#20 Tour of Krakow through day, night and a day at Auschwitz(HELL)

When we finally awoke after our big night out we headed to do a five hour bike tour around the city of Krakow. We were the only two on the tour so it was very friendly, personal, and extremely informative. We got to hear about the history of the city from hundreds of years ago to moving all the jews in the city to the Jewish Ghetto (which we went through and got to see) in the early 40's and even learned about the ways of communism and how it's changed slowly since the wall came down in 89'. We saw the river that runs through the city, saw the different neighborhoods, universities (Krakow is the largest university city in Poland), and learned about the traditional happenings in day to day life. We also visited Oscar Schindler's factory where they did a bit of the filming of the movie. (Schindler's list). There we got a full picture of Oscar from the beginning when he took the factory from a jewish family and then got rich by using slave jewish laborers; but he did change dramatically and put himself in harms way by helping over 1000 to survive.

Did you know that speed walking was an olympic event? I did not. A polish man is the defending 3 time gold winner of speed walking. During our tour there happened to be a speed walking race through the main city and yes, it did look as funny as you would think. I don't know how they tell the difference between that and a run but I think all these guys could walk faster than I could run. I don't know how you decide to do this seriously. Maybe when you're young you tell your friend you'll race him to the corner but no running and that's when it is discovered that it's time to take this fast walking to the next level. I couldn't get enough of watching it and watching the judge determine if they are walking by the rules.

We headed out for the night still a bit tired from the night before combined with our full day tour. We ended up at a live music bar which was quite entertaining. Not only did the band sing great (all english songs that they sang like the singer themselves although I don't know if they really knew english or just knew the words to the songs because when they took a break and I talked to them a little they didn't seem to understand me or more likely just didn't want to understand me) but there were a group of really drunk, strange looking english guys that took over the dance floor and put on a show for everyone there to see music; there was no chance of not watching these guys because they were all that could be seen between the people watching and the band.

This morning we headed out to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. This was the biggest concentration camp which killed around 1.5 million people. Just over 1 million of these peoples were Jews from around all of Europe and the rest were intellectuals, Political prisoners, Gypsies, Handicap, and other assorted groups. They were executed by guns, hangings, poisoned, along with starved and worked to death. They were tortured such as forcing 4 people to stand in a 4ft X 4ft square, bricked in for hours and sometimes for days. We saw the crematoriams that could burn up to 1,400 bodies a day, the sleeping quarters, the gas chambers and all the other parts of the camp that went on for multiple years.

Even after spending the day there, seeing and hearing all the stuff it is impossible to fathem the reality of what really took place. When they talk about a day that 1,000 were executed it seems insignificant compared to the 1.5 million, yet the 1,000 is the size of many high schools. On the bus ride back to Krakow we heard all american songs on the radio and mid way back the song 'wonderful world' by Louie Armstrong came on and I like to think that we do live in a wonderful world and we can all make it a wonderful world, but there are some fucked up people and stuff that goes on everyday.

We arrived back in Krakow and headed to a very authentic polish restaurant we heard through the grapevine. It was great, cheap and we left ready to nap for days. We spent less than $10 dollars each and ordered at least twice as much as we should have. Many people in the place were laughing when they saw how much food we had between the two of us. (One appetizer we ordered was something that said '3 types of perogies' and when we got it there were 3 types but there were about 8 of each type). That was one of 4 appetizers we got before our two main courses. We are now on our way to an overnight train for Prague. Main goal of the trip-not to lose our tickets.