So Friday morning we went to Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was an incredible experience. Not a fun day, but one that I’m glad I had. We were planning on going early with some English friends we made. We were going to take the bus from the main station, but when we all got there, someone offered to take us all together in his van for the day. Something sort of like what happened in Warsaw, but this was less sketchy. The driver was pretty cool. I don’t think he knew English very well because he was pretty stoic as we were laughing and joking like crazy on the way there. These guys were so much fun! It was a stark contrast to what we felt as we started our tour.
As I’m sitting down to write this, I’m sort of realizing that I have no words that can really describe what went on there. The Nazis committed atrocities against individuals amounting to a mass destruction of a group of people as a whole. It was thinking of individual people going through literally torture every single day of their life that made me really feel pain. I don’t understand how people did (or do) these things to other people. How can you justify forcing another human to wither away and die of hunger? That’s not even the worst punishment the prisoners faced, but everything else is too unbelievable to talk about here. Please go see it. Please ask me in person about my expereinces, but I don’t trust myself to do it any justice in a blog. The best I can do is leave you with the story that finally made me cry there and some pictures to show you just a little of what passed at Auschwitz.
The most touching story I heard at Auschwitz was of a Polish priest who saved a man by sacrificing his own life. A man
who had a wife and seven children was sentenced to die in the starvation chamber. The priest somehow offered to go instead. He outlived everyone he was in the chamber with, and a nazi came in and killed him after I think 12 days of starvation. The man whose place he took lived and eventually left Auschwitz with his family.
Pope John Paul (the first Polish pope- they LOVE the guy) heard this story, and on his visit to Auschwitz went to the cell where he was kept and killed. There is now a memorial there with a beautiful candle (i think it has a more special name than candle) in there. I think this story meant so much to me because it showed that there was still hope after all this suffering.
What a trip it has been! So I last left off in Iceland, but now we have officially made it to mainland Europe. As I write, we are in Budapest, Hungary, and we just arrived a couple hours ago. I’m going to share about Poland with you first though because it was absolutely amazing! We had the best time, and though Poland doesn’t seem like the ultimate vacation destination, it might just be.
We landed in Warsaw after a very rickety ride on Iceland Express. I’m not sure I would ride that airline again. It was nice to get a free day in Iceland out of it, but I don’t understand how a business stays operational at the rate they were going at. Anyway, so we land in Warsaw and make the first mistake Rick Steves warned us about in his travel guide: we were almost duped by a fake cabbie. He offered us a cab ride right in front of the taxi stand, and he had a badge that said “lisenced taxi,” so we thought it was fine. But then he took our bags and led us into the parking lot. At this point we were a little sketched out but we figured he maybe wasn’t allowed to bring his cab to the taxi stand, so we kept going. He told us it was going to be a 90zl (about $30) ride to the train station, but Rick Steves had told us it would be about 40zl. Hmm… Finally we reached his “taxi” which was just his standard car. No no. We turned around and went back to the taxi stand and it was only 40zl…. Just like Rick Steves promised. Lesson learned.
When we got to the train station, we bought our tickets to Krakow, but we had a few hours to kill, so we decided to seek out some food from a milk bar. So these “restaurants” are from the communist era, and they offer government-subsidized food, so it’s REALLY cheap. We found one called “Milk Bar Familie” or some kind of translation like that, and the menu was entirely in Polish. There were a few cognates we could make out like macaron is macaroni and zuppe was soup. We each ordered a soup, a marcaroni with something on it and a drink or bread. It was a total shot in the dark, but it was so fun and exciting. When the food came out, it was like the quality of what you get at a bad cafeteria lunch, but it was still edible. The tomato soup with macaroni was a little odd tasting, and the macaroni had some very strange cheese and cream on it. Also, it was topped with sugar, which was very very weird. We survived, but we couldn’t eat it all because it was a lot of food. we felt bad because it was obvious that this is the kind of place where you don’t just waste food. We felt really guilty leaving an almost full plate of pasta and half a bowl of soup behind.
Warsaw was pretty unimpressive all around. Maybe it was just because it was rainy and we had to carry our bags around, but I don’t think there was much I would have wanted to see there. Luckily, we were going to Krakow in a couple hours. The train was kind of weird. The electricity in our cabin was out and we couldn’t read our tickets, so we just kind of guessed. We got kicked out of one set of seats, but found some other ones. I actually ended up to a man who could speak English, so he was helpful.
Once we got to Krakow, the vacation began! Krakow is BEAUTIFUL!!! Here’s just one piece of proof:
We stayed in Nathan’s Hostel, which was a pretty happening place. There is a bar downstairs and when you sign in, you get a free shot. The shot of the town is apparently cherry vodka with 2 drops of tobasco sauce. I thought I would hate it because of my passionate loathing of tobasco, but actually it wasn’t bad. We went out to the old Jewish part of town called Kazimierez. There were a lot of nice bars, and it just had this great old-town feel to it. It was in Kazimierez that I had my first Zapikanki- an affair that would last only 2 days but that I will remember for a lifetime. Zapikanki is sort of like pizza. It’s half a baguette with a sort of mushroom base as a sauce. Then cheese is melted on top, and you can have other things like scallions, meat, onion, and then you top it off with ketchup or some other sauce. It will become a staple in my diet.
