Days 18, 19 & 20: Farewell Poland

Today was our last real day in Krakow. We’ve had a few silly class-related activities over the past few days that took up much more time that we all would have liked so we used today to say our goodbyes to the city.

Because we completed the winter session, the lovely people at Jagellonian University had a convocation ceremony for us today, like a mini-graduation. Our daily classes have been in a boring old administration building but for convocation, we finally got to hang out in the fancy 700 year old buildings that Jagellonian is famous for.

The courtyard of the philosophy building

The “reading room” that we had our convocation in.

Rachael, Maria and I before convocation

They gave us little diplomas and pins and the Vice President gave us a nice speech about how we’re now ambassadors of the university. After the ceremony, we had a tour of the university’s museum which holds some of the coolest, oldest stuff ever.

This used to be the dining hall when only a few students and professors lived and worked in the building hundreds of years ago.

The original maces that inspired the university’s emblem 650 years ago, along with some other treasures

Polish cinema is a big deal and a Polish director donated his Lifetime Achievement Oscar to the exhibit.

This is an Olympic Gold medal from Athens 2004 won for SPEEDWALKING. I think I just found my calling…

Lots of other fun treasures

The Nobel Prize for Poetry that a Polish woman won a few years ago. She was an alumni of Jagellonian.

Bloomsburg loves to pretend our things are old because we’ve been around for 175 years but the ceremonial mace that is brought out for graduation was made in the 1960s. That’s pretty lame when Nicolas Copernicus himself was a student at Jagellonian University five centuries ago.

Another ceremonial room

The motto of the university: let reason prevail over force

the portrait of everyone’s favorite Pole: PJP II. He’s everywhere. And now, we both went to the same college.

A really ornate door.

Me, hanging out with some really old books

After the tour, we had to go back to regular class for the morning. Once we finished, we had the day to ourselves to say goodbye to our lovely city. I did a little shopping in the square with some friends and grabbed lunch before heading back to the room to regroup and begin the packing process.

Yet another photo of Mary.

A blurry photo but this is the inside of the market in the town square. It used to be where people sold their cloth back in the day but now it’s home to lots of fun, homemade crafts and goods. It’s where most of your souvenirs came from 🙂

Mary at night, and yes, all the Christmas decorations are still hanging around

The outside of the market, the centerpiece to the town square

Saying goodbye to Mary

Now, after a long and slightly emotional day, I’m all packed up and heading to bed. Our first flight out of here leaves at 11 a.m. but we have to be out of the room by 8. I should be back in the good ol’ U S of A around 4 p.m.

Thank you all for reading this blog over the last few weeks. I’ve enjoyed sharing my travels and I’ll be very grateful that I have a record of my trip to Poland in the years to come. But mostly, thank you to my wonderful parents who supported me on this trip and made all this magic possible. I can’t thank them enough but I’m definitely going to try 🙂

Day 17: When the sun shines in Poland…

…it’s like a whole different country.

Today was sunny, bright and maybe about 50 degrees and the entire atmosphere in Krakow changed.

We had a lecture this morning at Galacia Jewish Museum in Kazimierz instead of our usual class so we had to wake up a little bit earlier today. Since I’ve been fighting off a cold, I didn’t want to take any chances today so I bundled up in my coziest sweater with leggings underneath my jeans. It turns out that it was glorious outside. After the lecture, we walked around Kazimierz to find the lock bridge that Maria had been talking about.

We walked along the pathway next to what I think is the Vistula River. I could be wrong though, what do I know about Poland?

There were two boats in the river that looked like restaurants but neither appeared to be in business at the moment.

We spent a lot of time looking at the locks on the bridge. Some were so ancient and huge, I don’t know how someone would get it on there. In some places, the fenced area was broken from too much weight from the locks.

After walking around for a little bit, we got the tram back into Old Town. Maria and I grabbed lunch by ourselves at our favorite little milk bar in the market. I got my same old eggs and bacon.

The view from our milk bar

When we finished, we frolicked around the market square which isn’t unusual because we’re Americans but what was weird was that everyone else seemed to be frolicking too! I’ve never witnessed so much lightheartedness in Krakow. People are usually so dull or melancholy but they were feeding the pigeons (which I was actually a little annoyed at because they are UNPREDICTABLE when they’re all in groups and I thought several were going to fly in my face Hitchcock style), children were running around and playing inside some of the sculptures and I even heard a group of people singing!

I got in on the sunshine-induced silliness with my favorite little lion.

After our frolic, we grabbed some milkshakes and headed back to our classroom to watch a movie. It seemed a shame to waste such a nice day inside but by that time, the sun was basically setting anyway so it wasn’t too much of a loss.

