Europe: Days 18 to 22

Hello everyone! Firstly, thank you to whoever is reading this. My page views jumped by 100 after last post, and that can't all be my parents. So I'm glad that people are reading.

I spent one last day in London on Sunday. I was a bit lazy in the morning, but eventually made it out to checkout old spitafields market. It's local designer day on Sunday, so I spent some time wandering the stalls, but didn't buy anything as nothing really caught my eye. I then met up with one of my friends from elementary/high school who lives in London who I haven't seen in maybe 10 years. What started as "should we grab a drink or lunch or something?" turned into a pretty decent Sunday session. We found a really good pub in Shoreditch with a beer garden in the back and spent hours catching up and gossiping. We had 10 years of stuff to chat about, so it was a lot of fun.

I then walked from Shoreditch to London bridge for dinner at one of Gordon Ramsey's restaurants (which was just OK). The fresh air and walk did me good - sobered me up a bit. Dinner was also with old friends; my former uni friend and roommate Angela and her husband Rob who moved to London nearly two years ago. Once again, it was really fun catching up after a few years.

I had an early morning flight from London Stansted to Krakow on Monday morning. I've never flown out of Stansted before, but went with it because a) it was a direct flight b) it got me in to Krakow at noon c) it was $50 and d) none of the airports (other than city) are extremely convenient from Greenwich, so it's all the same. It wasn't too bad actually getting there, as the Stansted express goes direct from Liverpool street station (although it is worth noting it cost more to get to the airport than my flight did). At Stansted though was a different story. I don't know if it's because it was a Monday morning or what, but it was absolute chaos. The way the airport is set up is terrible. There is an extremely small main terminal building with about 3 shops and 50 seats. The gates are all off in 4 different directions, all at least a 10 minute walk. But they don't announce what gate you're flight is leaving from until 40 minutes before departure. So 3,000 people are just loitering around this tiny area waiting for their gates to be displayed (I sat on the floor to eat breakfast for lack of anywhere else to go). Then of course, 6 gate numbers are announced at once, and 1,000 people are making a mad dash in the same direction. I don't think I even experienced as much chaos in the train stations in China! People were pushing, running, yelling, etc. It wasn't great, especially at 7am. Then of course I had a screaming baby next to me on the flight - but thankfully I was so tired I managed to sleep through most of it (except the part where she hit me in the face with her pink converse - for which her parents laughed and didn't apologize).

London is a great city, and is so much fun, but it is quite exhausting. It's not an easy place to travel (or live I think). It's just constant people, everywhere. Cramming onto the tube, hitting you with their umbrellas, etc. And the weather also isn't great. I can appreciate why Jess prefers to live in Greenwich, which is just a bit out of the city centre. It's only 30 minutes door to city centre, and there are still tonnes of pubs and restaurants nearby, but it's much quieter and there is green space and room to breathe. With that said, I would love to live there someday.

In contrast, Krakow is lovely and calm. I'm absolutely loving it here. It's such an easy city to navigate, it's beautiful, it's clean, it has tonnes of history, and of course beer everywhere. Plus, the perogies are pretty alright. On the day I arrived, I just spent a few hours walking around and getting my bearings. I went up two old towers for the view (and to help work off the excellent perogies I had for lunch). I also went over to the castle and looked around, and got their just in time to see a big dragon statue blow real fire. The back story with the dragon is that it's a famous polish story - that there used to be this dragon outside of the castle who demanded to eat one virgin per week. However, Krakow then ran out of virgins (haha), except for the princess. The king of course was having none of this, and made a contest to encourage the citizens to come up with a way to defeat the dragon. Eventually someone came up with the idea of building (what I gather) is an animal shaped bomb. So the dragon ate it, thinking it was food and it exploded in his belly. He tried to drink water to cool his insides, but then he exploded and is now no more.

On Tuesday I went to Auschwitz, which took most of the day. While it was an excellent museum, and very interesting, it was pretty horrific as well. Auschwitz I, which is the original camp is comprised mainly of two story brick buildings and was where the museum and most of the displays are. Auschwitz II/Birkenau was the expansion camp, built to accommodate more and more people (at one point in 1944, Auschwitz II held 100,000 people). It was the bigger of the two camps by far, but it is less in tack than Auschwitz I. When the Germans realised they were going to lose the war, they burnt a lot of the camp down in an attempt to hide their crimes. The gas chambers and crematoriums were all burnt down however the detailed blue prints were subsequently found, so historicans know exactly how these missing buildings looked. Plus, because camp II was built more quickly, the buildings were wood and so many no longer stand.