The next day we slept in a bit later than we wanted, but we still managed to have a productive day. We walked all around the city. We started with the most incredible fruit crepes for breakfast. The woman who made them was a pro- perfectly crafting each unique crepe into deliciousness.
The main market square was awesome. There were hundreds of stalls with crafts of all kinds. There was Polish food and candy, handmade crafts of glass, wood, metal (someone was blacksmithing right there!), cloth, anything you could imagine. There was also some kind of cultural festival going on and I think the video below is of some traditional Polish dancing and music. They talked about everything you could do in the mountains and listed mushroom picking as favorite pastime… haha. Enjoy the video below:
After that we headed to the train station to buy our overnight tickets to Budapest. After that we were feeling a bit hungry, so we stopped at this outdoor cafe on a street that runs along the old city wall. I had some polish dumplings (again, hungry at the thought of it) and the most elaborate iced latte I’ve ever seen. It had a long biscit, fruit, whipped cream and chocolate shavings on it.
After that great lunch, we walked down to where the students from the art school sell their work. It was beautiful. I mean this stuff is professional artist level quality and the price for them was so inexpensive for what it was. Still too expensive for a college student, but I really wish I could have bought some art. We walked around this picturesque city some more and eventually wound up back at the hostel. We rested for a bit then got some Zapikanki for dinner. Not at good as the night before’s Zapikanki, but still quite delicious. We went out for a bit of a drink but we got to bed pretty early because in the morning we were planning to go to Auschwitz. As this in itself will be quite the post, I will end this one for now and continue on in the next.
Welcome back all. The next chapter of my journey brings me
to Europe. Over the next two weeks I’ll be making my way through Eastern Europe
with two of my friends from Engineers Without Borders, Christine and Kelsey.
Today we flew into Iceland!
Just a warning to anyone trying to fly Iceland Express… it’s
been a hassle. I mean we got a free day in Iceland out of it, but as for
running an airline effectively, I don’t think these guys have it together. So
originally we were supposed to leave Boston tonight, have a 1 hour layover in
Iceland, then fly to Warsaw, Poland. Well our flight to Iceland got cancelled
(but not the one to Poland), so we had to leave a day early. I mean don’t get
me wrong, Iceland has been awesome, but what kind of airline does that?
So the 4 and a half hour flight was loud, rocky, and
uncomfortable. We didn’t get much sleep. Then when we landed we could not
figure out where to go to get to the hotel that Iceland Express booked for us.
No one was working at the check-in desks, and we were so confused. Finally, we
found a man standing with a sign for the hotel, and he took us there.
Unfortunately, when we arrived at Hotel Keilir, we realized we forgot to print
out the airline voucher. The woman at the front desk would not let us in
without the voucher, but she would not let us use her computer either. She gave
me the wrong wifi password and wouldn’t listen to us when we tried to explain.
Finally, a man offered to let us use his laptop and we were able to email her
the voucher, but it was such a fiasco. Honestly, though she was pushy, I couldn’t
blame her. Obviously Iceland Express has given her a hard time about vouchers
and they should have booked the rooms expressly, not just given us a voucher.
After we got settled, we grabbed a little breakfast at the café
next door. We had these delicious sugar-covered pastry puff rolls. Amazing.
After that we went to the BLUE LAGOON!! This place was touristy, but fantastic.
So there’s this natural hot spring, and they built a power plant over it to use
this natural source of energy. After they use the water, they let it run back
out into a lagoon. This is where is gets interesting. Apparently, it used to
just be open so anyone could go swimming, but they have since learned that this
is obviously a huge tourist attraction, so they built a spa over the whole
thing. It costs about $50 to go in, but I think it was worth it.
You walk into the place and the water is whitish-blue,
almost like baby blue. It contrasts beautifully with the green mossy hills.
This water is packed full of minerals that are amazing for your skin. The spa
has these buckets of silica mud mask around the lagoon, and you can slather it
all over you. It was a wonderful face mask. We wandered around the little
lagoon for about 2 hours. There were some spots that were extremely hot and
some that were cooler. They have steam rooms, saunas, and waterfalls. It was really
nice. My skin feels so extremely soft now (though my hair did not like it so
much).
After we got back from there, we took a nap. I don’t know
how long we were asleep, but probably at least an hour. We have just been so
exhausted all day. Once we woke up, we went out in search of Icelandic food.
The only affordable thing we found was this want to be 50’s diner that served
these awesome hoagies. I got basically a ham BLT with cucumbers. It was
delicious. Probably not the most authentic Icelandic food, but it filled me up.
We went to a little dessert café after and got delicious swiss mocha drinks. I
also got a chocolate dream muffin that I can’t wait to eat for breakfast
tomorrow. Since we are leaving the hotel at 5:30am, I’m thinking the bakery won’t
be open for another sugary-delicious bun.
Alexandra Unger's Travels 