Poland

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First stop was Warsaw. Only stayed here for a couple of nights which was all that was really needed for this city. Loved the old town and castle and then the contrast heading down Royal Way to all the modern upmarket clothing shops which was shadowed by the old communist building of the Palace of Culture and Science. Learnt a fair bit about what happened to Poland during the war and then during the Warsaw Rising where many people were killed or shipped off to Sibera for trying to free to country from the Russia ruling.
Headed down by train to Krakow then by mini bus further south to the mountainous town of Zakopane, right on the border of Slovakia. This place was beautiful and set in the mountains with a real mountainous resort feel to the place. Weather had closed in which was a shame. Spent the first afternoon wandering around the one main shopping street and trying the local street food of goats cheese which tasted like vomit and trying to find a place that was showing the world cup rugby to no luck. The next day I decided to head up into the mountains for a walk and climbed up to a beautiful lake, Morskie Oko, along with hundreds of other people. The evening was spent in the hostel with a lovely British family with us trying to watch the rugby on the internet. I spent the next morning hiking around the town with this family before catching the bus back to Krakow with them. I made the mistake of being cheap and staying in a 16 bedded dorm which was over run with gap year kids who were up all hours of the night. Spent the first night out with this family, going to a fancy traditional resturant underground eating the local food of pierogis (kinda like raviolli). The next day was spent exploring the city from the castle to the old town and around the markets. Managed to find the old jewish ghetto area of Podgorze from the war days, the old Jewish cemetry plus the remains of the old Plaszow concentration camp and Schindlers factory off the movie 'Schindlers list'. Really loved this city. The next day I caught a mini bus out to Auschwitz and Birkenau, two of the worst concentration camps from the war with over 1.5 million people murdered here. Auschwitz was still well preserved and a tour took us around explaining the life of the camp which housed more political 'criminals' than Jews. Saw some of the prison cells were people were murdered in and the death wall where about a thousand people were executed. One terrible building housed a lot of the personal items taken from the murdered Jews etc from hundreds of suitcases, artifical limbs, glasses, shaving gear, shoes, pots and worst of all 2 tons of human hair plus material made from some of it. Birkenau was a haunting place where the majority of people were murdered. The train would pull up and off load everyone and most people were shoved along to the gas chambers where 2000 people were killed in one go. These 5 chambers were often over flowing with people and people were even burnt out in the open to dispose of all the bodies. A few thousand prisoners would remain on site and lived in terrible conditions and some were subjected to awful experiments etc. Most of the camp was destroyed by the retreating Nazis before Allied liberation. Well worth seeing.
Flight out to London the next day.

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