With that settled, we booked our trip and flew out last weekend. When we landed, we got our bags, met the driver, and headed to the hotel. Before the trip, Shanna picked up thing for the stroller to pack Ben in to for when it's cold, and it's a good thing she did, because it was freezing when we landed.
The hotel was nice, and our room had a small balcony over looking a garden in the back. After we got everything settled in the room, we headed down to the Old Town area. Along the way to Old Town we passed Walwel Castle, and in front of it, they had a large pole that pointed out various cities around the world, and how far away they were. They had Rochester on there, at 7,400km away. I thought that was neat since New York is where my Grandmother's family moved to from Poland.
Across from the castle was a small church, and in front of it was a giant cross that said "1940 KATYN 1990". I had to look up Katyn when we got back to our hotel later that afternoon. This was a memorial dedicated to the 22,000 Poles that were executed by the Soviets in what was later called the Katyn massacre.
The old town area was beautiful. They had a large square, and lots of shops all around it. There was a large church in the square, and every hour there is a man who goes to the top of the church spire, and plays a bugle. Hundreds of years ago a guard would play the bugle to signal the opening & closing of the city gates, as well as a warning when invaders were approaching. In 1241, a guard played the bugle to warn of a Mongol invasion army approaching. In the middle of playing, he was shot with an arrow and killed. They commemerate his sacrifice in Krakow today by having a person play the bugle every hour (I don't know if it goes through the night or not) and abruptly end the note to signify when the bugler was shot and killed.
The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the old part of the city. During one point when we were sitting at a cafe on the square, Shanna was going through a bunch of pamphlets she got from the hotel. One advertised a traditional Polish dinner with Polish folk dancing. It sounded like fun, so we headed over to the restaurant and made reservations for that night. My grandmother taught my Mom some Polish cooking, so when we were younger we used to have Kielbasa and Pierogis...I couldn't wait to try some here.
That evening we walked back to the restaurant. At this point fog had rolled in, so it was actually a pretty night to walk around with everything lit up through the fog. We got the restaurant and took our seat. Ben had slept on the walk over, but right as everything was getting ready to start, he woke up. He had a lot of fun that night, and could not take his eyes off the dancers. When they would take breaks, he would go back to playing with this toys at the table. As soon as they came back out, he was back to staring at them. The food was delicious. I had a soup that I'd never heard of, but figured I'd try anyway. It was called Zurek soup, and it was incredible. There seem to be multiple recipes for it, but the one I had was a white broth poured over potatoes with bacon pieces and chopped boiled eggs in it. The appetizer was the Pierogis I'd been looking forward to, and Kielbasa was used in the main course. The last dance of the night involved all the patrons (about 15 of us) with the Polish dancers. This particular dance had everyone holding hands and dancing in a circle. One person would pick another, then the two of them would get down on their knees facing each other while we all danced around them, and they would kiss each other on each cheek. The person who was picked then got up, picked someone else from the crowd, and repeated. One lady picked Ben while Shanna was holding him, so Shanna got down on her knees, and the lady kissed Ben once on each cheek while he laughed. After the dance, they came out and took some pictures with him.
The next morning a guide I'd arranged met us in the lobby, and we started off on the tour. The hotel was on a street that divided the Old Town area from the Jewish Quarter. Our guide first started with the Jewish Quarter. Originally the Jewish section had been in the center square area of old town during the middle ages, but the king at the time wanted a strict divide between Jews and Christians, so he had them moved outside the Old Town area to where we were walking now. The first stop was an old Jewish cemetery. During World War II, the Nazis used it as a place to dump trash. After the war the local residents cleaned it up, and restored it. We walked along to the area where Spielberg filmed the "Ghetto" area for Schindler's List. That wasn't the actual ghetto area, but it still looks today like it did 70 years ago, in terms of the building architecture. From there we headed to a Synagogue. Shanna & I thought about it, and we realized that in our travels we've been inside Churches, Cathedrals, even Mosques...but we've never been inside a Synagogue before. So it was a first for both of us.
At that point we were done with the Jewish Quarter, and it was time to head to the Old Town area. We started with the original entrance through the old city gates. We couldn't walk through because they were working on restoring it, but we could see it form the outside.
We walked through out the old town area as our guide told us about the history of the city. We ended the tour at a little off the beaten path restaurant. We weren't that hungry, but we had to share a snack of Pierogis! The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the various shops. There was a display set up in the center of the old town area that said "Krakow", so we took pictures with Ben in front.
There was also a few other letters, so we took one in front of the large N.
The next part of this post is disturbing because I'll be describing the things we saw at Auschwitz. If you don't want to read it, click here to skip past it.
The next day we took a group tour to Auschwitz. They had two small vans, but because we had the stroller and Ben's car seat, they gave us a van all to ourselves. Everyone else had to cram in to the other one. So that was nice. What I didn't realize was how large Auschwitz was. So large that it was built in stages. The original part of the camp is called Auschwitz I. Later Auschwitz II was built, and finally the area that most people would probably recognize pictures of was built, Auschwitz Birkenau. The tour we were on took us through Auschwitz I and Auschwitz Birkenau.
