Krakow and Auschwitz

From Berlin, Jesse and I took a 9 hour train to Krakow, Poland, where we stayed for the night. Our hostel really sucked so we tried to spend as little time there as possible, which wasn't too hard as we were only there for a night and out all the next day to Auschwitz, which was only a 2-hour train away from Krakow. Auschwitz was emotionally draining for us; so many horrors went on in this place during the war, horrors that previously, nobody thought was humanly possible. We ended up only visiting the first camp of the four in the area-- we didn't visit the gas chambers in Auschwitz II -- as we were completely drained after only a few hours in the memorial. The bunkhouses where the Jews and other POW's were kept are preserved, and the interiors are filled with small exhibitions featuring different aspects of the life (and death) of the prisoners. One building had entire rooms filled with the suitcases and shoes of the victims of Auschwitz, and in another room, there was a separate room completely filled with hair that was cut from the heads of all the Jewish men and women and children before and after they were sent to the gas chambers. The hair was meant for factories as raw materials for making blankets and textiles for the Third Reich. They can prove that they were murdered because the hair fibres tested positive for the Zyklon-B poison that the Nazis used to gas them in the chambers. As I said, it's really harrowing stuff. Each bunkhouse has more and more evidence and stories that chill you to the bone, and every bunkhouse has photos of prisoners lining all of the halls that you have to walk down. The effect given is like a haunted house, where you think that because of so much death and murder, there must be ghosts watching you. Pretty Spooky. We returned on the same train back to Krakow, trying to forget our woes, but ended up just getting depressed. The city of Krakow was able to cheer us a bit as it is really a beautiful city and the main square in Old Town has some cool clock towers and a nice market during the day. During the night even, they have some of the coolest bars and clubs with very cheap drinks. They use their own currency, with one Euro equaling about 4.1 Zloty, but the cheap food and drink bring the price to about par for richer countries using the euro. The city is also just small enough to be able to traverse it by walking, but you can still rely on the buses and trams that run around Old Town. From Krakow we took a night train that lasted about 10 hours to Budapest and to new adventures.