After finishing writing the last Blog in Warsaw, Adam and I spent the evening in the garden of our hostel with Jacob, the man we met and directed from the underpass. He drunkenly poured forth his life story and lamented the state of his home country and city. He was also quite adamant that the state of the Polish loaf of bread and sausage had declined dramatically whilst he was working and studying in Britain. He let us in (a rare honor, apparently) on his carefully constructed (and very expensive) plans to follow the love of his life to America, and gave us lots of slurred advice on public transport companies and cities to visit should we have the time - we plan to meet up with him when we get back to Szczecin (his home town, poor thing).

We had a successful journey from Warsaw to Krakow, and yet another journey with a cabin to ourselves! This time due to our ingenious curtain ruffling and my hilarious grumpy-baby-crying sounds. Oh, and Adam trying to sound like 6 polish people talking loudly.

The train took about 4 hours and not a lot happened. I finished by book and accidentally walked in on a man using the toilet (surely that's what locks are for?) but other than that it was a fairly uneventful transit. When we arrived it was sunny and hot enough to unpleasantly heighten my awareness of my backpack straps, resulting in what I can only describe as neck cramp. We spent some time getting irritated at each others map and tram timetable reading skills and finally jumped on a crowded oven with wheels. Once we arrived at the hostel, however, we were greeted by a cheerful, English speaking man and a pleasant enough room. Success!

Yesterday evening we spent some time getting rid of our travel-dirt and tiredness and then went out with the intention of exploring the majority of the city in one night (like we'd managed to do in every other city!); because our 'full day' in Krakow was booked up with a visit to Auschwitz. We managed it quite well; saw some churches, heard some singing, watched some (brilliant) street dancers and had dinner in a little fish restaurant in the main square.

We wandered down to the river and spent some time enjoying the view in between discussing and rating passers by and being disgusted at the PDA happening next to us (a young couple - evidently with no room to go to - were practically eating each other's faces off in between grotesquely chewing gum or smoking). We found a huge, abstract, metal dragon that breathed fire every few minutes (a lengthy 'few minutes' when you're waiting, camera poised, to catch it mid-display) and a tatty stall selling maps of Krakow for 8zl (2 pounds) which we bought one of.

Then we headed back to the hostel through the 'new town'. Actually, we intended to walk through the new town but found it such a disgusting mixture of tower blocks and unattractive facades that we doubled back into the old town so the dirt under our feet could be ignored amidst the pretty church spires and arches.

Shamefully, we ended up in bed reading at about 9pm. I'd like to say we got up early to make up for it, but I'd be lying. We got up at about 8, sneakily using the staff shower (the only 'single' shower in the place) before having a not-unpleasant mix of sour-bread, cheese and ham for breakfast.

The receptionist told us that there were 3 buses every hour to Oświęcim ('Auschwitz' was the German spelling and pronunciation of this Polish town - 'w' is 'v' and 'c' is 'tz') so we went and stood at a busy bus stop for about 20 minutes before a mini-bus with 'oświęcim' stuck on it's front window drove by and we flagged it down. It cost about 7zl (1.50ish) to get there and it didn't look far on a map so I had thought that the journey would be 20 minutes, max. It ended up being over an hour (my crappy map-reading skills to blame, rather than traffic) and the bus had all of it's seats full and the aisle also crammed with people. Adam and I were sitting right at the back, with our knees crammed into the tiny seats, being bounced around. I'm not the best with small spaces and Adam hates heat so we weren't the happiest or most comfortable people in the world - probably apt, considering the nature of what we were going to see. I also got stung by a wasp for the first time in my life (it got in the way as I tried to lean my bare knees against the window, rather than crushing them against the seat in front), which after the initial pain had passed felt like a small triumph; I've always hated wasps, but it doesn't hurt so bad when they sting you!

When we arrived it was about a 2 minute walk from where the road stops to the main camp, Auschwitz I (the original camp where prisoners were forced to work in the nearby town on building chemical plants and barracks for the larger camp, Auschwitz II. Also the camp where the main gassing chambers were and still are.) It was an incredibly sobering experience for me; I had wanted to go out of morbid curiosity and with a simple 'tick in the box' attitude, but it was well worth the visit. It seems wrong to say 'you should go and see this' because it's hardly a beautiful, pleasant or cheerful event, but I think that as long as people can still go and witness the atrocities that can be achieved when authorities aren't questioned and when one man's ambitions are made the ambitions of an indoctrinated nation, there is still hope that something so awful will never be allowed to happen again.