I’m currently doing laundry in the sink again — for the last time! (hopefully.) — and I’ll grab something for dinner in a little bit. We need to start making a list of the things we still need/want to do this week because we’re sadly running out of time.

Days 14 & 15 (& 16): I should have stayed in Prague.

Whew, after a whirlwind weekend, we finally got back into Krakow around 7 am this morning. I would have posted this sooner but I had to catch up on the Golden Globes… because, you know, priorities.

We left for Prague around 9 pm Friday night to make our 10 pm train. When I learned that we were taking a sleeper train, I had visions of the Hogwarts Express floating through my head. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong about anything in my life. Instead of plush seats and a great view out of the window, we had this…

6 beds piled on top of each other with very little space to do anything but lay down, it’s every girl’s dream.

I actually didn’t have a problem with sleeping the train. I enjoyed the rocking motion but since I slept on the top, I was worried that I — and more importantly, my phone — would drop to the floor in the middle of the night.

Bunny loved the sleeper train.

After 6 hours on the train, we finally arrived in Prague. We had to take a couple subways to get to our living arrangements – another student hotel that lacks cleanliness – and we got settled for a little bit.

We took a tour of Prague’s old town and I’ve never seen anything so pretty. It was the stuff of my European dreams, except I’d be super rich staying at a hotel that didn’t have black mold in the shower.

Part of what made the sights so great on Saturday was the fantastic weather. After weeks of having to put Vaseline all. over. my face to stop it from getting chapped in Kraków, we were finally rewarded with spring-like weather. It was sunny and breezy and about 50 degrees or so. I forgot what the sun looked like. But given the atrocious amount of walking we did today, I feel like I made up for my lack of Vitamin C.

Our first excursion was to the Royal Castle. Czech Republic hasn’t had a monarch in a while so the President works there instead. He also has an apartment there but it’s apparently too small for him to live in so he has some fancy mansion elsewhere.

There was a lot of graphic imagery in the sculptures that guard the gate, it was somewhat alarming.

We got there just before noon so we got to watch the changing of the guard ceremony. I was pretty far back in the crowd so I didn’t have the best view but it was very cool. The officers wore these great navy coats with fur around their necks.

Once that was over, we meandered around the courtyard and found this iconic view.

The amazing view from the Royal Castle’s courtyard

It seems silly to say that this moment was rather life changing but it really felt like the little European movie that plays in my head most of the time finally morphed into reality. Krakow is beautiful in it’s own gloomy and historic way but the colors and textures of Prague were magical and quintessentially European.

Also, fun facts: Czech’s money situation is OUT OF CONTROL. One US dollar is about 23 koruna, because nothing can ever just be easy. So everything here seems outrageously expensive, even though it makes sense once you do the mental conversion. But it’s scary to lay out 85 koruna for Starbucks.

Speaking of Starbucks… in the photo just above here, juuuust to the right of that green little rooftop area was a Starbucks with outdoor seating so you could sit and hang out while taking in the incredible view.

Of all the amazing views and sites we visited on Friday, my two favorite things were the spectacular view of the city from the Royal Castle (pictured above) and St. Vitus’s Cathedral.

It was impossible to get the entire cathedral in one shot. It was massive and the best way to get the whole view was to stand right at the base of it.

The larger scope of St. Vitus’

We couldn’t get into the actual pews because they were roped off.

Some of the alter details

My favorite part was the window at the back of the cathedral. It was so colorful and delicate.

There were a ton of these side-aisle things going on with major stained glass window art. You could tell that some of the windows were older than others due to the style of the painting.

Me and Maria, hanging out

Pictures really don’t do it justice but you can get a sense of the magnitude of the place and it’s intricate beauty. According to the vaguely audible tour guide we had, President Clinton, among other dignitaries, visited the cathedral for the former president of Czech Republic’s funereal.

We continued to walk (and by walk, I really mean hike) all around Prague, crossing over the famous Charles Bridge into the old town. The bridge was packed with tourists so it was hard to get a good photo. There were religious statues all along the way and if you rubbed certain parts of certain statues, it’s believed you’d get great blessings.

Another one of my favorite things were the lock bridges around Prague. We stumbled upon two of them but I’m sure there are more. People write their initials on locks and hook them onto fences or bridges along river ways. I suppose it’s a romantic thing for couples to do but I like the idea of doing one myself. I couldn’t find any locks in the area to hook one on myself but Maria says there is a lock bridge in Krakow that we can visit.

A random railing we found on our way to the Charles Bridge

Just off the Charles Bridge that crosses over the Vltava River, the longest river in the Czech Republic.

