KrakOW!
In and around Krakow, Poland
This weekend, Steven, Andrea, and I took advantage of our optional three day weekend and flew to Poland. It was quite the trek just getting to airport, as the train doesn’t go there, and it’s a 50 minute car ride away. We walked to our train station, caught the train to a neighboring city, and took a bus from there to the airport. Miraculously, we made it! Unfortunately, Steven and I ran into some costly issues at the airport that totaled 100 euro ($135) in unnecessary fees. I was not a happy camper.
The flight over was nice, and I had pretty much forgotten about our airport fiasco when we arrived in Poland. I’m not sure if it was my own ignorance or what, but I was not prepared for the looks of Poland. I was not aware of how poor and underdeveloped the country is, and this caught me by complete surprise. At one point, I even found myself asking, “Is this what we came to see?” All of that was completely turned around when we got off at the train station, which lies underneath a huge mall. As much as I was not expecting the looks of Poland, I really wasn’t expecting to walk out into this huge mall, bigger than any I have ever seen before!
We walked around the mall for a bit before heading to our hostel, The Dizzy Daisy. After checking in, we dropped our bags off and spent the rest of the day walking around Krakow.
Saturday we decided to go on an all day tour to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka salt mines (google them!). We were a little bummed by the tour to Auschwitz, as it was very rushed and cut short due to late people who didn’t know about the time change. That was very unfortunate since Auschwitz was at the top of our lists to see while in Europe and was the sole reason we went to Poland. The tour was very informative, but no time was allowed for it to sink in and be moving. We got to go to both camps, Auschwitz I and Aushwitz II (Birkenau). We saw where the prisoners were forced to sleep, their many different “torture cells”, their facilities, and rooms full of human hair, belongings, and clothes. There wasn’t any time to go into the museum or other informational buildings.
Nothing could ever make up for our lack of an experience at Auschwitz, but the salt mines at Wieliczka were definitely a nice close to the day. Before we went to Poland, Steven was the one really pushing us to go to the salt mines. Andrea and I were both pretty indifferent, but were blown away when we got there. The salt mines are basically a small town underground all made out of rock salt. There were many, many statues, a couple chapels, a ballroom with stone pictures on the wall, and many chandeliers made out of crystallized salt along with other rooms and features.
Our time in Krakow was very well spent and relaxed, but if I could do it all over, I would not take a tour for my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hopefully I’ll be super rich when I retire in the future, and I can afford to go back to Poland for a second try!
Route taken and entries by Real Traveler Liz Hamilton
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