Blogs from Poland, Europe

Before I arrived in Warsaw, there was one fact that everyone who knows Warsaw (guide books, people I met on the train, and the helpful lady in Tourist Information) was very keen to tell me. This is that Warsaw's Old Town isn't really old at all, but was rebuilt as an identical copy of the Old Town after the original was razed during WWII. I was looking forward to seeing if I could tell, but we could hardly see Warsaw for snow, which was thick everywhere and still coming down unrelentingly. Unable to strughle through it very far with our rucksacks, we instead took one of those red bus tours that every tourist place has. Even that was a struggle - the roads were so bad that the commentary kept getting ahead of the bus, so ... read more

First step the hardest one? Welcome all to my little shack of geographic discoveries!! No matter how far, how high or how deep you strive to go, the sole fact is, every journey starts with the decision to make! And quite often, this mental act proves the greatest obstacle to overcome! I have pondered a prospect of establishing a codified statement of those little and those a bit bigger journeys of mine for some time now… Whereas travelling beyond the geographic boundaries have always been integral to my psyche, then the writing was something I shied off. Not sure why. Perhaps because I do treat sojourn as a really personal experience? Either way, I decided to give it a go. I hope history will absolve me! ;-p Thus, keep your eyes peeled, for there will be ... read more

A single movement of a thumb. Either to the left or to the right. Decided the fate of more than a million people during WWII. I visited the Auschwitz concentration camps as part of a spring (Freezing cold, heavy winds, no spring at all.. ) seminar at AGH university, Krakow. We were taken to visit Auschwitz during one of the days, and it will remain etched in my memory forever. Jews, Soviets, Poles, Hispanics, Homosexuals; more than a million of them passed through the gates of Auschwitz Birkenau, the second of the Auschwitz and the one of the largest concentration camps operated during the WWII. The train stops in the middle of the camp and people are herded off towards the central ramp dividing the two rail lines. They stand in a queue, shivering in the ... read more

Auschwitz. Today was one of the hardest days of the trip. Coming into today, I had a feeling it was going to be a pretty tough day because this is the camp that I know the most about, but I was hoping that it would be touristy enough that it wouldn’t be too hard. I was wrong. Today started off early with a three hour bus ride to the camp where we watched The Pianist. It was a good movie. Even just pulling up to Auschwitz 1, I could tell that it was going to be a rough day. Auschwitz 1 has had many of the barracks turned into areas that show things found from the camp after its liberation and after the war. We had to wear headsets as we walked around in order to ... read more

Krakow is a lot prettier than I gave it credit. Although, I think I am a bit biased because we went to the older part of town which, like I have said, is always prettier. We saw many beautiful churches and went up to the Wawel Castle. It had a beautiful view of the city and was very interesting to look at because you could see the different architecture that was added throughout the different centuries. The church that was in the castle was one of the prettiest churches I have ever seen; it had amazing stain class windows that were from the 24th century. After the church we went into a museum that represented what one of the homes/ office areas of one of the king’s officials looked like. There were many beautiful tapestries hanging ... read more

Another travel day was experienced today. Four and a half hours on a bus went pretty well, minus getting car sick half way through (luckily we stopped for lunch and I got to be out of the bus for an hour). Arriving in Krakow, I can say that it is prettier than Warsaw but that doesn’t mean that it is all too pretty. We went exploring looking for food and I am pretty positive that the town was covered in straight ice. Settling for a café, I got cake and hung out with everyone while we figured out what to do that night. We came to the conclusion that we needed to cheer up and have some fun after three days of death camps so we got some drinks and played card games in one of ... read more

Today was day three of death camps. On the two hour bus ride there, we watched a movie on the uprising that took place there. It was a good movie but we were not able to finish it before we got there so we learned the fate of the characters while we were in the small museum (the movie was still good when we finished it even though we already knew the ending). Sobibor was another camp that was completely destroyed. The uprising took place on October 14, 1943. The prisoners had gotten sick of the way they were being treated and killed off so they started planning their escape. They had tried doing escapes in small numbers but they found that when this happened, people left at the camp were severely punished and large numbers ... read more

Visiting the Treblinka death camp was a very overpowering experience. It was a camp that was completely demolished by the Nazis before they were taken over so there is absolutely no sign that anything bad ever happened there. If there weren’t monuments there, a person would think that it was just a forest. Before we went to the memorials or ventured into where the camp was, we stopped outside of a building and listened to a tape telling us about the history of the camp and how over 800,000 people had died at the camp. It was built in 1941 and started out as a labor camp. It was made to look like a nice place when people arrived, including signs to shops and bathrooms further down, but, as they entered, they quickly realized it was ... read more