First off, Bratislava was stunning, though one day is definitely not enough time to make a true judgement. We went to the national museum and it was a hilarious hodgepodge of random. It said in the guidebook we had that the museum highlighted the history of Slovakia in a very dry way...well apparently since that book was written they tore out all the old stuff and replaced it with rocks (minerals), taxidermied animals and trinkets depicting young children within the country. Nonetheless it was a lot of fun to explore and we had a good time.
We arrived in Krakow quite early in the morning after a long, and eventful, overnight train ride. We got a bit of a mix up on the directions to our hostel and it ended up taking us about 2 hours to find it, needless to say we were all exhausted. We were located very close to market square which was so beautiful and had a lot of really neat things to see from street performers to shops. We spent the first day getting a bit of rest and taking in some of the sites.
Friday arrived and we had all decided we were going to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Both concentration camps that were active during WWII. I spent many years reading about these places and the people in them, it was surreal to think that I would be entering those grounds on that beautiful sunny day. Auschwitz was set up like a museum, full of information and had been restored in some ways. There was one moment I had where tears came to my eyes; walking through a room filled with shoes. It's impossible to even try to explain the enormity of the room or the amount of shoes, but all I can say is that standing there walking through I knew these were real, tangible and they belonged to people. Another was walking through the crematorium, we were asked to walk through in complete silents, and I shed a tear for those who had died there and had never been recovered. The most odd thing is that is all looks so normal, Auschwitz was originally built to house "political prisoners", but was transformed into a camp later on.
We got into our tour bus and made our way to Birkenau, which was much harder to see. The land goes farther than ones eye can see. It was closed in by barbed wire, and there we saw the train tracks were many Jews, Gypsies and others were transported by cattle truck to the camps. We entered the "dorms" and saw the bunks, they were so tiny and said to have held up to 6 people on one bunk. Our tour guide explained that in the winter it was so cold they would burn the planks under their bunks for heat, but that often also meant that the bunks would collapse. Birkenau is in ruins in a lot of ways, the gas chambers no longer stand (because of the bombs that were dropped by the Germans to try and hide the Holocaust) and there is now a memorial near its place. Our tour guide was a native of Poland and a wonderful man who had passion in his eyes and sorrow in his heart. As we stood on the tracks he told us we would take a walk down to where the gas chambers once stood and said to us "please remember that you get to return to your cars after this, but for many this was their final walk. They had been stripped of their belongs and their families, you get to go back, they did not." It was the hardest part for me personally. I walked alongside those railroad tracks and I cried because it just hit me so hard that this was the same walk so many others had made in order to be murdered. It is still tough to think about now and that is probably why I have been avoiding this post. There is no absolute way for me to express the "bigger than you" feeling you get as you walk down that path.
I could say so much more about Krakow like about the amazing Georgian food I had tried, or walking through the Jewish quarter, but it seems fair to say that I should write about what moved me most. Looking back, I want to remember that moment always, and remember the feeling of appreciating life and family and every belong I own even if it is just a pair of shoes. I am blessed in so many ways, and from the experience I have taken from it a whole new humbleness. I hope this hasn't been too sad or unpleasant to read, but if you ever get a chance to visit a place like Auschwitz-Birkenau you should go. The experience is worth a more than I could ever express in words.
Until next time,
Jeg elsker du
Meghan
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