was invited to go to Krakow with some of the other native teachers for 4 days. I jumped at the chance.
We got tickets on the fast train so the journey only took about 2.5 hours. The apartment we stayed in was right in Rynek Glowny, Krakow's main market square in the Old Town, right in the centre of everything. It was a huge apartment. I even got my own bed (no one else had that luxuary). It was a bit of a pain trying to share a bathroom between 7 people though :/
If you go to this site http://www.warsawshotel.com/Europe/Poland/Krakow/Apartments/Detail/854 you'll see some pictures of where we stayed. It looked like that for about 2 hours before it
developed the 'lived in' look.
Highlights in Krakow
Kazimierz
Kazimierz is the old Jewish district. Before WWII about 60,000 Jews lived in Krakow. Now there are only about 100. It's a rather depressing statistic. There are a lot of synagogue's still standing in Kazimierz, only one is actually in use as a place of worship though. Most them are now museums.
It was in Kazimierz that I first tried Grzane Wino (mulled wine). What I want to know is why isn't this drunk in Australia? I swear it is one of the most delicious drinks I've every had. It now has a firm place in my top 5 drinks. It definately takes #1 spot in the best alcoholic drink category.
We had dinner in a 'traditional Jewish restaurant' in Kazimierz on our first night. Apparently, it was where Steven Spielberg and the cast of Schindler's List stayed in when they were filming the movie. Judging by a picture on the wall Prince Charles had also been a patron of that particular restaurant.
I went back to Kazimierz by myself a few days later, I wanted to find Remuh Cemetary, it's supposed to be one of the best preserved Jewish cemetaries in Europe. That was when I discovered that the maps in the Lonely Planet guide books can't really be relied on.
Wawel Castle & Cathedral
My first European castle. Hmm, maybe I'm not a castle person. I have to admit I found it a tad 'meh'. Maybe it was the 60zl entrance fee that coloured my view. Maybe I was tired. All I can say is that it definately wasn't my favourite part of the trip. It wasn't bad, it was just 'okay'. It was rather amusing the way they made everyone wear little plastic booties so we wouldn't traipse mud inside.
There was a good view of the city from the Cathedral tower though.
Wieliczka Salt Mine
It was actually more interesting than it sounds. I believe it's one of the oldest working mines in existance, if not the oldest. The mine first opened 700 years ago, and they're still extracting salt from the water that flows through it. They only stopped mining it properly about 9 years ago. Imagine walking through rooms made entirely of salt. The ceiling, the floor, the walls, the stairs, all salt. The Cathedral in the mine was unbelievable. I'm sure I'll never see anything like it ever again. It was like walking through an extremely ornate church carved entirely from marble. Salt carvings of the Last Supper, carvings of the patron saint of the mine, salt chandeliers, a salt alter and naturally a salt statue of John Paul II.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Do I really need to write anything about this particular place? Probably not.
Oswiecim, the town the camps are in, is possibly the most depressing place I've been to in my entire life. I wonder what it was like before WWII, was it just as bleak then or is it purely a result of its Nazi legacy?
I'm sure thousands of people visit the town every year but for 99.9% of tourists it is strictly a day trip. You really can't stay any longer than strictly necessary.
The weather was perfect for the visit. Grey, drizzly and below freezing. At Auschwitz we saw the cells where they had the first gas chamber experiments, it was in the same building were prisoners waited to go to the 'death wall' to meet the firing squad. We also visited the first actual gas chamber, it's the only one left. All the others were destroyed by the Nazis before the Russians arrived, trying to destroy the evidence. I can now say I've seen the crystals they used to gas millions of people to death.
However it was the seeing all the prosthetic limbs, glasses and human hair that the Nazi's collected that made the biggest impression. I just kept reminding myself that each and every one of these items belonged to real people. I'll never forget the way that the prisoners marked all their luggage so carefully so it wouldn't be mistaken for someone else's. As if this actually mattered ...
As bad as it was, compared to Birkenau, Auschwitz seemed like a holiday camp. We were told that the prisoners at the two camps had an average life span of three months. I really wonder how the ones in Birkenau were able to last even that long. At least in Auschwitz there was a possibility that you wouldn't freeze to death.
I bought my one and only souvenier of the trip while I was there. It was a book about Auschwitz and the Final Solution. I've yet to bring myself to read it. I briefly considered buying some postcards but thought it might have been in bad taste.
I didn't learn anything new there. I wasn't expecting to, you can't spend as much time studying German history as I have and not become pretty well versed in the subject. Still, it's one thing to read about these things, seeing them is an entirely different matter.
When I got back to Warsaw they were playing The Pianist on television. I love that movie but I had to switch it off after ten minutes.
Krakow's certainly different to Warsaw. It's much easier on the eye. Tourists visiting Krakow are told to visit a 'model Communist suburb' on the outskirts of town just to see what life was like. You don't need to visit that suburb if you live in Warsaw as that's the normal scenery. Krakow is definately much more tourist friendly. That said I think I'm better off living in Warsaw.
