Krakow

We left Baden Wednesday night and flew into Berlin, where we setup camp for the night. We nabbed our usual comfy benches in the corner and called it a night. We got up at around 5 to check in for our flight to Krakow, but our flight ended up being delayed for an hour, o well, no big loss. When we got to Krakow, we headed down to our hostel then back to the old city center. The first place we came across was the main square (Rynek).



It's the largest medieval in Europe, apparently, but it didn't seem so large since 1/2 of it was under contruction. Near the city center is St. Mary Church.



Every hour, a bugle player players from the top of the tower and abbruptly stops mid-song, since the sorry goes he was struck by an arrow in the middle way back in the day. It was pretty neat that they carry on this tradition. The inside was really spectular, but I didn't take any pictures (i'm turning soft), since they said no. Here's a pic i found on the net though.



Also around the main square was the town hall tower, and St. Adalbert's church, the oldest historic building in the city. We found a little covered market which had a but of local crafts such as boxes which was kinda need. We proceed to walk towards the river and found the cheapest doners I've seen so far (the average 6Zt here, appox 1.50 euro). We ran into a few other churches, the Church of SS Peter and Paul, and St. Andrew's Church. We eventually reached Wawel Hill, which has the Royal Castle and Cathedral, but it was closed when we got there, so we just walked around and took some pictures.



We slowly made our way back up to where we started and found the Florianska Gate, and The Barbican. The gate was part of the fortified wall which once surrounded Krakow. It was 3 km long and had 47 towers, 8 gates, and a moat. Today it's just a small section of wall with a tower or 2. The Barbican was a defensive bastion. It was located outside the wall, surrounded by a moat and had 130 loopholes and 7 turrents.



We stayed around the area and grabbed dinner at a medieval styled resturant called Szlacheckie Jadto. They had this one dish that was served on a big sabre, but it costs too much. Instead we settled some some tradtional polish dishes. For starters we had oscypek w skonupce z zuramina (smoked sheep cheese w/ cranberry) and kapusniak zwyczajny w/ kociofkn (sauerkraut soup). The cheese was really good and was fried in a light batter. The soup was ok as well. For meat we had warkocz z poledwiczki z boezniakami (pleat of tenderloin w/ mushrooms served in creamy sauce and onions, with Krakow-style potatoes) and zrazyzawijane po radziwiffowsku (beef rolade radziwiff style). The mushroom sauce was the best part of that dish but they charged us for tap water, grrr...

After dinner we walked around the old Jewish Quarter (Kazimierz), back through Wawel and then called it a night.



The next day we went to the concentration camps Auschwitz and Birkenau. They were located in the town of Oswiecim, about an hour and a half away. We were gonna go there by bus but just missed it and had to take the train. When we got there, they showed a brief video about the liberation of the camp and then went on the tour. We started our tour in Birkenau (Auschwitz-2), which was build because Auschwitz was too small. It was planned to be around 40 acres but only 1/2 was built before the liberation.


At this camp, most of the mass extermination took place. The mood of the place was very dark and gloomy and the weather seemed to match the mood as it was gloomy, overcast and rainy, very fitting. The size of the camp was absolutely huge and really but into perspective what happened.




We saw some of the facilities the prisoners used, such has the washroom facility and the sleeping barracks. There were only 3 washroom buildings for the entire camp, and prisoners were only permitted to used them for 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes at night, so most of the people had to find their own places. The barracks had rows for 3 level bunk beds, with over 5 people on each bunk. There was no flooring and the only source of heat was a chimney in the center. They buildings we infested with rats, insects and disease, it was very disturbing.



We were then shown the train tracks that brought the prisoners and victims into the camp. A special connection was built from the main railway line to bring them directly to camp. From there they were split into groups of women and children, and men. They were then split in to the strong and the weak and the weak were sent to the gas chambers.





Birkenau had 4 gas chambers and crematoriums. They were all destroyed and only the ruins remain. The two biggest could fit around 2000 people. The prisoners were told they would go take a shower and were sent to the first underground room, the changing room. It was designed like a changing room with numbered hooks for clothes, and benches. They were then led into the showers where Zyclone B, hydrogen cyanide, filled the room. The final stage was into the ovens of the crematorium. The ruins had a very errie aura around them. After a quick stop at the memorial site, we were bused back to Auschwitz.



At Auschwitz we first went through the main gates, with the saying "arbeit macht frei" - Work brings freedom. This was used in many concentration camps around Europe.



The conditions here were much better then in Birkenau, since the buildings and Barracks here were originally for the Polish Army and were modified. We went through some exhibits about the mass executions, jails, and belongings. There were huge displays with piles of human hair (used for textiles) and shoes, it was a sight that really put things into perspective.


We were then shown the Death block, which was like the prison inside the prison. At the basement were 4 types of cells and being sent there usually meant you weren't coming back. The first cell was the starvation cell in which you were locked there until your died. There is a story of a Polish Priest which switched placed with another prisoner and died in place of that man. The next type of cell was the suffocation cell. Here the cell was blocked off with very little air and prisoners were locked in until they died. The third was a standing cell, were 5 prisoners would be locked in a cell 1m^2 for the nights, then sent to work in the day. Unable to do work, they would be executed. The final cell was a regular cell. Beside the death block was the wall of death were the executions took place.