We ended our tour in the main square to watch the astrological clock strike 4:00. All the movements are mechanized which is really impressive because it’s been around for like centuries. The 12 apostles each make an appearance and a skeleton rings his bell to signal the hour. I think our tour guide told us that it was the folklore that you didn’t want to hear the bell behind you because that meant death is coming. Our guide was fairly quiet and undoubtedly the fastest walker I’ve ever seen so I could barely keep up with her, let alone in earshot.

We wandered around in our own little group for most of the evening, finding a great klobása stand and trekking our way back to our hotel, which took about an hour because no one told us how to work the subway system here so we literally had to follow the reverse route of our tour. It was nice to see more of Prague but I’m pretty sure I just saw the same parts of Prague twice.

After our long day, we just wanted to shower and sleep. This was the towel provided to me.

I got reaaaaal dry reaaal fast.

An early alarm woke us up on Sunday morning for our guided tour of Jewish Prague. If you’re curious about Catholic Prague, it’s the other 99% of the city. The Jews were relegated to their “ghetto” in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially leading up to World War I. They had their own shops and businesses and functioned pretty self-sufficiently until they started being persecuted.

We visited 4 different synagogues which were all pretty close to one another. Accompanying one synagogue is the famous Jewish cemetery of Prague, which is filled with thousands of the oldest looking headstones ever. Because the Jews weren’t allowed to buy more land for their burials, they had to keep removing the headstones, adding a layer of soil and then pile up more bodies, so the ground has swelled about 15 feet above the normal street line.

One of the synagogues that I can’t remember the name of

Inside the last synagogue we visited were exhibits of some of the Torah covers used in antiquity. They look like crowns so it was really fueling my royalty complex. There were also dozens of “yads” which were pointers to help a rabbi read the Torah because you weren’t supposed to touch the holy text. Someone made a comment about how they look like they would make great back-scratchers and I said you could definitely pick someone’s nose with it. Then I realized that is a joke only my sister would appreciate.

Definitely way to big to fit on my head.

You could apparently get your “yad” customized to your personal preferences.

Side note: There are a lot of dogs in Prague, too! They don’t care so much about the history of their city, though. I watched one dog pee on the side of a synagogue and then another came along, smelled the other dog’s pee and then added his own specimen to the wall.

Of course, now the Jewish part of the city has merged with the surrounding areas and is now filled with fancy stores.

I tried to find a Czech sugar daddy but apparently that’s a real thing and then I was afraid of being kidnapped.

No, I did not ask to go in Louis Vuitton while on a tour of Jewish Prague…

Sigh.

After another extraordinarily long day, we made our way back onto the sleeper train to return to Poland.

I was a little relieved to get back to Krakow because of the familiarity, but I think I might have enjoyed Prague more than Krakow. Because Prague is much more of a tourist destination and international hub, there was so much cultural experiences happening in one space… not to mention English is spoken waaaay more in Prague than Krakow. Nearly everyone knows it and we even found several American travelers, some from University of Pittsburgh.

Our train pulled in around 7 am and we had class at 11:30 so that left a little time to shower (properly, with a real towel and everything! hallelujah!) and get my life together before running off to class. Somewhere in the process, though, I developed a bit of a cold. I blame that petri dish of a sleeper car. But there is no fun in being sick if you can’t binge-watch your favorite shows while your mom makes you soup so I am currently in bed with an orange juice trying to fight it off.

Days 11, 12 & 13: Being a boring student

I am currently packing for our weekend trip to Prague so this post will be rather short, unfortunately.

The past few days have been quite uneventful, if truth be told.

We had to return to school after classes on Wednesday to watch a movie so we wanted to stay to close for lunch so we weren’t late. Some boys in our group took us to a fish and chips restaurant that tried its best to be British.

The place was rather cute.

My “fish” was really chicken. But my tartar sauce was good!

It was late in the afternoon when we got back from the movie so Maria and I just decided to make it an early night and grab some “to go” food from our favorite little lunch bar. We both ordered smoked kielbasa and sauerkraut and it was amazing! I never liked sauerkraut in America but this was much less pungent or acidic. I’ll definitely get it again!

This dish has a name but I can’t figure out how to spell it. It sounds like “beegoss” if that makes sense.

After classes yesterday (Thursday), a few of us tagged along with Maria and her dad to the Plus store (a cell service provider) and then grabbed lunch at an Italian place called Mamma Mia. I ordered myself a small pizza and was super nervous when they brought it out because it was not that small and this country does not do “to go” boxes.

It was super thin and I ate the whole thing, no shame!

Today we had a shortened day because our second professor had a previous engagement so she cancelled class. Our first professor brought in Polish newspapers and tabloids for us to look at. I loved it but unfortunately, germs are spreading all through our small group so I didn’t want to get too into the papers because I’m convinced I will die of pneumonia.

