Poland Trip: Day 5-Krakow and Auschwitz

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25th, 2014

This post is a hard one to write, mainly because of the place that we visited-Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp.  I wasn't sure what pictures I wanted to include in this and I really hardly took any compared to all the other places we visited.  

We woke up bright and early because our tour began at 8:00 AM and it was a bit of a drive out of Krakow to Auschwitz.  

Good Morning Krakow-View from our apartment.  

We all headed out except Derick, Julie and Rod.  We arrived a few minutes before it opened and just enjoyed the beautiful morning.  

Cousins!  

When it opened we met up with our AMAZING tour guide.  She was so knowledgeable about the camp and did a wonderful job of sharing this information in a way that really made the emotions run.  One thing I kept thinking about during the tour is how can you relive this day in and day out.  I don't think I ever did ask how long she had been working here.  She was younger-I would say younger than me.  There were times that she had to step away from the group and collect herself-especially when the talk of the killing of children came up.  For me, one time visiting this place in enough-I couldn't imagine coming to it everyday to work, although I imagine you would have to be passionate about educating the public about this horrific time in history to be a guide here.  

Let me share with you a little history of this camp (most if this info is off of their main website)  It was establish in 1940 by the Germans because they were arresting so many Poles upon invading and taking over Poland and they needed a place to house all them all.  They isolated the camp, built barbwired fences surrounding the camp and contact with the outside world was forbidden.  They took over 40 square miles surrounding the camp and the local population of Jews and Poles were evicted from their homes in 1940-1941.  About 1000 homes were demolished and many others were used to house German officers-some of them came here with their whole families.  

Throughout the years this camp moved from being a work/concentration camp to an extermination camp where 1.1 million Jews were exterminated.  There were two main areas of Auschwitz-Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.  Auschwitz I is the original camp and Auschwitz II was where the vast majority of the death took place.  The camp was liberated in January 1945 by the Soviet Army.  At this time, most of the German Army had escaped from the camp and before they left, they dismantled, burned, and blew up as much evidence of their crimes as they could.  To this day, there are some people who believe this never happened despite all the survivors testimonies, photographic evidence, and evidence left behind.  It is very evident during the tour that they want to prove to visitors that this indeed did happen.  

After visiting, I was left with a very different perspective of the Holocaust and WWII.  Here in the US we read about it in books but it is very difficult to make a real connection but to see it first hand really brings out real emotions vs hearing about a time in History.  My heart just broke for all those men, women, and children who walked these grounds and I still will never fully understand the terror and horrific experiences they had.  

So here are a few of the pictures from that day:

Grounds of Auschwitz I

The prisoners that lived in this part of the camp were workers and most rarely last longer than 30 days before they died of dehydration and exhaustion.  Also in this area was where medical experiments took place on women in hopes to find a fast and easy way for sterilization.  

This part of the Museum housed most of the displays.  It was very disturbing to see some of the personal items that were left behind in the camps warehouses-a place where they would store all the items that were brought in from the prisoners-since they were told to bring all they owned.  

Auschwitz II-Birkenau

Many of the barraks in this area were dismantled and burned down before the liberation but this was where there were four gas chambers and crematoriums and where the Jews would arrive for "Selection"

This train car is what many of the Jewish prisoner were transported to camp in.  They would spend days even weeks in here depending on far away they traveled from.  They were told they were going to be given a better life and many came in hope only to have their families torn apart and eventually put to death.  Upon arrival they would be split up by men and women/children and then they would determine if you were "fit to work" or selected for death.  All children under the age of 14 were immediately sent to the chambers as well as the elderly.  It just makes me sick.  

This is the remnants of one of the chambers.  It is so sad to see-there were still "showerheads" on the sides of the walls where newcomers believed they would be getting cleaned up and disinfected when in reality they dispersed gas and not water.  

Here at this site is where there is a Memorial. 

This plaque is duplicated in many languages throughout the memorial.  

