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Published: August 3rd 2005
July 30 - August 3 Krakow, Poland Janexim Guesthouse
Hey Everyone!
Hope all is going good at home, we need some updates soon to see what everyone is up to. Anyways, we are just getting ready to leave Krakow tomorrow on the early train at 6:10 am and travelling about 12-13 hours to Munich, Germany and will arrive at 8:30 pm. Our original plan was to go to Venice for 4 days but we had trouble booking and finding a room, its super expensive and we're kind of getting sick of all these people! So, now we are stopping in Munich for 2 nights and then we have 4 nights in Interlaken, Switzerland which is a town of about 20,000 people in the middle of the Swiss Alps (we're thinking its going to be very relaxing and gorgeous). It's pretty cool that we can change plans at the last minute and have no idea where we are going and where we are staying at the end of the week.
About Krakow. First off, we'll mention how we got here. It was an overnight train that left at 9pm and didn't get in until 6:30 am. When we arrived at the train to board all we saw were a bunch of old men smoking out of the windows with their heads sticking out and we thought uh oh, what are we in for tonight. We'd been warned a bit from Chris and Carmen who had also previously taken this overnight train to Krakow. We heard there would be booze smugglers, but we didn't see any, so it was alright. We got a bit of sleep and weren't bothered at all, although it was incredibly hot when we first left and then this chic sitting with us wanted the window shut! She had to have been crazy. We've also come to the conclusion that the Europeans do not believe in air conditioning, fans or public toilets because you can't find them anywhere.
The place we are staying is very nice and cozy. The bathrooms are bit dingy, but they're alright. But, because there are not bathroom fans, it gets really smelly and musty in there. And we've also learned that breakfast included equals a hard bread roll and maybe some butter. People over here absolutely loooooove their frickin bread! i swear it is everywhere, on every corner someone is selling bread out of a plastic little case and its all hard because it sits out all day and people still knaw on it and love it, just plain!
We have learned so much more about WWII and communism as well. The city is very run down, especially in the old Jewish Quarters and Ghetto. The buildings look a bit trashy, it's actually a bit depressing, especially on an overcast day. You just can't imagine what these people went through, its really quite amazing. There is however a very lovely side to Krakow and that is in the Old Town Square, especially at night when all of the old buildings such as the churches and clock tower light up and you have people in the square playing music and tons of fun restaurants that line the square. Also, every hour, on the hour a trumpet player comes out of a window at the very top of St. Mary's Basilica and plays a little tune from all 4 corners of the tower.
Some funny things in Krakow, the sidewalks are used as parking spaces, leaving no room to walk or bike. We think that the only parking rule is that you can't park in the street! seriously! Another funny thing is they put ketchup on they're pizza, we tried it but it didn't quite taste right. Also, we've noticed that of the two tours we've taken, both tour guides stopped in the middle of the tour for a smoke break as well as many of our bus drivers...its just funny because you don't see that in the states.
The first day we got here we climbed to the top of the clock tower, which gave a nice view of the city. We also stopped at St. Mary's Basilica which was amazing, it was so gorgeous and the detail was unbelievable. Pretty much every inch of it had detail, we haven't seen a church like that yet. The next day we rented bikes and biked around town going through the old jewish ghetto, by Wawel hill which has a castle on it, we didn't go in but it looked nice, we rode around the river and then took a ride on this paved bike path kind of in the countryside of krakow, it was very nice with big rolling hills. We saw this huge mansion as well as another castle nestled in the hills. near the damn of the river there was a white water rafting course that was set up real nice and looked like alot of fun to go down.
of course the biggest highlight of Poland was Auschwitz, the death camp. Its so hard to describe what you see there, it is just unimaginable what these people had to go through and the horrid living conditions and torture they endured. Some tidbits we learned were the barracks that housed the inmates were first meant to hold 52 horses and when used in the concentration camp, it housed 400-500 people! Can you imagine! They were allowed to use the toilets (which was basically a hole in the ground) for 2 minutes, 2 times a day and the holes were literally inches from one another, so it was also very humiliating. The children, mainly twins, triplets and such were used by the scientist for experiments and many died because of the experiments or were crippled for life. There was one disturbing story about a woman who had just given birth and they took her baby away immediately and killed it. Her breasts were engorged with milk and during a role call 2 of the officers grabbed her by her breasts and squirted the milk all over their bodies then spat on her chest and wrote some harsh word on her chest - how horrible!! Executions were carried out all of the time, and many times as a sign of power so the inmates would not retaliate. There was also a building that served as a prison inside of the camp and was called Death Block. Here inmates would either stay in starvations rooms, suffocations rooms or the standing cell. In the standing cell 4 people would cram into a 3ftX3ft space and have to stay there all night, work 12 hr days doing extreme manual labor and keep this up for nearly two weeks or more. We think that one of the most dramatic parts of Auschwitz was standing in the gas chambers where sooo many people were murdered. on the wall you can see what looks like scratch marks from people when they were dying. The kicker about the gas chambers is that the people were told they were going to have a shower, and then gas came out of the fake shower heads instead. also, they would decorate the outside of the crematorium and gas chambers with flowers and such so they would have no idea, although most of them knew but were too weak to fight back or protest. We could go on and on and on, but it was absolutely amazing and very humbling.
Today we saw an old Jewish Cemetary and justin had to wear one of those hat things on his head that the Jewish men wear and he got a kick out of that. We also toured the old torture chambers on pomorska street. This is where people were tortured during the communist period and in the cells you could still see these people's last words, often the words they wrote right before they died and were tortured and beaten to death. Then we went to Schindlers Factory where parts of Schindlers list was filmed ( the only way Spielberg could make schindlers list was if he made jurassic park first, it was a bribe by universal studios.) That was very neat, we walked in his old office and signed the guestbook that will be put in a museum in a few months.
It's been great in krakow, a very cool city with tons of history.
well, i think thats enough for now. we do have 2 pics up on this website, one of which is justin's shaved head. the upload speed is very slow, so we could only do 2 for now.
Take Care,
Beth & Justin
p.s. i don't think the blogs are gunna get shorter, i guess i lied
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Jay
non-member comment
Nice look Barth.
I kinda like that shaved head look Barth. I think you should keep it. Beth, you look stunning as well. The blogs are great. Stay safe, Jay