The first half of spring break, Ethan, Nick, and I were in Poland. We flew into Warsaw on Easter Sunday evening/night and took a night-train to Krakow. We arrived in Krakow at about 3am on Monday. Because we had had a change of plans that let us arrive earlier, we had no lodging until Monday night; we ended up hanging out in the train station until we could hitch a ride on a train to Wieliczka--the town with the famous salt mines.
We arrived in the town and had an early tour of the mines. It lasted about an hour or an hour and a half and was very interesting. The best part (in my opinion) was the chapel in the salt mines. Everything in the chapel was carved out of salt, including several statues and chandeliers. It was very beautiful and incredibly impressive.
After taking a bus back to Krakow, we planned to go to Wadowice (Pope Saint John Paul II's hometown). We took a bus there and explored the town. We went to the church there; it was very beautiful, even though it was in a very small town. We also had lunch here. I had the largest kebab (a Turkish wrap, kind of like a gyro, but with a tortilla) I have ever had--it was at least a foot and a half long. We ended the visit with a trip to the JPII museum. That was also a very interesting tour (although the guide spoke in Polish, so I was limited to taking in pictures and captions).
We got back to Krakow fairly late and decided to check into our AirBnb and get food. We settled on burgers for the first night (they are easy and usually have English speaking workers). After eating, we turned in for the night.
The next day was an early one, as we wanted to get to Czestchowa early. In that town, there is a monastery with the miraculous image of Our Lady (aptly named 'Our Lady of Czestchowa'). The monastery was very cool and seeing the image was awesome. We were there early in the day, but there were still a lot of people there (apparently several thousand people visit it every day). We then had breakfast (very cheap but very good) and started trying to get back to Krakow. This turned into a bit of an adventure. There was a train going to Krakow, but it was going to the wrong station for us, and it was leaving hours after we would have liked. We decided to try a bus. None of the ladies selling tickets at the bus station spoke English very well, and all but one did not even try to help (of course, none of us spoke Polish--but we are Americans, so it's to be expected). The one lady who helped us pointed us outside and seemed to give us a station number. We went and looked but found nothing. We then saw the lady motioning to us from a door on the side of the building. Not knowing what else to do, we followed her inside. She appeared to tell us to wait outside a door, and then she left us. After several minutes of standing in a very narrow hall with several doors along it, the door she motioned to opened, and a woman came out. I took that as our cue to go in, so we did. Inside were a couple of Polish women typing on very old keyboards. I greeted them with a 'dzien dobry' and was greeted likewise. I then asked if they spoke English. One of them said she spoke a little. I started talking to her, explaining that we wanted to go to Krakow. She understood and started typing stuff into her computer. She found us a bus and asked for our passports. We turned them over to her so should could get information for the tickets from them. Somehow, she put in our names in three different ways: I was Thorp Brendan, Nick was Nicholas Waddell, and Ethan was Andrews Ethan King. She then needed a phone number. While looking for the selection for an American phone (she had to scroll through all the countries of the world until she reached 'United States,' however, she decided to click the arrow all the way down instead of dragging the sidebar, which I think caused Nick great agony and distress to watch), she seemed to drop an expletive in English (I turned to the other two and said, "She speaks English"), but she got it done. She printed our tickets, we thanked her (jinkue or something like that), and we were on our way. After leaving, we realized that the tickets did not say where the bus would pick us up. We tried to figure it out, but to no avail. We walked back into the train station and talked to the first lady again. She wrote a '14' on top of our ticket, so we stood by station 14. Eventually, a bus pulled up; it was the correct one, and we made it back to Krakow.
That night in Krakow, we ate authentic Polish food. We spent the equivalent of about 10 bucks and had more food than the three of us could finish, and it was delicious.
The next day, our last full one in Poland, we spent the morning wandering around the city. We visited the cathedral (it is magnificent, rivaling even some of the churches in Rome), the castle in Krakow, and wandered the streets. I ate a paczki (a doughnut like Polish pastry) and ate food at a recommended German restaurant. Ethan and I each had a liter of beer (faintly banana flavored--also recommended by a friend).
In the afternoon, we went to Auschwitz. Needless to say, words are not really going to do it justice. I would recommend people go and see it--it is not something that should be forgotten--but be ready to get hit hard, particularly in a few places. The one light in that dark place is the cell of St. Maximilian Kolbe. The memorial to this great Saint is a beautiful site amidst so much horror; a reminder that, even in the worst times and places in history, there are still good and hope-filled people.
The next day was spent bumming around Krakow until it was time to leave for Ukraine.
