With a heavy heart...

This morning we woke up at 4:30 AM to catch a 6:05 AM train to Krakow. We had a nice train with compartments, and I rode with my head resting against the window, watching the Polish countryside roll by. It was so interesting to see small towns and villages, some that looked quite new, and others that looked like time had stood still for thirty years or so. I woke up from a motion-induced nap at one point to see snow! It wasn’t just a sprinkling of snow; the ground was covered about a foot deep in white. The cold when we stepped of the train was piercing, and my teeth instantly started chattering.

There was a mall attached to the train station, so we went inside and wandered around for an hour waiting for stores to open at 10:00 AM. The mall was four floors and, once again, larger than most I had visited in the U.S. We decided to buy lunch in the food court, and I ate at a salad and pasta restaurant. I ate salads at least three days per week in the U.S., but in England, salads are expensive and small. It is difficult to find an affordable, meal sized salad. This Polish restaurant, however, had salads in two sizes, small or large. Both were huge and more than I could finish, and I only paid 15 Zloty ($6 dollars) for a huge salad with lettuce, chicken, corn, canned peas, cucumbers, green peppers, walnuts, hazelnuts, golden raisins, and bright red pieces of chewy, candied something or other with a curry vinaigrette dressing. It was once of the oddest salad combinations I’d ever eaten.

To combat the chilly November air, Sam and I stopped at a vendor in the corridor of the train station to buy gloves, hats, and winter socks. I wasn’t expecting the snow, so I was wearing thin ballet flats, and my feet were quickly wet and numb. We walked up to the bus station and paid 7 Zloty ($2.75) for an hour bus ride to Auschwitz.

Visiting Auschwitz was such a surreal experience. The tour was not as intense as I had expected, but in some ways, it was more so. I didn’t cry at Auschwitz like I had at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington DC this past summer. Auschwitz was oddly...peaceful. It was freezing cold, and everything was covered in snow. Really, it was just a bunch of brick buildings. It was so weird to walk through the camp now, knowing what it was 60 years ago. The buildings at Auschwitz were made of brick, many of which were taken from the homes of nearby townspeople who were kicked out and made to live across the river. They were nicer than I had imagined, though inside conditions were terrible.

Each building of the tour was dedicated to a specific aspect of the camp. One of the most interesting was the room that housed property collected from the prisoners when they arrived by train. Each person was told to bring a certain amount of luggage that they would use to start a new life in the East. The Nazis collected these possessions as soon as the prisoners arrived and sorted into storehouses. The museum had displays that included rooms piled to the ceiling with suitcases, combs and brushes, cookware, and shoes. I was struck by the variety in the 40,000 pairs of shoes in the mounds that walled both sides of the walkway. There were red espadrilles, white sandals, purple heels, blue loafers, wooden clogs, and tons of brown shoes of every size and shape. Though the shoes formed a collective sea of material, each pair was as unique as the individuals whose feet they had once protected. Some of the shoes were incredibly tiny, reminding viewers of the lives of innocent children that ended at Auschwitz. The same room had a case of baby clothes, including intricately woven and delicate white dresses and booties.

I was least prepared for the stories of torture and experimentation at Auschwitz, most of which are too gruesome to share in this journal. After touring Auschwitz, a bus took us to the Birkenau site, a short journey away. This is where the most killing took place, though much less remains as the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of the camp when they realized that the Allies would be arriving soon. In all the stories I had heard about Auschwitz, I had never really connected the fact that Poland is cold. As I walked through Birkenau in cargo pants, a fleece sweater, a wool pea coat, a hat, gloves, and a scarf, I shivered and couldn’t wait to get back inside. I hadn’t expected snow in Krakow, so I was wearing thin canvas ballet flats, and my toes were incredibly numb after hours of walking in the snow. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to live in the manufactured horse stables at Birkenau in the Winter, when the cold wind blew snow through the sizeable cracks in the wood construction.

The museum site closed at 4:00 PM, so everyone was waiting to take the 4:15 bus back to Krakow. The people in front of us took the last two seats, but we didn’t want to wait for the next bus at 5:30 PM. We ended up sitting on the cold, wet steps of the bus for the two hour ride back. I was sure that one of us was going to fall down the steps and crash through the door. On the bus we met two guys from Alaska who were backpacking through Europe for 2½ months. Since the bus ride back to Krakow took longer than we had expected, we didn’t have time for dinner at the traditional Polish restaurant we had planned on visiting. The Alaskan boys told us about a traditional restaurant that they had visited the night before, so we decided to go to dinner with them. Evidently, they were turned around when we all left the station, because they led us thirty minutes out of the way, and what should have been a 10 minute walk took four times as long. We finally arrived at the main square of old town Krakow, and I was able to see a bit of the beautiful buildings I had heard so much about, but it was difficult to see anything at night.

The restaurant met all of my expectations for a traditional Polish dinner. Inside were wooden tables and benches, shelves of ingredients lining the walls, and hanging swags of spices and wreathes of garlic. It felt like we’d stepped into someone’s kitchen. Our meal began with bread served with traditional Polish lard spread instead of butter. Sam wouldn’t touch it, but the boys raved about it, so I had to try some. It was actually quite good, though the idea of spreading fat onto my bread was a tad bit too much for me. For our main course, we had perogies.

We took a taxi back to the train station and were so disappointed to find out that the 8:00 PM train was full. We could have taken a 10:00 PM train, but it wouldn’t have arrived until 6:00 AM. The night train takes a full five hours longer than the day train, so we decided against that option. We bought standing tickets for the three hour train ride back to Warsaw and spent the journey sitting on the floor in the dining car. We were so happy to get off the train in Warsaw at 11:00 PM. After a day of freezing cold weather, I took full advantage of the wonderful Marriott bathtub and took probably the most wonderful bubble bath of my life. It may be the first time I’ve been completely warm in months!