Krakow & Auschwitz

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Taking the night train from Prague to Krakow was certainly an experience! You have to reserve what’s called a ‘couchette’, which is basically when the compartments to seat 6 people are converted into four beds. It’s like a bunk bed each side with a tiny walkway down the middle. The train itself looked like some old rusted Slavic freight train, with the steel-framed windows that pull down to half way so you can lean out of them, and doors in the main walkway and sleeping compartments with horizontal metal bars across – so you feel like you’re in a strange horizontal prison for the night. The ‘bathroom’ is entirely avocado green plastic from top to bottom, apart from some rusted pipes under the toilet, and has no running water (at least that I could find!). The outside of the train has rust streaks down it and various graffiti entries which no-one bothers to paint over.



I was sharing my compartment with three strangers – 2 Spanish people who only spoke a little English, and one Egyptian man who usually works in Dubai. After throwing TP and the rest of my bags on the bed (thankfully I got the lower bunk!), I stood with my head out of the pull-down window in the corridor while the train pulled out from the station. That train was the most wobbly and rickety piece of shit I think I have ever been on, and my head out of the window was the only ‘air-con’ that I was going to get. After the train got on its way, people started heading to their sleeping compartments for the night. I threw my sheet and pillow on the bed and then spent the next 15 minutes kicking TP into a more comfortable position to give my legs some room. I didn’t work, and I spent the night either curled up on half of the space of the bed, or with my legs sprawled on top of TP. Needless to say, there was no additional luggage storage space.



The bed itself was quite possibly made out of concrete, and every time the train literally screeched to a halt, you were almost thrown out of it. I can’t say it was the best night’s sleep I have ever had, but perhaps that was just me, as Egyptian man seemed to have no trouble snoring for the entire journey. You could say that I was quite eager to get off the train when it arrived in Krakow at 7am, with thoughts of getting a few hours’ sleep before seeing the city. I walked to the hostel and arrived at reception, and was told that check-in was not permitted until 2pm…. Shit. The receptionist said I could leave my luggage in storage, which I suppose is something, and she handed me a map of the city and said there was a free walking tour at 10am.



Krakow isn’t awake at 7am, so neither are any cafes for breakfast. There was a corner shop where I bought a croissant and some cheese, and walked into the square to eat it. Poland is another country where the currency confuses me- 50 zloty is just over £10. When a café opened, I went and ordered a coffee and tried not to fall asleep in it, and then just waited around until 10am came.



The walking tour looked at the historic sights of Krakow, including the church in the main market square, where a bugle player plays from the top of the tower on the hour every hour. I heard the music, which ends abruptly on one short note. The guide said that this is because the bugle player represents a story where a watchman historically signalled to the inhabitants of the city by bugle when the city was being invaded. The story goes that the watchman was shot in the throat by an archer, so he couldn’t finish his warning call.



We visited a church which had its ground level lower than the rest of city, and the guide explained that when people used to throw their waste in the streets, they would cover it up with a layer of soil and keep repeating this so that the ground level would get higher and higher. This was common place all over Europe and not just in Poland, and many excavations are made basically by digging through medieval waste.



The walking tour took us to all the main sights including the castle on the hill overlooking Krakow, and the guide was very good, but I’m not entirely sure how much information my sleep-deprived brain absorbed. I found the centre of Krakow to be very nice, but the buildings further out of the centre are a little grubby, and look in dire need of a good jet wash! After the walk, I took myself back to the hostel and arrived bang on 2pm. I took a much needed shower and crashed into bed. I’d like to say that I went out that evening and explored every inch of the city, but quite simply, I couldn’t be arsed! I walked the 250 metres to a takeaway food place, bought a pizza, and went back to the dorm for the remainder of the day. Sometimes you just need a good rest!



Early the next day I left the hostel and walked to the train station to catch a train to Oswiecim, to visit Auschwitz. When I got to Oswiecim, I tried to book my train reservations to Vienna for the next day. I approached a woman at a glass window and asked if she spoke any English, she said ‘No’. I knew instantly that this was going to be difficult, seeing as I don’t know ANY polish. I pointed stupidly at my rail planner app showing the trains I wanted to catch, and asked for ‘reservations’. She frowned at me for a moment (I have noticed that Polish people look angry quite a lot of the time) and said something in polish which I think meant that I couldn’t book international trains from this station, I would have to book at Zebrzydowice. I thanked her, and walked away even more confused than I was before I joined the queue……. How was I supposed to get to Zebrzydowice without a reservation, just so I could get a reservation?!



Anyway, I gave up on that for a moment and tried instead to work out the bus timetable to get to Auschwitz – On another note, how come bus timetables are so much harder to understand than trains?!? Luckily, I had researched the day before that Polish people sometimes call Auschwitz the Oswiecim Museum, and so when I saw that a few buses stopped at ‘Muzeum’, I thought that was probably my best chance! I boarded what I hoped was the right bus, asked for the museum, and bought a ticket. It was two stops away. I could have walked it in 10 minutes rather than waiting half an hour for a bus! D’oh!