They do not think very highly of Americans.

Since it was early when class was over today, we came back to our room and napped a little (or watched some more Downton Abbey). On our walk home, I saw more of the precious dogs of Krakow. Now here are a barrage of random photos…

Full on snow suit.

I tried to go over and pet this one but they got scared and jumped away.

The pathway through the town square… Those are my friends Kaylee and Rachael.

The tree in the little market outside the mall.

the famous theater in Krakow

Now I really must go, we’re about to grab something to eat before we get on the train. Next posts will be about Prague!

Day 10: Nowa Huta

Yesterday was very low key, again. Just classes as usual and then some wandering around the square. We found a milk bar (which is a European way of saying cafe) that had amazing breakfasts so we went back again tonight where I got the same thing twice – eggs and bacon.

As always, it’s cold and snowy here but whenever I’m in the square, I forget about it a little bit because it’s just so picturesque. I love it! Unfortunately, I think the holiday market and Christmas decorations will come down tomorrow which breaks my heart a little bit. I feel less like a tourist as the days go by — even though I’m pretty sure I still behave like a tourist — so I’m sad to see the square go back to normal. The big tree in the square and all the lights felt like home.

Me and Mary

Today is the Epiphany, or Three King’s Day, so we had the day off, and it looks like most of Poland did as well! Today was also yet another day in which I accidentally bought sparkling water instead of still. You would think I would know by now but I was just so excited that I found cold water bottles in the refrigerated section of the convenience store that I forgot to check, which is sad because that’s one of the few things I actually understand in Polish. Here are the 5 Polish words/phrases that I know: dziękuję (thank you), dzień dobry (good morning), piwo (beer), proszę (please), przepraszam (excuse me) and NIEGAZAOWANA (still water).

People were giving out crowns today on my way to the tram, so I sported this for a large portion of the day.

We were originally going to visit the Underground Market today but we had a change of plans. We met up with a few tour guides who were going to take us into Nowa Huta, an eastern district of Krakow that was built in the 1950s under Lenin’s communism and was intended to be an industrial center. There was a massive steelmill in which most of the adult males of the district worked but it only works to about 10% capacity now. Because of communism, living in Nowa Huta was free as long as you were employed and they technically claimed an unemployment rate of 0% but that’s communist propaganda for you.

In order to get to Nowa Huta, our guides picked us up in Krakow in these tiny Soviet-era cars called a Trabant 601. They were East German cars that were basically made of plastic to be economical and efficient. I could explain it to you but I could also just include a photo which would be so much more fun.

Yes, I fit into that car, along with three other people.

We had three guides that drove three of us in each of their cars. Two of them were standard gray but I obviously had to get in the pink one. The driver of the pink car was a guy named Kuba (or at least, that is how it sounded). He loves the pink car and won’t let any other guide drive it because it has a “kicking” stereo system. I sat shotgun and he made me hang out the window to spray the windshield with Windex because that was the only way to clean it, because of course.

I really thought the car was going to breakdown but it got us there and back without any issues. My friends Rachael and Kaylee and I rode in the car with Kuba and he told us his life story and by the end of the ride, we all wanted to date him. All of our guides (3 boys, 1 girl) were so nice and made the trip fun because I really didn’t care that much about Nowa Huta. Sorry Lenin.

We stopped in a restaurant in the main square of Nowa Huta and we got free drinks so I had a beer at about 2 in the afternoon. Then we toured an old Soviet-era apartment where we watched a propaganda video trying to get Poles to move to Nowa Huta. During this horrendously awful video, we did shots of the best vodka I’ve ever had. (Apparently Polish vodka is better than Russian vodka and I’m inclined to believe it.) So by the end of the tour, we were all pretty drunk.

After the tour, a bunch of us went back to my favorite milk bar for dinner and then we got gelato afterwards.

The selection of sweets at the gelato place.

Me and my gelato, looking thuggish. My chocolate gelato only cost three zloty, which is less than one dollar.

Back at our dorm, we have no hot water so I think I’ll be skipping a shower tonight until the plumber can fix it. Maria went to her dad’s house so her stepmom can wash our towels and I will sit here and watch Downton Abbey and eat my pączki, which is a Polish donut with pudding on the inside and it’s warm and wonderful.

No one judge me.

Day 8: Auschwitz

With blizzard-like conditions today, we visited Oświęcim, the town that is now better known by it’s German name of Auschwitz and is the home to a network of concentration camps used by the Nazi’s during WWII. They consisted of Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz II–Birkenau (a combination concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III–Monowitz (a labor camp), and 45 satellite camps. We took tours of both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau and it was pretty brutal.

The main gate into Auschwitz, which reads “Work sets you free” in German.

