David and I both loved Krakow. We took separate
transportation from Prague to Krakow on Thursday. The plan was like this: David
would take a bus from the train/bus station that left ridiculously early and he
would get to Krakow around noon. I would take the group bus organized by my
program leaving at 9 from the train station.
I went to the gym early in the morning before heading to the
train station and just as I was beginning to work out, I got a text from David
telling me that he had either missed his bus or it had never come. I tried to
console him over text, but I could tell he was severely questioning his
decision to come with me to Krakow. Luckily, he did an awesome job of staying
calm and problem solving. He discovered that he was apparently supposed to take
a train to a midway point and then switch over to a bus, which was very unclear
from the webpage where we bought the ticket. He ended up having to buy a new ticket,
which was frustrating but not the end of the world. His new train left about an
hour after my bus, so we were able to meet up at the train station. It was nice to
get to wait with him, since I knew almost no one on the trip.
(My program split the students into two travel groups, and I
was technically supposed to be in the second group. But since my family is in
town this week, I asked to be allowed to go with the first group. It worked out
well in that respect, but it meant that I hadn’t really met anyone on the bus
with me.)
I boarded the group bus, and immediately I knew that it was
going to be a long ride. The girls around me (hopefully none of them are
reading this) seemed to have a deeply held passion for complaining. Everything
was annoying, unfair, uncomfortable, and/or irritating. I kept fighting the
urge to tell them that they weren’t actually being forced to go on this
trip. They did have a choice in the matter, and some people actually might be
excited to have the opportunity. Eight hours later, we arrived at our hotel and
I had managed not to say anything. I waited in my hotel room for David to get
there. Originally, I had been quite sure that I would meet him at his hostel,
but when I went to the reception desk to ask for directions, they informed me
that it was quite a ways from my hotel, and that it was definitely outside the
city center. When I seemed unfazed by this information, they looked at my like
was I completely insane and really suggested that I take a taxi. So we decided
that David would come to me instead.
When David got to my hotel around 9:15, I was extremely
hungry and in quite a foul mood. Luckily, he was in a fabulous mood. His
transportation had been easy! He loved the train he got to take! He loved
Krakow! People there smiled at him! He liked his hostel! The streets in Krakow
were bigger than in Prague! The public transportation was cheap and easy! He
was basically bouncing off the walls. It was difficult to be in a bad mood
around him.
We ended up eating at pretty much the first restaurant we
saw, which happened to be a decently nice one in a fancy hotel. David loved the
food and I thought it wasn’t too great (this was quite possibly a reflection of
our mental states). I ordered borscht, traditional pork chop, potatoes, and cabbage. The
borscht had dumplings in it, which were delicious but definitely gluten-y. The
cabbage was pickled, which I don’t like. The potatoes were topped with dill,
which I don’t like. Apparently “traditional pork chop” means “breaded and deep
fried” pork chop. So that was fun. I did order my first drink though, and that
was nice. I got a margarita and it was quite tasty, but towards the end of the
meal, I started feeling really light-headed. So, in case anyone had any doubts,
I’m definitely a lightweight.
The next morning, David came to my hotel to join in on my
program’s walking tour. He got there a little early and was also able to steal
breakfast from the hotel, which worked out excellently. The walking tour was
fun. We got to see fortress walls built in the 11th century and a
few of the many cathedrals in Krakow (apparently Krakow is 96% Roman Catholic).
We also walked up to Wawel Hill (which isn’t actually that big of a hill, for
which my knee was very grateful), where the royal cathedral is located. It’s right
next to the “largest intact Renaissance courtyard in Europe” (I think the
lengths that cities go to in order to claim fame are hilarious). Near the top
of the hill, there is a rather famous statue of a dragon. While we stood there
looking at it, fire came out of its mouth, which was super cool. There was a
little gift shop at the top, where I bought a kids book in Polish about that
dragon, which I’ll add to my collection of foreign language kids books.
After the tour, my knee was pretty sore so David and I
bought lunch supplies at a little market by my hotel, and ate in my room. Once
we were full, we walked the three blocks to the train station, where we bought our train tickets for our journey back to Prague. (I could have rode the bus back with my program but I wanted to be in town for my family's first full day in Prague.) We also scoped out the bus
station to see where David would buy his ticket to Auschwitz the next morning.
Afterwards, we decided skip the Ethnography Museum that we had been thinking
about going to and wander around the city instead. We occasionally stopped in
the little shops that lined the streets, where I bought a touristy keychain. We
also stopped in a few of the chocolate shops that seemed to be everywhere, hunting for the perfect place to go after dinner. It took us three tries
but we found an excellent one.
