Tuesday September 3, Krakow

On Tuesday we woke up pretty early and raided the fridge where the continental breakfast was served. We took the the tram to the castle and cathedral - the old quarter of town. It's centrally located and was beautiful with the morning sun. Emil told me the very suspicious circumstances of the plane crash that killed the Polish president, high ranking government and military officials, and high ranking church officials in 2010 I believe. It's a tragic story that some believe was arranged by the Russians to make Poland more open to foreign interests. Unfortunately, we were too early to tour the cathedral or castle. I did manage to take some great pictures, though.

Here are two pictures of the castle and the grounds.





And here is the cathedral.





After this, we took a super bumpy, hot bus ride to Auschwitz. I didn't even know it was in Poland. I think the German name threw me off. I learned that during WWII, Poland was under control by Germany and Russia and did not exist as its own country for a time. During this time, Germany renamed many of the Polish cities. What can I say about this tour? It is an eerie place. It's haunting to walk the places that so many murdered and their murderers walked. It feels like surely it couldn't have happened here. The trees and surrounding country are beautiful, the sky is big and blue with puffy clouds. Yet only 70 years ago, over a million people were systematically murdered here. For me, the big number is hard to comprehend until I saw the displays. There was a room perhaps 60 feet long simply filled with shoes. Shoes. And I'm looking at this thinking "no way... no way". It really hit home for me then. It was one of the very few times in my adult life when I asked myself "How can God have let this happen?" It's certainly easy to not believe in Him here.

The tour was split up into two parts. The first part was Auschwitz I, originally a Polish military barracks. Here were most of the exhibits with shoes, personal items, human hair collected from women, empty canisters of zyklon B poison gas. Towards the end, we actual entered a gas chamber and saw hundreds of scratches on the walls. The second part of the tour was the gigantic Auschwitz II, build entirely by prisoners. We had to take a bus there and for whatever reason, I chose to take a few pictures here. Perhaps it was the shear size of the death camp that was now so peaceful and eerie.





Here is the rubble of a gas chamber that the Nazis destroyed to attempt to cover their crimes when they knew their terror was over.



It's hard to explain how I felt. After a while, it's just too much, and more horrors just go in one ear and out the other. It is a horrible place, but I recommend visiting it to get a better understanding of how and why it happened.

The evening felt more like real life. We went about Krakow a bit more and even though it was a Tuesday night, there were a good number of people out in the main square. There is a big merchant building in the middle of the square with a bunch of booths that sell cheesy goods. Around this is the big open square with people peddling strip club coupons to Emil (he must have had the look, not me) and little toy light up falling helicopters. I don't know what else to call them because they are just little toys that are shot maybe 40 feet in the air with big rubber bands. They gently twirl back down, dancing in the air with their own little colored lights. There was also a killer dance crew performing in front of a restaurant with a nice boombox. It was too bad they weren't battling anyone, but they were doing a lot of great break dance moves, so of course I gave them some zloty (Polish money). Dinner was again huge and delicious. I ate beet soup with a meat pastry. The beet soup was essentially just purple translucent water, but it was well seasoned and delicious. I like Polish food!