We had a guided tour through most of the facilities in Auschwitz I which is the best preserved of the camps. I didn’t take too many pictures. It was too cold to have my hands exposed and I don’t think I’ll need to photos to remember what I’ve seen.

Though I had many expectations about our visit, I was not expecting the camp to have been so well developed and built. It looked like a little town with its several dozen brick barracks lining the streets. The tour seemed to be structured in a way to give visitors the true experience by detailing the arrival of the prisoners, where they slept and ate, where they were punished and eventually where they were killed.

The Nazis thought it was really important to keep the prisoners calm, especially upon arrival, so they allowed them to bring all of their belongings to keep up the impression that they were merely creating a new life within the camps. When the train dropped off the prisoners, they were immediately separated by gender. One officer would inspect the men and women. 2 out of 10 prisoners were sent to the barracks to begin life as a worker. The other 8 were sent immediately to the gas chamber because they were not physically fit enough to benefit the Germans. Children were examined by a doctor who used many of them to conduct pseudo-medical experiments on and the rest were sent right to the gas chambers.

According to the exhibits, Auschwitz I was filled with more male prisoners because they were working the quarry, which required stronger bodies. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was predominately filled with women who worked the fields.

We walked through the living quarters of residents, which ranged from a room with hay spread on the floor for new arrivals to bunks meant to hold four or five prisoners each night to personal rooms for prisoners who managed to secure some powerful positions that left them in charge of other groups. The German soldiers had their accommodations outside of the camp’s fence to avoid disease, of course.

If you didn’t know where you were, you might find the place a little charming.

The first, and possibly the greatest of the shocks to my system was entering a room that held all the remnants of human hair that was taken from prisoners before their death. The Nazis sold the hair to various companies before the camps were liberated in 1945 but the contents that remained were astonishing. Similar exhibits held millions of shoes that were taken from prisoners, as well as suitcases, pots and pans, hair brushes and even shoe polish. It was beyond heartbreaking.

We visited the cells where prisoners were sent to be punished, which included your typical jail-like cells and even small crawl spaces that four people would have to stand in for up to 10 hours at a time. My stomach was in knots as I observed the scratch marks and messages carved into the walls. The shooting wall where prisoners were killed execution style was on display as well, although the wall itself was a replica because the original was destroyed after the camp was liberated.

The most terrifying part of the day was standing in the main gas chamber of Auschwitz I. I could not fathom that I was standing in the exact chamber where over 1 million people died. I think I held my breath the entire time. Then we moved right into the crematorium where all the bodies had to be incinerated. The Nazis never had a problem with killed all those people, according to our guide. The only issue (practical, not moral) they had was disposing of the bodies. This issue became even more prevalent because the Germans were pushing their facilities to maximum capacity. They were filling their gas chambers with hundreds more people a day than was initially intended so they had way more bodies to dispose of.

After the traumatizing experience at Auschwitz I, we trekked to Aushwitz II-Birkenau. The second camp was built in 1941 to ease the congestion at the main camp but once Hitler decided to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, they re-purposed Birkenau for more killing capacity and laborers.

The main view of Aushwitz II-Birkenau. Many of the structures were destroyed just before the camp was liberated so there’s not toooo much left of it.

Birkenau had 4 different crematoriums so they had a massive killing capacity. A real rail car was on display that took prisoners to the camps and the rail system is still intact.

One of the crematoriums that was destroyed 6 days before the liberation of the camp.

Once the Soviets began invading Poland in late 1944, the Nazis were ordered to destroy all evidence of their activities, so they dismantled many of their crematoriums and re-purposed some of their buildings as air raid shelters. They also destroyed most of the written documentation about the camps’ existence.

Needless to say, today was rough. I grew up learning about the Holocaust and while I didn’t really learn anything “new” today, it became so much more real and tangible looking at the thousands of pairs of glasses left behind by poor people who didn’t deserve any of the horrific treatment they received.

It’s scary to think that even Americans didn’t do much to help the situation. The Allies received several reports about the camp’s activities but always assumed the reports were exaggerated. Once they were finally convinced of the legitimacy of the camps, they were still reluctant to bomb the camps due to technical issues. This is a pretty big debate that still exists today.

Today, the camp remains one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, as well as the Salt Mines we visited earlier this week and the Krakow city center. After doing some research, it turns out that I’ve been to a few of these World Heritage Sites, including Independence Hall.

We’re back to our normal routine this week with a day off on Tuesday for the Epiphany and then a trip to Prague this weekend.

