Yesaterday we got the train to Krakow in order to do the Auschwitz camp as a day trip. It cost about fifty quid and also took 7 and a half hours, which was a very. long. time. but we maanged to make it fly so it was fine. we are getting really good at being content or in the zone on long train journeys! Nothing else exciting happened apart from that I made ANna laugh so hard that she choked on her strawberry soft drink (which cost the equivalent of about 20 p - just thought i would put that in to emphasise how great for us the exchange rate is of polish and czech money!) - and thought that she might actually choke to death, she had gone so red and wasnt breathing for so long. It sounds very dramatic. It really was! ANd whe we got to our hostel it ended up being really nice wioth good showers and comfy beds. And only 6 pounds! Yusssss. We were so excited to go to bed. Sounds lame, but when you have been on a train for a whole day thats all you want to do really.

Today we went to Auschwitz on the bus, which was kind of bumpy and uncomfortable for an hour but kind of scenic too so we didnt mind. Then because it is so cheap we got a tourguide at the museum because we wanted to learn about the exhibits as we went round. The tour took about 2 hours, so we ended up being at the camps for almost the whole day what with travel time too so it fit in well.

The first thing we did was watch a documentry on the camp, which was using old video footage and photos of people at the camp. It was quite graphic and sad but we expected it to be more gruesome because we have heard quite a few things from other travellers on our way about it, but it wasn't as bad as we thought, which was a relief because alot of the rest of the museum itself we felt were pretty hard hitting. There were firstly lots of kept documents from headquarters and stuff in cabinets, and explanations of the places that people had been deported from all over Europe. We didnt even realise how many countries in Europe were affected by the camps, but there was a map showing where lots of prisoners had come from and literally almost the whole of Europe had been affected, excluding great Britain. The tour lady told us later that in Poland one person in every family had been affected in some way by Auschwitz even though most people thought of it as a Holocaust memorial - 80 percent of people who died wrere Jew.s. There is a memorial we took a photo of at Birkenau (which is the biggest camp in Europe) and it says on it that over 1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

The buildings we walked through in Auschwitz camp were originals, and in the first there were rooms with exhibits they had found after the camp was fled - there was one with a pile of glasses taken from people before they were killed, one with a pile of toothbrushes and combs, and one exhibit of shoes taken from people stretched down a corridor behind glass on both sides of the wall. The worst ones were the exhibits of womens hair and also the huge piles of suitcases that they had kept, which people arriving thought they were going to get back. That was the hardest part of the tour, because the figures and numbers of people are hard to get your head around but when you see their possessions it hits you a bit harder.

We also saw the prison cells and the death wall, which is where lots of people were shot. There is a nice memorial of flags and candles there. We sa lots of the indoor rooms with bunk beds and cells that were used to punish some prisoners, like one where they put four or more people in at a time, and it is too smallto lie down and sleep in. These are all htings we have actually learnt about but it was different actually being there, because it felt much more real.

AFter Auschwitz we got a shuttle to Birkenau which was titled an 'extermination camp', which was a bit nasty. It is absolutely massive, and was a complete shock after walking around the small part of Auschwitz we saw which was quite compact. We saw the main gate (in the picture) which is very famous and apparantly in Schindlers List. The train track in the picture leads directly into the camp, and also right up to the gas chambers. Lots of people transferred to this camp where Jews that werent selected but sentenced straight to death. The thought was very horrible but we couldnt imagine what it was like to be in the camp no matter how hard we tried. We walked all the way up the tracks and saw the ruins of the gas chambers at the end (we have been in the ones in Auschwitz and also the crematorium). There are lots of wooden shacks still standing in Birkenau, which were built by prisoners themselves as AUschwitz grew.

There is alot we saw today that was too much to write about! When people ask how Auschwitz is you arent really sure what to say, because we learnt alot from it and are glad we did the trip but at the same time it was very sad. I thought it would be pretty gruesome but it was just very sad and hard hitting to see all the stuff left behind by the prisoners.

We are getting a night train now to Prague so that we can meet Fran on time tomorrow afternoon. Until then! Anna and B