Once we arrived, our guide took us in. The first thing you see is the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign, which means "Work will make you free".
After having seen so many pictures of concentration camps when they were filled during World War II, it was eerie walking through the most famous one now. We've been to Dachau while here, but most of that camp was destroyed at the end of the war, and only partially re-constructed for visitors. Auschwitz is entirely originally. What you saw as you walked through was what each prisoner there saw. Auschwitz I was originally a Polish military base, so all the buildings that housed the prisoners were former military barracks. Each building today is a mini-museum dedicated to a specific thing. For example, one building was dedicated to all the things that were taken from the people when they arrived at camp. To sell the lie that they would eventually be set free, the Germans had each person write their name, birth date, and any other info that would help them identify their suitcase. They have a room with a glass wall, and behind the wall are hundreds of suitcases stacked. You can read the names and birthdays of each person. Would made that it particularly sad were the suitcases with birthdays listed in the late 1930s/early 1940s because you knew those were young children.
Another building had a small monument built by the Soviets who liberated the camp. It has "1940-1945" written on it, and a glass bowl on top that contains ashes of human remains the soldiers found outside the crematorium.
The next building we walked in to I considered not writing about, because as haunting as all of this was, this particular room was probably the worst one we went in to. We were given a warning before hand, and Shanna didn't even want to go in. Inside this room, behind a glass wall, was well over a ton of human hair. When people arrived at the camp, the first thing they did was shave all their hair off. The hair was then bundled up into bags, and sent off to factories in Germany where it was used to make carpets, rugs, and things of that nature. When the Soviets liberated the camp, the Germans had attempted to destroy parts of it to hide their crimes, but several tonnes of hair were still left. This was probably the single most disturbing thing we saw. The rest of it required your imagination to picture what happened, but this was something you could see with your own eyes. This wasn't a replica or re-creation, this well over a ton of hair of actual victims of the camp.
When we left the barrack area, we next headed underground to rooms that they put captured Soviet POWs in, and tested the gas that would later be used in gas chambers. They tested on POW after POW until they got the mixture of the gas just right to kill as fast as possible. Our guide told us the first few tests took the soldiers days to die. From there we headed to the actual gas chamber. You walked through, and when you walked out the back part of it, it put you into the crematorium.
Outside of the chamber was where the building that the Gestapo were housed in used to be located. The building is gone now, and instead there is just a plank with a single rope hanging there. Rudolph Hoess was the first commander of the camp, and in 1947 he was captured and tried by a Polish Tribunal. He was convicted, and hung right on this spot.
After this part of the tour was over, they drove us to the Auschwitz Birkenau part of the camp. That's right, they drove us. That gives you an idea of how large this camp was. This part of the camp I've seen many times in pictures, so I recognized it immediately. As we pulled up, we saw the infamous tracks leading into the camp.
Our guide took us in, and the first thing you noticed was how large this camp was. One of the most common pictures from camps in WWII shows people standing at the barbed wire fences looking out. As you walked in, you saw a fence on either side of you that stretched almost as far as the eye could see. I couldn't help but think of those pictures when I saw the fences. On the tracks inside the camp they had one train car sitting there. It was one of the original cars used to transport people to the camp.
For the next 30 minutes we walked around camp as our guide talked about daily life, as well as stories of people that were there that are known due to journals recovered and interviews with survivors after the war.
When it was all done, we were ready to head back to the hotel. It had been a heavy day, and we were looking forward to getting back to Krakow and unwinding. After getting back, I pulled up the address of Schindler's Factory. Shanna didn't realize it was so close to us, and she really wanted to see it. Along the way we walked over an interesting bridge that was all lit up with pink light.
We eventually reached it. It wasn't much to look at from the outside, but you could see there was a museum inside. Had we planned our time a little better we could have toured it, but instead we just had to settle for being there and seeing it from the outside.
One neat thing they did have on the outside, though, was pictures of all the people who worked in the factory that Schindler saved from camps.
We ended the night at a bar I'd found out about online that served a large selection of local Polish craft beers. Not only was the beer delicious, it was ridiculously cheap. I ordered a half liter stout for myself, and a half liter pale ale for Shanna. Total cost was 18 Polish Zloty. I did a quick count in my head, and realized that came out to a little over $5. That kind of beer in most of Europe would easily set you back twice that. Because it was brewed locally, it tasted amazingly fresh.
We finally called it a night, and the next morning headed out. It took longer to get home than expected due to heavy fog at the airport, but we eventually did.
We really enjoyed Poland. The people were friendly, the food was delicious, and the history was sobering. It was an amazing experience, and one I'm really glad we got to do before we moved back.
To see pictures, click here or any picture above.
The next post should be up sometime this week. Tomorrow we're taking an overnight trip to Rothenburg, Germany. It's a small medieval town that we've heard is neat to visit, so we're taking advantage of the long weekend. After that, the next post will be in early December after we get back from Tallinn, Estonia. We're going over Thanksgiving break when they start their big Christmas market.