Days 6 & 7: Schindler’s Factory

Yesterday was pretty low key so there’s not much to report. After classes, we grabbed lunch as a group at a small restaurant where I thought I ordered chicken soup but was brought a cup of chicken broth, so basically the same thing but minus 500 calories. Maria and two of the other girls met up with Maria’s dad to visit his flour tilling plant (I think that’s what it was?) and visit Tesco, which is like the European Walmart. My friend Kaylee and I instead went back to our rooms and napped a little, grabbed a late dinner and we all stayed in for the night.

Today, we woke up early to visit Schindler’s Factory. It’s in the Jewish quarter of the city called Kazimierz and it was about 20 minutes via tram. The neighborhood the museum was located in could actually be considered the ugliest part of Poland, in my opinion. Lots of construction and industrial buildings and just ugh.

So, while it’s called Schindler’s Factory, the place is really just a venue for the permanent exhibit of “Krakow Under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945.” The building is the former administrative building for Oskar Schindler’s enamel factory that was made famous by the Oscar-winning movie but it didn’t have too much to do with the story itself. Overall, it was a bit of a disappointment.

Lots of fun Nazi memorabilia…

The exhibit chronicled the beginning of the Nazi’s invasion of Poland (pronounced like POH-land by our tour guide who probably learned the British form of English) all the way to the end of the war. Poland apparently held a fundraiser to help benefit their army when they noticed that a war was brewing and were thrilled when they raised 2 million zloty, which is about $670,000. Obviously that money was worth more back in 1939 but it was apparently not even close to helping the Poles defend themselves because they were not very prepared for anything the Nazis, and then the Soviets, threw at them.

A replica of the tanks that Poland began the war with. Apparently, they were very ill prepared.

In the earlier stages of the war, the Polish Jews were relegated to the “ghetto” which was enclosed by walls but many Jews were eager to live in the ghetto because they thought they’d be safer in their own community and it offered them some comfort. It obviously did not work out for them in the long run.

They made a recreation of the Jewish ghetto and included letters or notes made about the living situations. One of the letters was written by Roman Polanski when he was 8 years old. The translation boils down to how afraid he would feel when the alarms would sound.

Things a typical Jew would have with them during their time in a concentration or death camp.

At the end of the exhibit were photos of the people that Schindler saved through his factory and our guide told us that while his “list” only saved 1,200 people, the long term effects of his actions probably helped millions of Jews.

After we got back from the museum, I decided to do some laundry. Because every single Polish person over the age of 50 is a miserable, soul-sucking human being, the receptionist at our dorm told us we’re no longer being provided toilet paper and towels and we have to pay to use our laundry facilities, which is just a set of washers. So, I decided to just wash some of my socks and undies in the sink.

Thanks for the Tide packets, Dad!

It wasn’t hard to actually wash my items but now the tricky part is waiting for it all to dry…

While waiting for my stuff to dry, I finally cleaned our floors with the little dust pan and brush they so thoughtfully provided us. We had enough sand on our floor to fill a child’s sandbox. We track it in everyday but I have no idea where it’s coming from. Our next step is to get some bathroom cleaner and more toilet paper. Baby steps…

It’s beginning to get agitating having to eat out for every meal. We don’t even have a fridge or microwave in our building to store some things so it’s either bags of chips and chocolate bars or running out to a bistro or restaurant. It sounds fantastically urban and European but it’s really an inconvenience.

Though the Polish people all seem fairly unhappy, nearly everyone has a dog. I see at least 5 each day and I love it! They wear sweaters or ride in baskets and they’re so cute. I saw my first Polish cat outside our building last night but it disappeared quickly so that’s my new mission: to find and love this cat.

Just one of the many dogs in Krakow.

Tomorrow, we head to Auschwitz. We have to take a private bus to get there and it’s about 2 hours each way. I’m actually looking forward to the downtime in the bus but the experience itself will not be a very cheery one.

Days 4 & 5: Szczesliwego Nowego Roku

Szczesliwego Nowego Roku, everyone! Yes, that is Happy New Year in Polish. We survived the New Year’s festivities in one piece and it was amazing!

It is currently Thursday, January 1 here but I’ll recap yesterday’s activities as well.

We had classes as usual in the morning and went to visit St. Mary’s Basilica in the town square. It was packed with tourists so it wasn’t very peaceful but it was still beautiful. We’re definitely going to go back another time. Here are a ton of photos in which I don’t really know what is happening.

After roaming the chapel for a little bit, we met up with Maria’s father who took us to Galeria Krakowska, which is the mall here in town. It was a lot like the King of Prussia mall, only busier since it was New Year’s Eve.

Even though the stores were still upscale, the prices are little lower here so I could actually browse legitimately although the salespeople still gave me side eye,

I got really excited to see a Starbucks in here. I still haven’t figured out the coffee situation here yet because the one time I ordered what I thought was a regular coffee, they added 2 shots of espresso and I felt like my heart was beating out of my eyeballs.

