Poland now...
Well, this hostel has an English style keyboard on the computer, so we're off to a better start. But now my Blogger software is all in Polish, so I need to rely on my memory to be sure that I hit all the right buttons!
We're in Krakow now. Arrived today. We're staying in a hostel, which is definitely a step down from where we've been staying and not terribly comfortable. But the place we had reserved turned out to be double-booked, and we didn't feel like searching further. So I think we'll sleep here tonight and look for somewhere new in the morning.
So, let's see since we last heard from our heroes (that's us) here's what has been happening:
We left Prague and took a three hour train trip to the eastern Czech Republic to a town called Olomouc. It is a lovely town with a few amazing sites but mostly just a place where people live rather than a major tourist attraction. I think that is the kind of place we like most. We found a lovely hotel and enjoyed wandering around. Peter's plant radar went off and we ended up in a botanical garden. It was a nice break from looking at churches, castles and other man-made structures as lovely as those all have been.
Yesterday we took a train to Osweicim in Poland. Auschwitz is the Germanized version of that town's name and the home of the concentration camp. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. Our train was delayed and when we got to town it was dark, raining, and the information center and money changing places were both closed. We asked at the ticket window for directions to our intended hotel, and she told us that it was closed down! Hm, we weren't sure what to do. We had no Polish money, our guidebook didn't include a map of the town. The obvious option would be to jump in a taxi and ask the driver to take us to a hotel, but historically we've found taxi drivers to be the most dubious characters around and so we usually avoid them.
We stopped in a small restaurant/snack shack and asked there if they knew a hotel. They didn't speak any English, but spoke German. With my one year of high school German I was pretty much left staring at them and saying that we were tired (reminiscent of the time Peter got Malaria in Laos and all I could tell the doctor who spoke French was that my boyfriend had a head ache and fever). I think we probably looked pretty pathetic, because in the end they drove Peter to a hotel and then came back to pick me up (they had a two seater car, seemingly the standard here, so we couldn't all fit in one trip). I did understand the general plan and that they'd be back for me in about 10 minutes. Sure enough, they came right back and whisked Soren and me to our waiting (and very nice) hotel. It happens to us so often that complete strangers jump to our help when we need it. For us this is such a special part of traveling and was such a nice welcome to Poland.
We did Auschwitz in shifts today. It just isn't the type of place to bring Soren. So I went this morning and then when I returned Peter did his tour. Hard to know what to say of the place. I think anything I'd say would either be melodramitc or trite. But I guess I can make three main comments:
1) It was a cold and foggy morning. I was cold. The irony wasn't lost on me. To feel a chill through my jacket and cashmere sweater really felt like I was being ridiculous. But it also was a reminder of how darn cold it must have been there so undernourished, overworked, and poorly clothed.
2) In all the holocaust memorials we've been too they show piles of personal belongings left by the murdered people. Piles of shoes, suitcases, glasses, hairbrushes. It is such a poignant reminder of the fact that so many people, individual people, were killed there. But this one had an particularly haunting room. A collection of human hair. They had thousands of pounds of it. They had shaved the heads of the dead and used the hair to make cloth.
3) This is the first time that I've been to a holocaust memorial since becoming a mother. The stories of the children were really more than I could bear this time. I truly can't really talk about it, or even allow myself to imagine those stories without really crying. Such horrors.
We're in Krakow now. Arrived today. We're staying in a hostel, which is definitely a step down from where we've been staying and not terribly comfortable. But the place we had reserved turned out to be double-booked, and we didn't feel like searching further. So I think we'll sleep here tonight and look for somewhere new in the morning.
So, let's see since we last heard from our heroes (that's us) here's what has been happening:
We left Prague and took a three hour train trip to the eastern Czech Republic to a town called Olomouc. It is a lovely town with a few amazing sites but mostly just a place where people live rather than a major tourist attraction. I think that is the kind of place we like most. We found a lovely hotel and enjoyed wandering around. Peter's plant radar went off and we ended up in a botanical garden. It was a nice break from looking at churches, castles and other man-made structures as lovely as those all have been.
Yesterday we took a train to Osweicim in Poland. Auschwitz is the Germanized version of that town's name and the home of the concentration camp. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. Our train was delayed and when we got to town it was dark, raining, and the information center and money changing places were both closed. We asked at the ticket window for directions to our intended hotel, and she told us that it was closed down! Hm, we weren't sure what to do. We had no Polish money, our guidebook didn't include a map of the town. The obvious option would be to jump in a taxi and ask the driver to take us to a hotel, but historically we've found taxi drivers to be the most dubious characters around and so we usually avoid them.
We stopped in a small restaurant/snack shack and asked there if they knew a hotel. They didn't speak any English, but spoke German. With my one year of high school German I was pretty much left staring at them and saying that we were tired (reminiscent of the time Peter got Malaria in Laos and all I could tell the doctor who spoke French was that my boyfriend had a head ache and fever). I think we probably looked pretty pathetic, because in the end they drove Peter to a hotel and then came back to pick me up (they had a two seater car, seemingly the standard here, so we couldn't all fit in one trip). I did understand the general plan and that they'd be back for me in about 10 minutes. Sure enough, they came right back and whisked Soren and me to our waiting (and very nice) hotel. It happens to us so often that complete strangers jump to our help when we need it. For us this is such a special part of traveling and was such a nice welcome to Poland.
We did Auschwitz in shifts today. It just isn't the type of place to bring Soren. So I went this morning and then when I returned Peter did his tour. Hard to know what to say of the place. I think anything I'd say would either be melodramitc or trite. But I guess I can make three main comments:
1) It was a cold and foggy morning. I was cold. The irony wasn't lost on me. To feel a chill through my jacket and cashmere sweater really felt like I was being ridiculous. But it also was a reminder of how darn cold it must have been there so undernourished, overworked, and poorly clothed.
2) In all the holocaust memorials we've been too they show piles of personal belongings left by the murdered people. Piles of shoes, suitcases, glasses, hairbrushes. It is such a poignant reminder of the fact that so many people, individual people, were killed there. But this one had an particularly haunting room. A collection of human hair. They had thousands of pounds of it. They had shaved the heads of the dead and used the hair to make cloth.
3) This is the first time that I've been to a holocaust memorial since becoming a mother. The stories of the children were really more than I could bear this time. I truly can't really talk about it, or even allow myself to imagine those stories without really crying. Such horrors.
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