The museum at camp I contains a section where all the belongings collected from the prisoners are now accumulated and on display. When the camp was open, they were stored in warehouses refered to as "Canada" and "Canada II" because the prisoners associated Canada with being a land of plenty (or abundance). Seeing the belongings was one of the things that got to me the most - they can tell you that 1.3m people were killed, but seeing a huge room full of millions of pairs of shoes helps put it in perspective. Each pair was a life. It was also pretty depressing seeing some of the stuff people had brought along in their suitcases - shoe polish, shaving brushes, etc. It shows that people really thought they were being taken somewhere decent, where they would need to have polished shoes.

We were taken into the gas chamber and crematorium in auschwitz I (the only remaining one) but I didn't stay for long; it was just too awful to think about. Auschwitz II, by contrast, was actually quite plesent on the day I visited. It's now covered in grass, and the sun was out and it's a huge space (much of which is now empty). If you didn't know any better, it wouldn't seem like that awful a place.

I did a tour with the hostel I'm staying with, but they pick up people from other hotels as well. They picked up a few older couples at one hotel which was a bit annoying. One of the women couldn't walk very well, so she held everyone up all day. You used to be able to visit without a guide, but they have just changed that this month. You now need a guide for Auschwitz I, so I was stuck with some real winners. At least on a tour like this, people don't talk much and everyone kinda just walks around in silence listening to the guide. Although when they did speak, it was shocking. I think one of the older British couples (in their 60s) literally knew nothing about the war.... "So, why did Hitler want to kill Jewish people?".... "Was it only Jewish people he didn't like?"... "Who was Himmler?(!!!)" I'm not sure how my guide was supposed to answer that first one - there are people who have dedicated their lives to exploring that question. She gave a high level background and suggested (politely) that they look into some documentaries if they were interested in a more detailed background.

I went out Tuesday night for drinks with people I met at the hostel. Krakow is a fun place; even on Tuesday night it was bumpin. It was pretty cheap as well, so that's nice. Krakow in general is cheap. For comparison, a scoop of gelato in France cost on average €3, or $4.50. In krakow, it costs Zl 3, or $1. So it's about a quarter the price of Western Europe. This is similar with beer. In London on Sunday, Lauren and I were drinking £4.50 pints ($8), versus the Zl 8 it costs here ($2.80). And the 20 perogies I shared with two girls from my hostel at 2am were just $8 (so less than $3 each).

Wednesday I went to Schindlers factory in the morning, which is now a museum (as made famous in the movie Schindlers list). While it is now a museum, it's not really about Schindler; it's more about the occupation of Krakow by the Germans from 1939 to 1945. The museum was excellent - really well set up and interactive. The exhibits were made to look like rooms in the Jewish ghetto, rooms in the factory, street scenes in the ghetto, etc. Unfortunately, I had to rush through it a bit, as it was bigger than I was anticipating and I had a massage booked in the afternoon. But I got the gist. I went for dinner in the evening at a famous polish restaurant. It's known for its portion sizes. I was thinking of just getting the bratwurst and souerkraut, but since I wanted to try a few different regional thing, I went with the farmers platter: "a selection of meat from our menu, served with rice, potatoes, picked cabbage and beatroot. $9. Sounded good to me. However it turned out to be just about the biggest plate of food I've ever seen. I had a bit of everything and then chose the 2 or 3 things I liked best and went with that.

Today I went to the salt mine just outside of krakow. It's a salt seam which has been mined since 1300, originally all by hand until the 1900s when dynamite was invented. It's huge, and over the years the miners have carved sculptures into the salt, which still stand. It's a whole little town under there. When they started using horses, it was too hard to get them up and down, so they built stables underground and the horses lived down there. There is also a big chapel (which is still used for Sunday mass) and now there is a restaurant, function room (with bar), souvinear shops, etc. My guide was saying how one of the rooms could be hired out for corporate events.... Couldn't help but think it would be a cool place for a work event; especially for those of us who work in mining. Too bad it's a bit far from Australia. Interestingly, the word salary is derived from the Latin 'salarium', which means to be paid in salt. Back in the day, salt was an extremely valuable commodity, so the miners were paid in salt. Before modern refrigeration, salt was used in abundance to preserve food, so it was quite valuable.

So that's about it from Poland. I'm off to Prague tonight via a night train. So that should be interesting!

SH

 

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