Krakow, Poland

Arriving into Krakow, it was very refreshing and different from Warsaw, as one would imagine. Everything here seemed a little more rustic and medieval. Left is the main square ‘Rynek Glowny‘ – the biggest medieval square left in Europe. Although there were tourists around, I didnt think it was at all as crowded and annoying as the prague crowds. Rather, it was relaxing and inviting. There were musicians around, adding some nice chirpy central european tunes to the atmosphere. The square was lined with cafes and bars as well as high street stores. Away from Rynek, there were still boutiques and shops around on cobbled streets, but with definitely more kebab shops and hell for those prices we werent complaining. (We had around four or five kebabs during our time there, they cost roughly £1 and tasted delish..)

I like the polish locals. Theyre not rude towards foreigners, they just get on with it and help you out if you ask for it. Whilst this is obviously vague and rather generalised, I spent a little over a week in Poland and got a great impression of the Poles during this time and Poland actually has a little space in my heart now for the time i spent there 🙂

On the right is me smirking and showcasing my Flying Trips to Central Europe book, which was in effect my bible for the journey. The backdrop is Rynek Glowny market, inside the central corridor of the great big building you see in the first picture. Quite interesting inside though they do sell the basic tourist stuff – souvenirs, rugs, embroidery and jewellery. I’m told Polish amber is not bad either, and there’s plenty of that stuff here too.

EK here is checking out the mass of jewellery this ole lady has compiled for herself at her shop, looking for something for her mama. EK told me specifically to get the authentic polish person in the picture.

Me outside Krakow Castle on the right. Since we’re cheap, and not entirely interested, we didnt actually go in. More put off by the big bloody hill one has to climb before reaching the entrance, and even then you have to enquire to see how many tickets are available for the day. So yup, cheap pic it is.

You can’t go to poland and not talk about the vodka. Hence turn your attention to the left and say hello to Wyborowa, a dry pure vodka invention that is 100% polish and nice and crisp too. I’ve since found out i’m not as lightweight as some, so ok it makes me tipsy but diluting with juices and such to make cocktails makes it better.

Basically, i really really liked krakow. I had a relaxing time there, things were cheap and delicious, its rather beautiful and and Poles are cool.

Auschswitz , Poland
Since we were so near, and i really wanted to go, we reserved half a day to visit Auschswitz, which was about an hour west of Krakow as I recall. I was fascinated about what was in the guidebook – in Birkenau (the larger camp near Auschswitz) for instance, the 70% of arrivals who were deemed unfit for labour were gassed amost immediately, whilst the ‘lucky’ 30% were worked to death in labour camps, wearing uniforms with badges that illustrated their ‘crime’ (e.g. a pink triangle indicated homosexuality),with ID numbers tattooed on their arms. Any chance a guard got to punish or kill a prisoner, they took quite readily, and sometimes with false assumptions. The plaque you see on the left says: The corpses of prisoners shot while trying to escape were displayed here as warning to others. 

If someone told a guard you had stolen an apple, you’d be shot at the Wall of Death. When the camp was liberated, the soldiers did what they could to burn buildings that housed gassing chambers and destroyed the wall. Today, a small section of the wall has been rebuilt in honour of the hundreds who were made to march there and wait for the bullet to hit the back of their head.

The entrance to the camp below is marked by a gate that bore the words Arbeit Macht Frei – work makes you free – which was of course, a big load of pap but anyway.

Its strange to imagine the thousands of prisoners who were forced through those gates, gazing up at those very words as if they believed them.

Literally the entire camp was open to us, a block of red brick buildings that housed different purposes, a corridor by Block 11 (the Death Block) which contained the wall of death, the prisoner cells (pitch black, with the worse ones where it was too narrow to even sit) and the crematorium (a small concrete block with a chimney). Inside there, you could walk amongst the furnaces and if crude enough, peer inside to see dark ashes. There were pulleys on the floor to help quicken the process of transferring corpses into the fire. On the pic above, is just me, walking through the camp, where you couldnt believe, especially on a sunny day that this place was once the epitomy of cruel inhuman sadism that you read about.

I had many more pictures but not on this camera, of the displays in the buildings. Housed in sections were collections of spectacles, shoes, suitcases (surreal to read the name and addresses of all these people scrawled on the fronts of the suitcases) pots and pans, combs, and even wooden legs, all bundled separately into window displays. The soldiers took all these things from the prisoners upon arrival, tattooed them, shaved their heads and ‘disinfected’ them for work. In several buildings, the corridors were eearily lined with framed mug shot photographs of all the known prisoners including names. All of their expressions were emotionless, though some even managed a small smile i thought. Its not half creepy to have so many eyes on you, knowing what happened to them.

By the time I had finished with the Auschswitz camp, i felt so depressed, sombre and quite frankly, itchy, that I reaaly couldnt hack taking a look at the bigger Birkenau camp. So instead we just caught the bus back to Krakow, sheesh.

Having said all of that, it really is fascinating and amazing, especially considering how much access they let tourists have to the camp. The camp is free to enter, basically out of respect to the prisoners who suffered so much there. Everything you see is so intensely morbid and, if you think about it more and more, rather sick, that it fills you with both disgust and a sense of incredulous surrealism that this all actually happened, the nazis actually did all of this, and it was for real. I highly highly recommend a visit here, if just to appreciate how good we have it in our everyday lives.