Krakow and Auschwitz

My school has this thing called the Buddy System which offers various planned activities (that are even somewhat subsidized by the school). These activities are everything from trips to Dresden or Krakow, to Boat Cruises, to Skydiving. The one that I knew I must do was the trip to Krakow, Poland, which is a party city about 9 hours away from Praha, and is only 1 hour away from Auschwitz, the place where millions upon millions of people were slaughtered during WWII.

This trip was an awesome trip cause it helped me bond further with many of my classmates as there was 30 of us from VSE that went to Krakow. This trip would also be good because I would get to do alot of things that I would have been too cheap to do when traveling alone.

On the Friday the 9^th we departed just after midnight, I knew this ride would be dreadful and thus I HAD to do what I could so that I would fall asleep quickly so me and Ruann had a couple drinks before we got on for the 9 hour bus ride (so we would pass out quickly.) Once we arrived everyone was super tired, but the buddy system had a whole day of planned activities so we dropped off our stuff and went on a tour for 6 or 7 hours from our personal tour guide. The city was cool, but alot similar to the rest of Europe I had seen already though I did enjoy that the city center was entirely enclosed by walls (or atleast it used to be), the dragon spouts that you can take showers from, and the huge dragon that you used to be able to text (now it just happens every couple of minutes) and it would breath fire hahaha (and alot of fire at that!). That night we enjoyed a Mountaineering 3 course meal which was pretty tasty, this was one of the two 3 course dinner + Entertainment meals that I would have been too cheap to pay for if traveling alone. That night the gang headed to an Irish Bar (which by the way are identical in every city I have been to including Ireland.) the bar was cool I watched some rugby and then I enjoyed some karaoke with the other exchange students.

our Mountaineering freinds

The next day was a very sad day in Polish History on this 70^th anniversary of Katyn a plane carrying many of Poland’s leaders went down, just to show how crazy this was, these are some of the people that went down in the crash.

* Lech Kaczyński, President of Poland
* Maria Kaczyńska, First Lady of Poland
* Krystyna Bochenek, Deputy Speaker of the Senat
* Archbishop Miron Chodakowski, Orthodox Ordinary of the Polish Army
* Leszek Deptuła, member of the Sejm
* Grzegorz Dolniak, member of the Sejm
* Janina Fetlińska, member of the Senat
* General Franciszek Gągor, Chief of the Polish Army General Staff
* Grażyna Gęsicka, member of the Sejm
* Przemysław Gosiewski, member of the Sejm
* Mariusz Handzlik, Undersecretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
* Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, member of the Sejm
* Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last President of the Polish government-in-exile
* Sebastian Karpiniuk, member of the Sejm
* Vice Admiral Andrzej Karweta, Commander-in-chief of the Polish Navy
* Janusz Kochanowski, Polish Ombudsman
* Andrzej Kremer, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
* Janusz Kurtyka, Historian and president of the Institute of National Remembrance
* Tomasz Merta, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
* Aleksandra Natalli-Świat, member of the Sejm
* Piotr Nurowski, President of the Polish Olympic Committee
* Maciej Płażyński, President of the Polish Community Association
* Tadeusz Płoski, bishop of the Military Ordinariate of the Polish Army
* Krzysztof Putra, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm
* Andrzej Przewoźnik, Secretary-General of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites
* Ryszard Rumianek, Rector of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University
* Arkadiusz Rybicki, member of the Sejm
* Sławomir Skrzypek, President of the National Bank of Poland
* Władysław Stasiak, Chief of the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
* Aleksander Szczygło, head of the National Security Bureau
* Jerzy Szmajdziński, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm
* Jolanta Szymanek-Deresz, member of the Sejm
* Anna Walentynowicz, free trade union activist, member of Solidarity
* Zbigniew Wassermann, member of the Sejm
* Wiesław Woda, member of the Sejm
* Edward Wojtas, member of the Sejm
* Paweł Wypych, Secretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
* Stanisław Zając, member of the Senate

When we were told about this in the morning in the Jewish district everyone was shocked beyond belief, how could so many important people be on one plane, where should Poland go from here? That afternoon we had a tour of Auschwitz 1 and 2, from a tour guide that had been doing this tour for 10+ years. IT was one of my most Shocking and horrific experiences thus far, and I thought of the world in a totally different way after this tour. Just the stories are horrific. 12 people sharing a single bed, with the sheet moving on top of them cause there are so many rats, and some people would die in the middle of the night and you would wake up with someone beside you eaten by the rats, they would have no nose, no chins, just terrible, if you go to Europe you should differently hit up a concentration camp it will definitely make you think of the world we live in differently.

the entrance to the concentration camp, the sign reads work brings freedom... work did not bring freedom

the bunkbeds, a thousand people would live in this building alone

Day 2's fancy dinner, me, Chris, Hanna and the dutch crew finished our whole bowl of tomato soup (4 bowls each!)

The final day we went on a Communism tour. Where we got to look at Fidel Castro’s ideal city, shoot some vodka to make communism problems go away, eat communism perogies, eat communism pickles, and drive in a plastic communism car. This was cool but I still think Jarov dorms beat all in their amazing communism feel. As we were leaving you could tell the city was in mourning, Krakow had closed all entertainment (movies, clubs etc) for a whole week, and even the grocery stores were closed on that Sunday.

the plastic car, it bends when you step on the plastic roof

All and all I strongly, strongly recommend all of you to try and go to Krakow so you can go to Auschwitz it is definitely something all of us Canadians or Americans should know more about, so the horrors of WWII never happen again.