Krakow, Poland

Highlights of my friday to monday vacation:

1. Perogies - lots
2. Sausage - just one, but it was good
3. Vodka - .....
4. Auschwitz - the primary Nazi death camp in WWII
5. Wieliczka Salt Mine - salty.

Check out my pictures after you read my blog.

This was the most relaxing vacation yet. I decided to sleep in instead of running around like a chicken with no head trying to see everything in the entire city, and some things outside of it. I saw what I considered to be the most important things, I ate a lot of reaaallllyy good food, did NOT deprive myself of sleep for once in the last month, and had a really really good time :)

I ate perogies every single day, at LEAST once a day. Those frozen ones I ate in Canada do not stand a chance compared to these homemade perogies. I had soo many kinds,
- potatoes and cheese
- potatoes and cottage cheese with tomato, basil and bacon
- red bean and mozerella with mexican sauce
- pork
- meat and cabbage (menu didn't say what kind of meat, i couldn't tell :P)
- CHOCOLATE! yes, chocolate perogies. Deee-lish!
This one place I went to, the perogies were deep fried and so was the plate. You could eat the plate! Everything was always soaked in butter or cream....oh gawd.

When researching things to do on the trip we came across several references to these two apparently infamous guys who after 9 p.m. pull their van up along the side of a certain street and cook sausages over a wood fire in a metal thing.... These guys were in Wiki Travel, so of course we had to search them out. It was a really good walk from our hostel, probably took us about half an hour to find them, but it was worth it! They gave us an enormous sausage and a bun...but the sausage didn't go in the bun...you were just supposed to eat them at the same time, it was different. After sausages we hit up an underground (literally) irish pub for some St. Paddy's Day celebrations. It was St. Paddy's Day the weekend before in London too....definitely got my yearly dose of that holiday.

On Sunday we all went to the Wieliczka Salt Mine nearby. That was really interesting actually... Did you know that people used to be paid in salt? That's where the word 'salary' comes from. We went down about 800 million stairs into the mine, and the air there is actually totally sterile. There are no bacteria, no viruses, no spiders....nothing! The air is really good for people with asthma and allergies, I guess in the summer kids who have it really bad go to this mine so they can breathe. There were chapels (one really big absolutely gorgeous one) carved completely out of salt in the mine, a lot of salt statues (including one of pope John Paul II - they really really love that guy in Poland), and several underground salt lakes which were really beautiful. Inside a cave there was a lake that was 40 percent salt so it was like a mirror. It would have made an ideal setting for a scene in Harry Potter. All kinds of events are held in one of the big chapel/halls. Weddings, opera's (the acoustics were amazing), grad parties.... They have a lot of trouble at these events when people who have been drinking are leaving. Because of the air pressure down there one can drink and drink and they don't feel drunk, and then the elevator takes them back to the surface so quickly, that a lot of people become drunk during that 40 second ride and pass out. They always have a bunch of ambulances waiting at the top. When we left we didn't have to take the stairs, thank goodness, but instead they packed us into a multi-level lift so tightly that you couldn't move anything, and then rushed us to the surface at the speed of sound.....it was scary.

Sunday night we went bar hopping with a guy we met at the hostel, sampling the infamous polish vodka. They have a looott of different kinds...I swear a different kind for every drink they make... You'd think mixing vodka with juice would be pretty standard, but no. Apparently different vodka's go better with different juices... Sooo we went to a couple places and one was again underground and looked like a cave, it was cool. Here a certain somebody with a very low tolerance for alcohol threw up in the corner and we got kicked out :P It was NOT me mom, I behaved don't worry!

Saturday Jarrett and I took a bus trip to a nearby town to visit Auschwitz. This, if you don't already know was the biggest and most important death camp during WWII. We spent 4 hours at the camp listening and seeing the remains of the setting for the greatest horror story in the world. It was very sobering and very very disturbing, but I'm glad that I went. The halocaust happened...it happened...I'm still trying to process this, I really can't actually believe or accept it...but it happened, and Auschwitz is a place I felt I should go.

One of the many things that blew my mind was the level that the nazi's went to decieve the people they murdered. People from all over the world were sent to Auschwitz to die. When jewish families were moved from ghettos they were told they were just moving, that they could bring suitcases. When they arrived by train through the gate of death (maybe you've seen this if you've seen Schindler's List) the families left their suitcases in a pile, and were told they would be delivered to where they'd be living a little later. Women and children were seperated from men, and all were told that it was only temperary, but in fact the women and children were almost always immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered. They went so far in their deceptions in order to keep the peace... The gas chambers were designed to look like showers, with fake shower heads. The victims were told that they were just taking a shower to disinfect them after their long journey, were told to remember where they left their clothes when they took them off....completely unaware until it was too late.

Everything was taken from the murdered and nothing was wasted. Human hair was used as a raw material to make textiles and cloth...Some of the uniforms worn by nazi officers was made of cloth from the hair. They extracted gold from teeth, saved all hair brushes and toothbrushes, shoes, all the clothes....clothes from everybody, from babies....everything. All the loot was stored in two store houses. These store houses were called Canada I and Canada II by the prisoners, because Canada was seen as a really good place at that time....it was seen as 'the land of plenty'. I thought that was interesting.

The man who was in charge of the entire camp lived right beside it. Literally right beside it, the death camp was in his backyard, and the gas chamber was right beside it too. He had a wife and children....his children grew up with a death camp in their back yard. Actually at one point he got promoted and had to move, but his wife liked living there so much she chose to stay there with the children. Blows my mind.

The things that were done to these people.....my mind tries to process it and I can't...I just can't believe that anybody...and not just one person but lots of people....could do the things that they did....

The trip was an eye opener. I knew horrible things happened, but I never really realized the full extent of it. And now, after 4 hours of listening to the details about what was done to people....I still don't realize it. It's too much for my mind to understand.... but at least I know more now.

I took some pictures, but not many. And none of the gas chambers or crematorium. After not very long it began to feel disrespectful to be taking photos. It was a very silent bus ride back to Krakow.

Even though visiting Auschwitz is a very saddening and disturbing experience, I would reccomend anyone who has the opportunity, and the stomach, to go there and experience it for yourself. It's good I think, for us to be as educated as possible, and for us to come face to face with the mistakes of the past, lest they be repeated. It's easy to think that nothing so autrocious could ever happen again....but couldn't it? There are still a lot of racist people out there. One of the things that makes me so, so angry is racism. I can't stand intolerance and hatred for other people's lifestyles, their culture's their religions...I can't understand hatred of an entire race or group of people because they have different beliefs and traditions or different sexual orientation... What's the big deal, really? I think we're doing better, as a world, but we still have a very long way to go.