HELLO. Okay so our second stop on our vacation was Krakow, Poland! I feel like this is another place in Europe that's often overlooked, but I absolutely loved it. It's just the cutest little city filled with cute buildings and so much history and I'm so glad we went! 

We took another night train from Budapest to Krakow and got there around 7:30 am. We went straight from the train to being picked up for our Auschwitz tour at about 9 am, so we used the bathroom of a nice hotel that was nearby to get ready. We got some weird looks and I'm surprised they didn't kick us out haha. But anyways, we all really wanted to go on a tour to Auschwitz because we thought it would be a really cool and eye-opening experience, and it definitely was. I don't think I'll ever forget the experience we had there and I will forever cherish it. It felt so surreal to be in a place like that, and I have so much respect for those who had to suffer through that. There was such a spirit there that I can't describe. We had a tour guide who has been doing it for 5 years, and she was so knowledgeable about everything and told some really cool stories. I loved how the whole place was set up. They didn't want to make it seem like a tour, but more of a pilgrimage for those who suffered and died there. Our guide said also said that it's a way of paying respects towards those who suffered and died there by seeing these places and hearing their stories. We went to the camp Auschwitz and then the much bigger camp Birkenau, which is 17x bigger than Auschwitz and just a few miles away. The Nazi's had built this one second to be used purely as a death factory. I'll never forget this day. 

After we got back from our tour, we arrived at our apartment. It was early evening, so we walked over to the Main Square to walk around and get dinner. It was the cutest square! I loved it so much and took a bunch of pictures. We ate at a really good little Italian place for dinner, and then we all got ice cream afterwards. I had read online somewhere to get this ice cream called Lody, and it was super good! We got it twice while we were in Poland. Listen to the internet guys. We were all exhausted, so shortly after that we just went home and went to bed! 

The entrance to the Auschwitz camp

They had a whole wall dedicated to pictures taken of the people there during the camp

This is just a small, small portion of the amount of shoes they had there. It was really sad to see of them sitting there behind the glass, especially the ones that belonged to children.

We arrived at the Birkenau camp and then walked the same 1 kilometer that the prisoners walked from the entrance to the gas chambers.

Just a few of the many living quarters at Birkenau

An example of one of the trains the prisoners would arrive in. There would be tons of people crammed in a little wagon like this.

One of three gas chambers that was burned down by the Nazi's.

Inside one of the living quarters, this one for women. On the day that we went to the camp Poland was going through a bad heat wave and it was around 100 degrees, but all of us felt really stupid complaining about it because of where we were. We were in this building for about 10 minutes, and it was so hot and humid in there we could all barely stand it. The tour guide explained that they put hundreds of women in there and to imagine how hot it would be with that many. I just still can't believe the horrors that they lived through everyday.

The main square in Krakow

The view from our Krakow apartment!

The next morning, we got up and walked over to the Wawel Castle. It's a pretty big castle, and they sell tickets to different parts of it. We decided to go into the State Room and the Dragon's Den. Side note: for some reason Krakow loves dragons. They're everywhere and there are so many souvenirs that revolve around dragons haha. I'm not really sure where it comes from. The castle was really pretty and it was a cool thing to go and see. After that, we walked over to the square and had lunch, then went back to our apartment to pack up since we had to check out by 12 pm. We went back to the train station to check our bags because we didn't want to lug them around for the rest of the day, and we also wanted to reserve tickets for our train that night. For this whole week trip we had bought this rail pass for like $200, which allowed us to take 5 trains within a 10 day period. The only thing is you still have to reserve your spot on a train you want to take, which usually costs around $5 depending on the train. Anyways, when we went up to ticket lady asking to reserve a ticket for the night train from Krakow to Prague she said they were sold out for that night. We kind of freaked out for a minute haha. It wasn't until we asked another informations desk that told us to go somewhere else to ask, and that lady told us we'd have to do a different option. We were definitely relieved, but little did we know what was coming for us haha.
After fixing everything at the train station, we went over to Schindler's Factory. It's a museum based around a factory that was run by a guy named Schindler who pretty much saved a lot of Jews from the concentration camps. He was from Germany, but he treated the people who worked at his factory really well compared to other places. It was a really, really cool museum because it was interactive and was very informative about what was going on in Krakow during WWII and about the Ghetto. I've always been interested in WWII history, but this trip to Krakow made me interested in it even more. After that, we went over to the Jewish Quarter and walked around and then eventually made our way back to the train station.
So about the train situation. The lady told us that we would leave Krakow at 7:45 pm and then arrive at Katowice at 11:20 pm. Then we would leave Katowice at midnight and arrive in Prague at 6:45 am. We got on a bus at 7:45 and thought we like a 4 hour trip ahead of us until we got off. Like an hour later we arrived at a weird train station and realized it said Katowice on it haha. We went inside and looked on the departure board and realized that our train leaving at midnight wasn't even on there, but one leaving at 3 am was. It was currently 9pm, and sitting in a weird station for 6 hours really didn't sound appealing haha. After talking to a information lady who was confused about the what was going on, and talking to the ticket office lady who spoke no english, we figured we'd just go up to the platform and see if there was a train leaving at midnight haha. When we got up to the platform, there were a bunch of people waiting and we figured out that the storm from the night before had caused the train to be delayed. We ended up hanging out for about an hour and a half until it finally came around 1:30 am and we were able to get on. It was a little stressful and it definitely wasn't an ideal situation haha, but we made it to Prague! Sucked then, but now it's just a funny story.

Inside the Wawel castle

Oh heck yeah. That Lody ice cream I was talking about!

Buuut I'm so glad we put Krakow on our list! It was such a great place to go see, and I would definitely live there if I was ever given the opportunity. I loved it.

Kara