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12th May 2009
After a long train ride from Berlin, we arrived into Krakow around 6.30am, walked to our hotel and checked in. This time I was sharing with Lisa. We then met in the lobby to go for our orientation walk around Krakow. We walked in to the main square and wondered around looking at the market and the Belfry. Whilst we were looking at the Belfry the trumpeter, played his usual call, which from what we were told is an ancient tradition.
After wondering around Krakow Ashlea, Jo, Bob and myself went to get some lunch. We wondered around looking at places to eat and ended up eating at one of the many restaurants in the market square. We tried some of the local dishes, such as Pierogi, which are dumplings and were really good.
After a great lunch we walked up to the Wawel Castle and ran into Dan, Richard, Grant and Kara who were there to do the same thing. They sell limited tickets per day and unfortunately we couldn't go through the State apartments but we were still able to see a lot of the castle.After the long tour through the castle Dan, Jo, Richard and myself went to a pub for a few drinks before meeting the group for dinner. We ended up going to an Irish pub, which was in one of the alleys off from the main square. We then went back to the hotel and met the group for dinner and we were a little tidly by this stage and couldn't stop laughing when we met the group.
Our tour leader Tim took us to this restaurant and when we got there we were a little surprised to how posh it was. It looked like it came straight out of the 18th century and we felt out of place and we had to try and act sober which was a little difficult. The food however was really good. We tried a few more of the local dishes, which I was really enjoying and was very similar to Russian cuisine. After dinner we went to a few of the local bars and clubs before calling it a night.
13th May 2009
The next day we had a really early start as we were going out to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Some of us were a bit hung over and thankfully we were able to sleep on the bus as it was about an hour or so away from Krakow. We arrived at Auschwitz and booked an English tour with a guide who took us through both sights. The feeling once getting there was quite overwhelming. The tours were really well done. You were given headphone to wear so not matter where you were you could hear what the guide was saying, they were also done with the up most respect to the victims of this place. Walking through the sight and the information we were given by our guide it was just hard to imagine that this went on. What also shocked me was seeing people taking happy snaps in front of the buildings but worst still taking pictures in the crematorium. This, especially our guide who was polish and had relatives, who had survived here, horrified us all.
We then caught the shuttle bus across to Birkenau to meet our guide. Arriving here we were all shocked at how big this place was. I'd seen a scale model at the Imperial War Museum in London but it didn't do it justice. We went through some of the buildings, which were not destroyed by the Germans. Not wanting to be here any longer than we had to we left and waited for the shuttle bus back to Auschwitz to then get the bus back to Krakow.
We went back to the hotel and chilled out for a bit, then Dan, Richard and I went for a walk before meeting some of the group for dinner and drinks.
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