The mall was only a 7 or so minute walk from the town square and there’s a big market outside with a skating rink and little booths selling kielbasa and these donut-pretzel-bread things that look amazing.

For lunch, we found this cute little lunch bar that looks family owned and sort of like a hole-in-the-wall and we desperately want to keep it that way. Now that we’re finally getting our bearings, we’re allowed to do our own things for lunch which is awesome for two reasons. 1. Going out in a group is always more expensive because we have to sit down and then figure out splitting the check and it’s just annoying. 2. Rolling squad deep with 14 Americans is the #1 way to get Polish people to hate you. The #2 way to get Polish people to hate you, in case you were interested, is to have large bills and not exact change. Since our allotment of 300 zloty a week is given to us in three 100 zloty bills, we have to break them somewhere but most stores either don’t have change or just won’t tolerate it.

Back to lunch — I ordered a typical kielbasa and roll meal and I was in love. It was the first piece of meat that didn’t repulse me here and it actually tasted like the kielbasa we have at home so I really enjoyed it.

Another weird thing – every place has Coke or Coke Zero and I’m a Diet Coke girl so I was thrilled when I saw this place had Diet Coke on the menu but they were out of it when I ordered. The Coke was still pretty good though.

We got back to our rooms around 5ish or so and tried to nap a little before getting ready for our NYE celebrations. Our program director told us he reserved a special room for us to celebrate together but what he didn’t tell us was that the room was the TV room in our building and everything was “BYOB.” It was pretty lame so we were in a hurry to leave and do our own thing.

Maria and I after just chugging some of the most disgusting lemoncello ever.

Maria and I plus a few other girls left around 9 to find somewhere to sit in a bar or restaurant to wait for midnight. When we got into the square, though, it became pretty clear that 800,000 other people had the same idea but 2 hours before us so we were left wandering around for a long time. We finally got a table in a burger place that had Wi-Fi (pronounced like Wee-Fee here, it’s more fun that way) and where the waitresses were nice and thought my botched attempt at Polish was cute.

Quick side note: This is how every Polish establishment serves their napkins. Looks cute, right? NO. It is physically impossible to pull a napkin out of there without pulling out 37 and wrecking the whole thing. Maybe that’s why Polish people never look happy – even their napkins give them grief.

Around 11:30, we left the burger joint to venture into the heart of the square. Maria saw one of her favorite bands performing on stage (the show was thoughtfully broadcast on every TV in every bar/restaurant so we could see it) so we had to get our hustle on. We couldn’t get anywhere close to the stage – we had to stand around the corner and look at a big monitor of it but it was still very cool. Since we’ve spent so much time in the square already, we already had seen the stage in the making and watched a couple performers rehearse earlier that day so it was cool seeing it all come together.

This is a terrible photo but it will have to suffice.

With a bazillion people in one compact space, it was normal to see a lot of “policja” but since Poland is not America, they don’t really have to worry about major security threats. And no one seemed at all concerned with the amount of firework bombs that people were setting off. The first one I heard was around the corner of another street and I think all of my insides liquefied and fell out of my butt because it straight up sounded like we were being bombed by the Russians. And people were setting them off all. the. time. It never got less terrifying but there was no danger, just loud noise.

Unlike the New York celebrations I watch each year, Krakow didn’t focus so much on the “midnight” aspect of NYE. It was more like a party all night. They had a beautiful firework show around 11:45 above St. Mary’s and they had a countdown to midnight of course but there wasn’t really any pomp and circumstance meant just for midnight. It’s hard to explain but it was still very cool!

We finally made it back in one piece after a jam-packed tram ride around 1 a.m. and I woke up today around 1 p.m. I’ve never slept that late in the day before but I blame the gloomy weather here. You can’t really tell it’s morning because the sun basically doesn’t exist here. We don’t have anything scheduled for today and practically everything is closed anyway — Poland takes their holidays seriously — so we may end up just vegging out and regrouping in our rooms for the rest of today or searching for a cafe to recuperate in.

We only have one class tomorrow and then a weekend filled with Holocaust excursions to Schindler’s Factory on Saturday and Auschwitz on Sunday.

Day 3: Wieliczka Salt Mine

What a surprise, I woke up to snow again today.

This is the view from my room.

I pass this statue of Pope John Paul II everyday on my walk to class. He stands in the middle of this little park and he faces this church….

I haven’t been inside any of the churches yet but I’m looking forward to it because the pictures online look beautiful. The hooded figure is my guardian angel Maria, she speaks fluent Polish and I love her immensely.

Snow is pretty in the town square but it’s just pretty bleak everywhere else. The sun peeked through the clouds today when we left class and I think my skin was scorched because it hasn’t seen sunlight since Saturday.