**I do want to note that I did my best to gather this information from my memory of the tour and also from the official website of Auschwitz.  

After the tour we headed back to the city.  We stopped for lunch along the way and when we got back, Tami, Nicolle and I were on a mission to find a place to get our nails done.  We walked around for a few blocks, used our phones, and were unable to locate a place to that could accomodate us.  By this time it was also POURING outside! After having no luck-I met up with the rest of a group at a Pub and Tami and Nicolle headed back to the apartments to clean up, rest, or whatever.  

Lots of little beers.  

After every joined back up at the pub we set out to find a place to eat for our large group.  Dinner was delicious!  I think this is where I had some yummy pesto pasta and I think after dinner we found another patio to sit out on and chat.  Afterwards we headed back to the apartment and Magda, Tony, John and I worked on some wedding stuff before heading to bed.  

I also wanted to share what our apartment was like while staying in Krakow.  It was really clean and pretty modern although, I am not sure about the art ;).  

Our bedroom

Bathroom

Poland Trip-Day Four: Krakow

Tuesday June 24th, 2014

Our fourth day started with breakfast at Magda's parents house.  It was so delicious, more ham, more kielbasa, and these delicious eggs.  They were kind of like deviled eggs but it wasn't ha-they were so good!!  After breakfast we loaded back up into the cars are headed back into Krakow.  Rod and Julie had arrived the night before and Monte, Angie, Nicolle, Drew and Nicole were arriving around 1:00 and we were picking them up from the airport.  The plan was to pick them up and then head to check into our apartment in Krakow where we would be staying for the next two night.  Then we planned to go to Wawel Royal Castle.  

We arrived at the airport and we waited for the five of them to come walking through the doors from baggage claim but soon the airport got very empty and they were yet to emerge.  Then we found out they never made their flight.  Their original flight from Chicago was delayed and they missed the connection in Germany.  Three of them were for sure on the next flight out and the other two were on standby.  Either way, none of them would be arriving until after 5:00 PM so we headed back into the city, checked into our apartment and then made a quick dash to the castle because we had a 3:00 Tour set up with and English speaking guide.  

Magda did such a wonderful job of setting up tours.  With such a large group it made things so much easier to have everything planned ahead of time, especially with such a short amount of time in Krakow.  

We ended up being a little late to our tour but got the bulk of it, although rushed.  Honestly, I don't remember much about the castle (this is what happens when you try to recall information from six weeks ago!)  It was old (dates back to the 11th century) and houses very old artifacts including one collection of tapestries that is the largest collection.  One thing to note is that when Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany quite a bit of art and historical artifacts had to be hidden or sent away.  Many things were lost during this time.  

Its hard to tell from the pictures but John thought these dragon head downspouts were pretty neat.  

Legend says that in the cave picture below there was a dragon that lived beneath Wawel Hill.  This is the hill the castle sits on.  (pronouced "Vavel").  Apparently it was a terible dragon that would ravage the country side.  Long story short, a young man named Krak destroyed the dragon, married the princess, and became King.  The city of Krakow is named after him-at least that is what the story says.  

You could tour his cave if you want-we did not.  

After the castle tour, we walked our way to the restaraunt which was called "Pod Wawelem" which I think means something along the lines of being at the foot of Wawel Castle.   Here is thier website.  Pod Wawelem

We had reservations and arrived on time but the Chicago group had just arrived so we were waiting for them to make their way to the restaurant.  So we drank while we waited :). After everyone arrived we order our food and it was soo good!  

Had to get a picture of this. . . I guess people in Poland drink so much they need puke sinks in the bathroom. They only have this in the men's bathroom so I guess women know how to handle their alcohol ;)

I ordered the Kabob-and I can not believe how big it was!!! Seriously!  But it was SO delicious!!!! I could not stop eating it! 

My parents ordered the meat platter and it too was HUGE!!  