We were next lend to the first gas chamber. It was much smaller then the others but still intacked.


In it, the large shower area and the furnaces were reconstructed.


The German's stopped using this chamber when Birkenau was constucted and it was converted into a bomb shelter. The furnaces were removed to hide evidence of the horrors taking place there, but the metal was found and reconstructed. After walking around and seeing some other exhibitions on the gypies and the War in Poland, we took a bus back to Krakow.

When we got back we went to grab some food and tried a few more Polish dishes. This time we had pierogi (ruskie = cheese and potatoes, z miesem = with meat) and some soups zurek (a soup soup with sausages) and barszcz (red beat soup, based on boarch). Afterwards Keegan had some bigos staropolski (sourkrout and sausages).



We walked around the center a little more, picked up some Polish Vodka (ZUBROWKA) and headed home after a tiring day.


On saturday, there was a bunch of free museum things so we went to check thouse out first. We went to the city of Krakow culture and history thing as well as the theatre but it wasn't so interesting.


Afterwards we went to the Gestapo cells which was pretty crazy. There were 4 cells with a ton of writting on the walls from prisoners.


The next stop was the Wielickzka salt mines.


This place was pretty cool. The mines extend down to 327 metres underground through 9 levels and has about 2000 with a total capacity of 7.5 million cubic metres. Unfortunately I spent most of my money on a bottle of vodka to take home, so we had to go on the Polish tour (english tours cost more). The tour starts with a decent of 64 metres to the first floor. In there we went to the Nicholas Copernicus room.


It was basically a large room with a carving in the middle. Since the tour was in Polish, I didn't get too much info. The chamber were all quite massive and if you licked the walls, they would be salty (the section I tried wasn't too strong though).


The next room was the first chapel on the tour, called the St. Anthony's Chapel. It has some carvings of some saints and an altar. After a few other rooms we decended to the next level, now at 90 metres.


We eventually came to St. Kinga's Chapel which was absolute HUGE! It was 2 floors with the lower floor 91 metres below ground. The space was created after the removal of a huge green salt block. The block was over 54 metres long, 18 metres wide, and 12 metres high. Afterwards miners and sculpturers made all the displays and sculptures.






We then came across the first of a few underground lakes which was pretty neat to see. And eventually ended up in the Stanislaw Staszic Chamber, located 124 metres below ground. This chamber was originally 50 meters high but it was filled up a little and is now 36 metres high.


After the tour of the mines we went deeper to a small museum which had various salt crystals and models of machines used to bring the salt to the surfaces.




At the end of it, we were 136 metres below ground (a little over 1/2 the distance I bungee jumped). We then took a neat elevator up to the top.

The elevator consisted for 4 carts one on top of the other and each carried 9 people. It was pretty neat and pretty trippy as it shook a lot on the way up. After the salt mines we took the bus back to the city.

The next stop was Schindler's factory, made famous by the movie Schindler's List.




It was closed when we got there but the security guard there let us in and gave us a tour. He was really helpful and informative and told us all about what happened and such, it was quite an experience. After some photos we went to Schindler's office to sign the guest book and headed for dinner. Being low of funds we went for some perogies and then headed to the airport for a good nights sleep.

We woke up early to get our boarding pass (#3 and 4) but then went back to sleep. When we got up to check in there was a crazy long line and we barely made it onto the plane (group A priority seating doesn't mean anything when your the last 2 people on hte plane). We flew into Berlin and had half a day to kill there.


This gave us a chance to see some stuff we missed the first time around. The first place we went to see was the Topography of Terror display. We walked by it the first time we were in Berlin, but we were on a walking tour and didn't have time to read all the stuff. It was basically about the Gestapo building and stuff located there and had nothing about the Berlin Wall (even though a section of the wall is located there). There was a temperary exhibit on the Nuremburg Trials which was really intersting. There's a cool quote made by the American Prosecutor summerizing the defence of some Nazi memebers on trial, it's took long so i'll just post the picture.


Afterwards we went to Potsdammer Platz to see it in the day time, but since it was sunday, all the stores were closed again, damn.


VW had some interesting driving simulators though, so we played with those for a bit.


Afterwards we went to the East side Gallery of the Berlin Wall to see some of the more colorful graffiti that was painted on the wall.




It was pretty neat since we missed it last time. I tried to break off a piece of the wall to take home but it was tough and I only managed to get some small pieces. O well. After a kabab for dinner we headed to the airport and took our usual sleeping spot.


We flew home the next day in time for a 1/2 day of work, good times.

On a quite side note, Sunday was the Anniversary of Pope John Paul's death. He is from Poland, so we thought there might be some special stuff happening but we left early Sunday so we weren't able to see if anything was going on. The only thing we did see was a photo exibition on the Pope in the middle of the park. It woulda been cool to see if anything special happened.