Jewish Graves and Salty Caves

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J and I said goodbye to the Ukrainian gang and caught our 17-hour train to Krakow. We were over the moon when we discovered that we had our own 3-birth cabin that even had a table that turned into a sink. It was like the true lap of luxury to us after some of our previous over night trips. We got settled in for the mammoth trip, we had brought our own little picnic of traditional Ukrainian fare. Cucumbers, tomatoes, sausage, bread and smokey stringy cheese, what else could you possibly need. It was a rather rocky sleep and we weren’t sure what time we would arrive at the border control so as soon as I heard voices up and about the next morning we got up. I was rather slovenly and stayed in my pyjamas but we didn’t need to get off the train so I thought what the heck. We passed through security after a little glitch, they didn’t believe I was the girl in the picture in my passport and even took extra ID. Not long after we had stopped several times for the border we stopped again, this time the whole train was jacked up about 6ft in the air. We worked out that they were changing the wheels of the train so that we could carry on to Poland as the tracks are a different gauge in Ukraine to the rest of Europe.

We finally arrived in Krakow late afternoon, our first impressions of the city was that it was more westernised than we thought. It was quite strange also that the only voices we seemed to have heard at the train station were those of Americans, especially when we had hardly heard anyone speaking anything other than Ukrainian for the past few weeks. After much wandering around and looking very blankly at the tram timetables and not being able to find the ones that the hostel said to catch, J went to the nearest tourist info centre who put us in the right direction. It actually turned out that the tram numbers given by the hostel were totally wrong. The hostel was really close to town and we had a really nice room with an ensuite it was just a shame that again it was another hostel who described their kitchens as fully equipped but it didn’t have a cooker just a microwave. It was quite late by the time we got settled in so we went for a stupidly huge pizza and watched the footie in bed.

Our first day in Krakow we decided to just chill out and see the sights by wandering around the city. We had our free breakfast and set off to the castle, Krakow is a really pretty and clean old city and we were quite impressed straight away. The castle however wasn’t that amazing and after the number of walled fortresses and castles we had already seen on the trip we weren’t that bothered. We had a look around the grounds of the castle and then walked to the waterfront to the tacky souvenir stalls but again we were all souvenired out and couldn’t bare it. We headed from there into the heart of the old town, which has been kept really well and was worth checking out. In the centre of the old town is a beautiful big square with an old church and clock tower and is surrounded by cafes. It was a really hot day so we decided to relax and have a drink and do a spot of people watching at one of the cafes. I was glad to discover that the Polish like the Ukrainians also offer a girly beer mix, the apple beer was pretty good. During our day wandering we also booked to go on the Auschwitz and Salt Mine tours for the following couple of days. That evening it was the football match between England and Germany, we found a bar to watch it in unfortunately we were the only people supporting England apart from about two other people and the rest of the bar was full of Germans. Not so good when we lost miserably and then to be consoled by three old German ladies who each patted me on the leg and said sorry as they left the bar!!

The following day we got up early to go on the tour to Auschwitz, the mini bus picked us up from outside our hostel, unfortunately we were the first to be collected and spent the next hour or so zooming around the tiny streets at stupid speeds picking the rest of the group up from their hotels and hostels. By the time we actually got going J was feeling rather worse for ware and was cursing the trip and the driver. We arrived at Auschwitz and we had a tour of the first part of the concentration camp. Our guide gave us a brief history and told us about the atrocities which occurred during the war. J and I were shocked to discover all of the things that the Germans actually did and a true eye opener was the huge display cases full of things that had been collected from the victims such as glasses, shoes, false legs and even the hair that they had shaved off the people they killed. These display cases only held the belongings of 2000 people which was a small drop in the ocean with the number of people that were actually killed. We walked through many of the buildings and even went in one of the gas chambers, it was really eerie and awful to think about how the Germans even went to the trouble of tricking the prisoners into thinking they were going for a shower and then gassing and killing them. They even went to the extreme of fitting fake showerheads to do this. The Germans had this huge plan to create a perfect race devoid of all other ethnicities and even to the point of killing their own countrymen and woman if they had disabilities. This was even down to carrying out sterilisation and fertility experiments on the prisoners to decrease the reproduction of other races and create more of the perfect German race.
Our tour continued to the Birkenau camp about 5 minutes from Auschwitz, this was built as the main extermination site of the prisoners. It had the biggest gas chambers but the Germans destroyed these before the red army came to liberate, they did this to try and conceal evidence of what had been going on.
After this trip J and I felt that schools should really teach more about these events, instead of just touching on the subject as we felt very naive and unaware considering it really didn’t happen all that long ago.
The tour finished late afternoon so we spent the rest of the day in the old town. We even got to see a crazy protest or something on those lines happen, where an old plane flew over square about 10 times, each time letting hundreds of hand written notices drop from the sky. We didn’t know what they said as it was in Polish but there were thousands littering the ground.

Our third day in Krakow, we had another tour booked this time at the Salt Mine. We again got picked up from our hostel but luckily for us we were second to last so missed out on the stomach churning tour of the city. We joined another group and set off down the mine. We first had to walk down about 600 steps to the first section of the mine. Our guide took us through many tunnels and chambers explaining how the salt was formed and how they mined for it. The salt sometimes forms into the shape of big cauliflowers on the ceiling of the tunnels, which looked cool. Some people felt the need to have a lick of the walls of the mine just to check what it tasted like!! We could have saved them the hassle and told them what it tasted like!
Throughout the mine there are these crazy statues, which have been carved out of the salt. The salt is as hard as marble and the miners have created amazing sculptures such as depictions of miners, historical figures and even the seven dwarfs. The most amazing part of the tour was when we came to the under ground chapel all carved out of the salt, even the chandeliers are made of salt. The chapel has intricate carvings of the last supper and the wise men on the walls and huge statues of Mary, Jesus and the Pope all craved out of the salt. The tour did drag on a bit but was well worth it to see the chapel and take the very rickety crammed lift back up to the surface.

Our last day in Krakow, we enjoyed the hot weather and sat by the river, read our books and had a picnic. We then went and had a couple of beers in the square. We packed our bags and got ready to make the trip back to England. We had the best trip ever but we were ready to go home and have some quiet time at my mums and not have to keep packing and moving on every few days.

We got up very early for our flight in the morning, we wanted to have time to check the weight of our baggage at the airport as we were flying Ryanair who give you the smallest weight limit and the biggest charges if you go over. We had bought so many souvenirs and tried to distribute the weight between our backpacks and some cheapo plastic chav bags. We finally managed to get the weight right after throwing away all of our toiletries and a towel and some other bits and bobs. Our flight was an hour late but we got back to England safe and sound and ready for a good old cup of English tea.

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Comments

[Larn]

OMG..i love this photo...

[Larn]

you look a bit scared here ....i hope you had a good crack at that pizza !!