After dinner and drinks we walked to Krakow's Old Town Square which is the historical center of Krakow. It is actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site and dates back to 1257.    Although some of the buildings have gone under some renovations it was still so beautiful! 

All around the outside of the square there were bars/restaurants with outdoor seating complete with blankets in case you get chilly.  

I ordered a Mulled Wine and it was delicious!  After a drink or two, we made our way back to the apartment we were staying at a few blocks away.  

A Summer Weekend at Home

Every summer I try to jam pack as much stuff as I can into our weekends.  I try to plan camping trips, trips to MN to visit family, and cabin weekends with friends and I actually plan weekends at home meaning I make sure to leave at least one weekend a month during the summer where we do travel.  This is mainly due to the fact that John needs time to get some cattle stuff done and sometimes in longer time periods than after work during the week.  This summer though we have more weekends at home than normal which is okay.

A few weekends ago we had a weekend at home.    And it was wonderful!  Friday night I worked from home and John hung out with me on the couch.  We talked about what we wanted to do the next day and things like Adventureland, berry picking, and Big Creek State Park all go thrown out.  We referenced our bucket list to help narrow down what we should do with our wide open weekend.  We went to bed not deciding on anything.  Waking up the next morning I just knew we should go to Big Creek State Park and go biking and hit up the beach.  John had to work for a few hours early in the morning so we woke up and waited for him to get home and then loaded up the truck and took off.

We started off with a six mile bike ride to Polk City for lunch and as we exited off the Neil Smith Bike Trail we came up against a lot of vehicle traffic only to discover that it was Polk City's annual town festival!  

Elsie enjoyed checking out these crazy ducks and enjoyed getting her picture taking with Tinker Bell and Cinderella.  We enjoyed some pizza and beer at the pizza place in town (which was practically empty because everyone was out in the town square enjoying the festivities) and then hit the trail back to the State Park to spend the rest of the time at the beach.  The trail was so much different than the High Trestle Trail.  That one is pretty much flat where this trail was a lot of rolling hills but is was pretty much all through the woods and shaded.  Very pretty.  

After biking we headed back to the beach and let Elsie play for a while.  We lounged on the blanket and just relaxed! It was perfect.  The water was pretty yucky so we chose to not let Elsie swim but we would get some buckets of water for her (it was a good decision not to let her swim because the beach was closed just a few days later for E.Coli and Algae blooms).

However there were quite a few parents who didn't care how gross the water was because there were a lot of kids in the water.  The sand area was really nice though and there was a huge wooden playground.  

This girl could play in the sand all day!

On Sunday we had an equally enjoyable day.  John worked a bit in the morning again and I started the prep work for canning some pickles.  We purchased a 10# box of pickling cucumbers from our CSA to attempt canning for the first time.  

After John got home we headed down to the county fair to see the animals and to grab some lunch.  First stop:  Pony Rides.  She could have done this all day long! 

While waiting in line we ran into Kara, Orson, Little Orson, and Henry.  

She got to hold a bunny which she thought was pretty neat. 

And also got to enjoy a "snowball"- what Elsie's calls a snow cone. 

More Pony Rides

We biked home to get Elsie down for an afternoon nap and then John and I tackled the pickles.  Besides the fact that it can be stressful because you had to do things at certain times or when things got to be a certain temperature we enjoyed it and it was fun to see the jars all lines up.  We did 15 pints in all with three different recipes.  Some zesty dill slices, bread and butter and some dill spears as well.  I can't wait to try them all!

After naptime we got ready and headed to Nick and Hillary's farm for a BBQ and campfire.  Elsie had so much fun playing with Owen.  He drove his little battery operated Gator while she rode behind in the little trailer.  We didnt' get home until after 10:00 pm that night.  As we were getting ready for bed we talked about all the fun things we did over the weekend and I asked her what her favorite thing was.  Her response" Riding around on the tractor with Owen"  :)