You can only take small bags into Auschwitz, so I dropped TP off at a luggage store. The guy picked up my bag, did a load of huffing and puffing and said ‘Heavy!’. I felt like saying….. ‘Yeah, no shit!’ but decided it was probably not a good idea. He almost got me back though when I asked the price for storage, and he said “4 zloty……….per kilogram” then he laughed.



My tour was booked for 1, but after being let into the museum, getting through security etc and being given a headset, I was a couple of minutes late. I caught up to my group and started listening to the guide through the headphones, but it didn’t seem to make sense. The guide was talking about things I wasn’t seeing. For the next five minutes I tried to work out what was going on, whether the headset was an automated voice….but then why have a guide? Was there a delay in the guide speaking and it coming through the headset? Had I had a stroke? At one point I stood in front of the guide and could hear talking in my ears but the guide wasn’t saying anything. It was very confusing! Turns out the people who gave me the headset had tuned me into the wrong frequency channel so I was hearing the guide from another group!



The groups each started 15 minutes after the last, and there were probably at least 30 people in each group. It meant that each group tailed right behind the last, so we were very much herded around the place.



I am going to be quite controversial now, and say that I was quite disappointed in the tour of Auschwitz. I am fully aware that this comment sounds like the ultimate in tasteless first-world problems, but it’s not to be taken that way. I was fully expecting the visit of Auschwitz to be truly harrowing, and to leave me with a whole array of emotions which would probably never leave me, but it didn’t, and I’m disappointed that it didn’t.



I think the reason for this, is that, for the entirety of the tour we were so hurried to get through the museum in our groups that there was absolutely no time to stop and think, or to even read the signs which explained the museum displays. I had to take photos of the signs on display because I honestly did not have time to read them while we were whirling around. If we were walking in single file around the buildings, then I hung back at the end of the group so that I didn’t feel so pushed to move forwards and so that I could take pictures. Unfortunately, this meant that the guide was already talking about something on display in the next room before I had managed to look at the display in the last. It became very confusing to keep up with the information being told to me.



The guide obviously knew the history of Auschwitz well, but each piece of information provided to us was given as if I were reading it from Wikipedia. The guide was very emotionless, as if she was reading out what she had eaten for breakfast. I’m not saying for one second that the museum should become a Hollywood masterpiece of acting, but I really struggle to understand how something that is so naturally heart-wrenching can be dealt with in such a swift, matter of fact way.



Some sights of Auschwitz did affect me, such as seeing rooms filled with 2 tonnes of human hair which had been cut off the prisoners after they were gassed in the chamber, and which was to go to make fabric; and another room full of the shoes of the prisoners, including those of tiny children. Some of the guide’s comments to us, of the fact that 5000 people could be killed in the gas chambers every 24 hours in Auschwitz; and that some prisoners were put in underground rooms without ventilation to literally suffocate them, were just awful. But those comments were mentioned in a stream of other information, and without emphasis or compassion, before moving on to the next display room.



Perhaps there was a language/cultural barrier between myself and the guide (as she was speaking English but obviously as a second language), or maybe she wasn’t the best guide to have, I don’t know.



Before you go in to Auschwitz, there is a sign you can read which said that the purpose of the museum is to make sure that the holocaust is remembered and is never repeated, and that the survivors of Auschwitz agreed for this museum to opened on the basis that there is no limit on the numbers of people being allowed to visit. I understand completely their reasons for allowing limitless entry, but in my view at least and based on the ever-increasing flow of people visiting Auschwitz, I think it may be time to impose a limit. That way those who choose to visit can spend time to fully comprehend and appreciate the enormity of the atrocities which took place there. If someone needs to spend an hour in front of one display just to absorb the magnitude of it, then that should be ok.



In a semi-masochistic sort of way, I wanted to come out of Auschwitz feeling like I had been kicked in the stomach. If the whole purpose of the museum, as their sign states, is to promote understanding and non-repetition of the events of WW2, then I personally think the tour fails to deliver the kick up the arse people need to understand the absolute horrors which took place – purely because there isn’t time to! I came away from Auschwitz with a lot of confusion and questions, but also feeling quite emotionally empty. After considering it for a day and then writing this blog, I actually feel quite angry that I, and maybe a lot of other people, didn’t leave Auschwitz with a much heavier heart. To me it means that the information held within that place didn’t hit home well enough to make any material difference to a person’s mind set, which I think is a travesty. So there you have it. I accept that other people will have an entirely different viewpoint to mine, and I would still recommend visiting Auschwitz so that everyone can come away with their own take on the place.



Perhaps in the next few days the information will start hitting home more than it did at the Museum, and if it does then I will be glad.



All for now, Em x

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