Most of the original barracks are either still standing or have been rebuilt. The whole place, now that it has trees growing and grassy verges around all of the buildings, actually looks quite nice and peaceful. The barracks have high windows but they are large and let in lots of light; I don't even think they had bars across them, but escape was hardly a priority for the people kept here: the whole country was being combed for people to be exterminated and once someone escaped they were either caught and tortured, or the SS would take other 10 prisoners at random and shoot them in a line in the courtyard.

Each 'block' is either locked to the public or set out as an exhibition. Only 1 or 2 are actually designed to show the living conditions and treatment of the inmates, the rest are commissioned by the countries most affected (Hungary, Austria, Poland), each with a building dedicated to telling the story of their fight in the war and the amount of civilians they had taken. Whilst this was interesting to see and there were countless heartbreaking and haunting photos (one of an SS solider with a handgun pointed at a woman as she cowered away from him, cradling a toddler in her arms), I felt as if the countries involved were jostling for 'worst deal'. Each of them listed statistics and quotes, claiming to have lost the most people, the highest percentage of their people or buildings. But I suppose sympathy is all the tonic they have for such a disgusting section of our history.

The barracks dedicated to showing the living conditions of the prisoners were something I will remember for a very long time. Seeing the brick and straw beds, the farm-like lavatories and even the devices used to torture prisoners are unpleasant, but forgettable. The most haunting thing was walking through rooms filled to the ceiling or with deep pits filled with prisoners belongings. The SS would take everything from the inmates and sort through them with incredible detail (even brushes separated from combs).

There was a whole room filled with prisoner's shoes, one section with a huge wiry pile of glasses, a whole pit filled with pots and pans that the families desperately dragged with them as they were 'evacuated' from their homes. The worst was a huge display of the prisoner's hair. There was 2 tonnes of the stuff, plied along one wall. All of it - according to tests - contained traces of cyanide. Some of it was even still plaited.

Lastly, we went into the gas chamber. It's the only one remaining; the SS hurriedly destroyed or converted all of the others to try and cover their crimes. There is a sign asking for silence in the underground rooms, reminding visitors that thousands of people died in this one room, but I didn't need telling, I couldn't have spoken if tried.

There were two large concrete rooms, one a gassing chamber and one the crematorium where the bodies were burned. In the gassing room there were dummy showers once attached to the holes where the poison gas would seep through, this was so that the prisoners wouldn't panic and also so that the desperately thirsty would fight to have their mouths near the deadly nozzles and die more quickly. There is a path cordoned off through the middle of the room so that the walls aren't disturbed; on the walls are the stratches of the victims nails and the hurried carvings of names done as people realised what was happening and struggled to leave one last mark before they died. In the next room was the huge ovens used to burn the victims bodies; the ashes were then swept onto a trolley that followed rails set in the floor to dump it's load into a deep pit in the floor.

By the time we'd seen this we were worn out; it's an exhausting experience. We pondered whether to walk the 3km to Auschwitz II (it was mostly ruins but had the one most recognised sights of the Nazi terror; the SS watch tower and selection barracks with the rails leading up to them) but decided against it and headed back to the bus station, discussing what we had seen and the likelihood of it happening again. Adam didn't enjoy the experience, he said it was 'boring and depressing'; which I suppose it accurate. When all the emotion surrounding the place is subtracted, all you really see is lots of depressing rooms and lists of facts and statistics. But I would still say that anyone should visit it.

We managed to get a large, air conditioned express bus back to Krakow, which made the journey a lot more bearable. We then headed straight into town for dinner (for the second day in a row and the fourth time this holiday we failed to pack a lunch and therefore missed it). We found a rustic looking italian with a little annexe up some spiral stairs. I'm not sure the waitress appreciated my choice of seating when she was carrying our plates but it was very pretty. They had a huge chandelier covered in feathers for some reason. We had an average meal whist discussing the possibility of opening a restaurant where the waiters were all monkeys (we concluded that it would be too difficult).

We walked slowly back to the hostel, discovering a few pretty buildings and a street full of paintings. We also saw some really rubbish street theater and the amazing street dancers from yesterday. After getting back to the hostel, we spoke to the receptionist about where we should go next; we have 4 days in which to explore somewhere else and get back to Szczecin (we are in no hurry to spend a lot of time in that tower-block, dreary city). Both Jacob and the receptionist had immediately mentioned Zakopane; a town at the foot of the Tatra mountains in the south so we looked up trains, buses and hostels, settling on spending 3 nights in a chalet in Zakopane and taking a night train back to Szczecin on the last night of our holiday. Booked and sorted!

We are now heading to bed, so see you in Zakopane!