While looking around in one of the shops, we heard a
commotion in the street. We peeked outside and realized that about one hundred
people were marching with signs and chanting in Polish. They were demonstrating
to express their disapproval of Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. We stood
on the steps and watched them walk by. David decided we’d just “seen history.”
For dinner, we went to a restaurant whose name in Polish
means “Raspberry Grandmother.” The reviews online were good and the name was
just too quirky to pass up. By the time we got there, we were both quite cold,
having left most of our cold weather clothes in Prague, since it was supposed
to be warm this weekend. Once inside, we were directed down a steep staircase,
at the bottom of which a pianist was playing. The decoration was reminiscent of
a quintessential grandmother’s house: mismatched, over-crowded, and dominated
by lace and floral patterns. The food was delicious, though the highlight of
the meal was definitely the soups that we ordered as appetizers. David had a
mushroom soup in a bread bowl, which he thought was just about the coolest
thing ever, while I had white borscht with potatoes and sausage. After dinner,
we walked to the chocolate shop that we had scouted out earlier. The truffles
were unbelievable delicious, and they had a fruit smoothie thing that David
liked (he’s not a big chocolate person, which I still don’t understand in the
slightest). We stayed there for a few hours because the atmosphere and, more
importantly, the chocolate were fantastic. On our walk home, I realized that my
family was currently flying to Prague, and David and I talked about how excited we were
to see them.
Saturday morning, David came to my hotel to mooch breakfast
before heading to the train/bus station. Once he left, I started hanging out
with two girls in my program whom I really grew to like. I had a great talk
about religion and such with one of them on the bus ride to Auschwitz, which
was about an hour and half long. Our bus took us to Auschwitz I first. This is
a smaller, more preserved camp where the museum is housed. Once we arrived, we
recognized how odd it was to visit such a sorrowful place on such a beautiful day.
At first, it felt uncomfortable to hear about the horrors that took place there
while the sun shone gloriously on my face. Later in the tour, though, when
stepping out of the buildings where prisoners were kept and tortured, which are
now cramped with tourists and informational plaques, I was so grateful for the
light and warmth. As we stood at the entrance gate waiting for our tour guide
a few groups around us took turns standing by the gate and taking smiley souvenir
photos. I doubt they were trying to be disrespectful, but I couldn’t believe it would occur to them to do that. It made me wonder if they were really emotionally
prepared to learn about what happened there.
For me, a few aspects of the visit were particularly
striking. In one building, there was a series of rooms filled with piles of Jews’
belongings that were stolen, sorted, and sent to Germany. The piles of
eyeglasses and shoes and carefully labeled luggage were depressing, and the
pile of human hair was even more hauntingly so. One building, Block 11, has
been almost entirely preserved in its original condition. This building was the
prison within Auschwitz I, where difficult prisoners were tortured and killed.
To the left of the building is a courtyard where shootings and public torture
were held. In the basement, there was a starvation room and a suffocation room,
which are both just what they sound like. There was also a room in which prisoners
were forced to crawl into brick cages that were one square meter large, where
they would stand all night between days of hard labor. David and I were
visiting the camp separately (me with my group and him by himself), and while
in the basement, we just happened to pass each other. I was so grateful for the
familiar face in such a heavy place.
After Auschwitz I, we rode on the bus to Auschwitz
II/Birkenau. This camp was much larger, but the Nazis destroyed some of it just
before liberation. While there we saw the train tracks that brought victims
into Birkenau and the barracks where they were forced to live. The sheer
magnitude of the camp was frightening, and I only saw a small fraction of what
was there. We had the same tour guide at both camps, and she did a good job of
emphasizing the enormity and severity of what happened. I can’t imagine doing
her job, walking around concentration camps and trying to make people grasp the
horror of the Holocaust every day, but I am so glad that she does.
Once we had returned to Krakow, David and I took a short,
unplanned visit to St. Mary’s Cathedral, the common folks’ church, in the main
square. This was the first cathedral we’ve been to that David embraced. We sat
in the pews and I prayed and we lit candles. Being in this place, so full of
peace, after feeling the Auschwitz air heavy with fear, was such a comfort.
Afterwards, we went to dinner at a touristy place because we
didn’t have time to hunt for a different restaurant. We stopped by the chocolate
shop again after dinner, and then headed to the train station to catch our
overnight train to Prague, where my family was sleeping.
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