Crazy Adventure to Poland

And the realization of an important expectation.

My trip to Krakow and Auschwitz can only really be described as an adventure. Some aspects were absolutely delightful, while others were sketchy and terrifying. Still others were depressing, exhausting, and hilarious. It was quite a crazy 44 hours!

We started off Friday with a trip to the Bundeskanzleramt (the Chancellor's office) as part of an excursion with the FU-BEST program. It was pretty interesting, and the architecture of the whole building was amazing. Open and transparent, fully representative of what the German government is trying to accomplish. Then we had about a 4 hour break to prepare for Poland! Our first real train left at 18:30, and arrived in Krakow at 6:36. Yeah.... 12 hours. With 4 train changes. I don't know what we were thinking!

The first train went fine, but then we realized that they weren't announcing the train stops, and the signs on the stations were suddenly in Polish! Apparently, it only takes an hour and a half to get to Poland... We had to go based on our ticket times, and get off the train at the time it said, and just hope it was the right station. And those Polish stations.... The only word to describe them is: SKETCHY. Or, for added emphasis, sketchy as fuck! I didn't get any pictures of them, but trust me... they were sketchy. And this is when we learned that neither P or myself knows a single word of Polish (well now I know that Tak means yes). Also, random fun fact for people going to Poland: you always have to pay to use the bathroom (and they don't take Euros there). And it's not just some machine that you drop a coin into like Germany.... no, in between the two sides of the bathroom there is a little living room set up where one of two people sit and wait for you to finish your business, then harass you in Polish until you hand them money. And I'm not kidding about the living room set up... they legitimately have couches and TVs and microwaves. I don't understand how it's cost effective...

Anyway, moving on (this is going to be a loooong post btw), as me and P are sufficiently freaked out, and wishing we had a big, strong, burly man with us, we board our final train of the night. An 8 hour train from Krzyz to Krakow. It didn't sound too bad, but then we realized that we hadn't made a reservation, so we had to search the whole train for a car to sleep in. We tried so hard to find a car all to ourselves, but this guy and his daughter were following us. He kept being like "where are you staying in Krakow? Come stay in my house with me and my daughter," etc etc. His daughter was so cute, but me and P kept exchanging looks of "Do you think he's kidnapped this girl? Should we alert someone?!" We ended up losing him when he stopped to talk to a conductor, and found ourselves a car to ourselves. Unfortunately some people joined us at the next stop, so not too much sleeping occurred. Also, on the 8 hour train ride, the conductor came around every two hours to check our tickets. Like seriously... you've already stamped it three times... I'm relatively certain it's still valid!

Anyway, after probably only accumulating 2 or 3 hours of sleep on the train (most of the time was spent trying to get this Polish woman to stop sleeping on me), we finally arrived in Krakow! Again, how the hell do these Poles know when to get off the train?? Around the time we were supposed to get off, we were plastered to the window, hopelessly searching for a sign. I finally saw one that said Krakow, and figured we'd be safe getting off there. Let me tell you, Poland at 6:30 in the morning is absolutely freezing!! I think it was about 6 degrees Celsius when we got there! We also discovered that the woman at the Deutsches Bahn ticket office had sold us the wrong return ticket... one that left Krakow at 2:30 in the morning! We struggled in broken English to change the tickets, but ultimately failed. We decided to give it a rest, and grab some breakfast. We both got delicious sandwiches, and P got a tasty pastry thing (pictures will come in a separate post).

We then spent about an hour or two roaming around Krakow train station desperately searching for the PKS (the bus that goes to town where Auschwitz is). We found the GDS or something, and figured we could hopefully find the PKS from there. Needless to say, this was painfully stressful and exhausting (even for someone running on a normal amount of sleep). Eventually we figured out we had to look for a bus headed to the town, and that the sign wouldn't say "bus to Auschwitz" - seems logical, but we just kind of assumed that's what it would say). Finally, we caught a 9:20 bus (well large van), and were able to sleep for about an hour of the hour and 40 minute bus ride. Then we got there. And it was absolutely intense.