This is the entrance to our classroom. It looks really stately and fancy outside but the classroom is pretty typical, even a little low-budget but it works!

After classes, we went as a group to grab lunch at an Italian bistro-esque place. The pizza was pretty good and it was the first meal beside breakfast that was actually appealing.

Right after lunch, we got onto a bus to go to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. The bus ride was a solid 45 minutes of standing up and holding onto the rope things that hang from the railings. It was a massive ab workout to not fall on top of the questionable Polish lady next me.

Once we got there, we had to wait a while (outside, in the cold.) because we scheduled a private tour but we needed to wait for an English-speaking tour guide.

This is Maria and I trying to stay warm waiting for our tour

The building where we began our tour

The salt mine is like six centuries old and there’s a lot of folklore that surrounds it – my favorite being the story of Queen Kinga of Hungary who threw her engagement into some type of body of water in Hungary and the ring turned up in the salt mine in Poland. Our guide said that’s probably not true but they did have a life size representation of it carved out of salt in one of the chambers so I’m going to stick with that story.

There are 9 underground levels of the mine but visitors only go down to the third level. There are over 20 chapels in the mine carved from salt and it’s really impressive.

This chapel will be the host of a wedding tomorrow! One of the tour guides is getting married there and the chapel can hold 400 people. Unlike most of Poland, this chapel is actually prettier in person.

Someone actually took the time in the late 1950s to carve the Last Supper out of salt. It looks like it has major depth in person but it’s apparently only a few centimeters deep. I can’t even apply my nail polish evenly so I was impressed.

Since everything in the mine is salt, you can lick anything you want. Yea,  you can lick public places here. I licked the wall where Brad Pitt allegedly licked too but it was more fun breaking off a chunk of salt to eat. Some of the salt looked like mold because it was white and bubbly but I was assured that everything was really pure and natural.

There was a lake in the mine too which people believe has healing properties. They come and hang out for days by the lake to breath in all the salt aromas. I was more interested in the incredibly high density of salt content in the water because no matter how hard you tried to swim to the bottom, you’d always float – like the Dead Sea.

Once we got back from the mine, we broke off into groups to get dinner. Myself and some other girls grabbed a bite to eat at a restaurant probably 40 feet away from our dorms, which is super convenient. I got apple crepes which were marvelous but a little too heavy for me to finish.

The whipped cream tasted like it came right from the cow so that obviously freaked me out and I did not eat it.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve so there will be a lot of activity in the city and especially the town square. According to one of our professors, Krakow booked some of the best bands in Poland for the celebrations so that could be very cool!

Days 1 & 2: Poland is cold.

Whew. Okay, we finally managed to get internet in our rooms after a long two days.

We finally got into Poland yesterday around 10:30 am local time and we’ve been going nonstop since. We took a half hour bus ride to our lodgings and got settled for a little. My wonderful friend Maria and I are sharing a room that’s pretty typical of a college dorm – one room, two beds, a closet and a bathroom. I feel like a NASA astronaut while using the shower but it will have to do.

After unpacking a little, we went into the Old Town square (about a 7 minute tram ride) where we met a tour guide to show us around the city. The sun sets pretty early here so by 4ish, it was freeeezing and the guide thoroughly enjoyed stopping us at random places to give us historical, geographical or architectural information about things that would have been much more relevant to us after a nap and some warmth. But alas, we were offered no such things. I was positive that I would return to my room to find that one of my toes had fallen off and I wouldn’t notice it because I had lost all feeling in my extremities.

So Krakow is your typical urban setting except they have this really cool town square that’s like quintessential Europe. At the center is the beautiful St. Mary’s Basilica but we haven’t been able to get inside yet. At the top of one of it’s steeples is a man who literally spends all day in a tiny room just to blow a melody on his trumpet each hour. His original purpose was to keep an eye out for fires in the surrounding areas or invaders in medieval times but now he just plays for the sake of tradition.

St. Mary’s Basilica. Just to the right of it is the main town square which is currently host to the Christmas Market which has gifts, food and wine

The story about the two uneven steeples is that two brothers were working on the church and they decided to do the steeples individually, which obviously led to some competition. One brother eventually stabbed the other brother and then killed himself at the top of his steeple and feel down into the square. Yea, Poland is super cheery. And the knife that’s allegedly connected to this deed hangs at the entrance way to the market. Delightful.

After touring the main square, we ventured over to Wawel Castle (ps, all the “w”s are pronounced like “v”s.) which was really pretty but I lost most of my appreciation for it while trekking up super slippery hills of cobblestones to get to it. Sorry Wawel.

This is a terrible picture of part of Wawel Castle.