We bought our tickets (even though the website said it was free...), and watched a 10 minute movie about the history and liberation of Auschwitz. It was a really good movie and had a lot of really moving clips and pictures that I hadn't seen before, especially about the liberation and discovery of what had been done there. Then we joined a group and started the tour. We went through about 6 blocks where the inmates lived, and each block had different exhibits in it. One on the living conditions, one on the means of deportation, one on extermination, one on the arrivals, one of the prisons, I think there was more, but this is most of what I can remember. I'm not going to go into too many details about it because it's such a sensitive topic, but there were three things that really stood out and affected me.

1) One room was full of the hair that the Nazis shaved off the women and used for textiles for the German army. The room was about 15 feet long, and the exhibit took up the whole wall and probably went about 6 feet back. And the hair almost reached the ceiling. Some of it was still in pony tails that had been cut off the women's heads. It was incredibly moving
2) A sculpture of a representation of the extermination process. It starts with people piling into the "showers," then the gassing, and finally the crematoria. I actually saw this originally at the DHM, but seeing it at the location where it actually occurred was so intense.
3) I didn't realize that this last part was going to be on the tour, and I wish I'd been prepared for it. We actually walked through one of the crematoria. It had 6 ovens, as well as the tracks that were used to transport the bodies. You could feel the death. It made me want to cry.

Anyway... onto less depressing things! We made it back to Krakow, and decided to explore the city for a while. We found these crazy mannequin things in a courtyard - some ING thing about the truth about insurance. Twas weird. Regardless, if we hadn't gone to explore it, we wouldn't have found the second half of Krakow train station, where we were finally able to change our tickets to 10 p.m. ones! It was like a weight had been lifted :) We continued strolling around Krakow and absolutely fell in love! We determined that we no longer hated Poland, ran into a random concert in the town square, saw so many horse drawn carriages and ate amazing gelato. Krakow is pretty much exactly how you imagine a European town will be. It's absolutely adorable. We wandered up a hill and found ourselves at a castle overlooking the river right at sunset. It was tremendous!

Once it started to get dark we decided to grab some dinner. We headed to this Georgian restaurant (mainly because it was the cheapest, but nicest looking, place we could find). It was called Gruzinskie Chaczapuri Restaurant, and it was delicious! We got some wine, and pork steak. I have no idea what pork steak really is, but it was surprisingly tasty - and I hate pork! It was marinated in Georgian spices, which are delicious, and came with this sauce that tasted a whole lot like currywurst sauce. After that, we headed to Boogie Cafe and got some tasty dessert. We had another hour or so until our train, and since it was getting cold, we decided to just head back to the mall/train station for a while. We loaded up on water and bread for the trip, and finally got on our train.

Two really nice Polish girls joined our car, and thank god they did! Apparently the woman who changed our tickets gave us the wrong information. It told us to get off at the third Warsaw station, not the middle one... but our next train left from the middle Warsaw station, and didn't even stop at the third! The Polish girls were headed to Warsaw too, so we just followed their lead! And so commenced our 2 and half hour lay over in Warsaw. From 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Warsaw is not a closed train station, so there is no way to avoid the middle of the night freeze. We were sitting at our track about an hour and a half before the train got there reading when three random Polish guys came up to us. One of them took our picture, and we tried to ignore them but they started to harass us. Again, where the hell was our big, strong, burly man?! (Or, you know, a few of them...) One of these guys was actually kind of nice, and spoke English really well. He could tell how uncomfortable we were and tried to get the other guys to leave. The other two were creepy as hell. They were obviously drunk, and as P would put it "one of them looked like Gollum!" They eventually left (after telling us not to be scared because there were cameras everywhere), and we booked it to the McDonald's to wait the rest of the hour for our train.

The final train! From 6:30 to 13:16... and such glorious sleep! We had reservations, and therefore a whole car to ourselves! The conductors still came around quite often, but we were able to lay down and sleep in 2 hour intervals. It was absolutely glorious! We were so happy to be back in Germany where we actually understand some of the language and can make out the sign posts... oh, and where the train announce the stops and the bathrooms are sooo clean and don't have creepy living rooms :) Berlin really has become home to us.

So yeah, that's pretty much Poland in a nutshell! Absolutely insane! The day I got back was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall so a group of us headed over the Brandenburger Tor and the Reichstag to celebrate with the Berliners! It was a great end to the weekend :) Pictures will come sometime in the next few days! Oh, and everything, including hostels, is now booked for Norway and Sweden in two weeks, so look forward to updates on that!

p.s. sorry for any typos. It's late here, and as you've seen there hasn't been much sleep in the last few days!