Krakow is Anything but Whacko--POLAND

Our group left on Thursday evening at nine p.m. at which time we met our 8th and final group member, Kevin. 2 thumbs up for Kevin, he broke the ice a little. So we got on the train and settled in to our overnight bunks, please note this was going to be a ten hour train ride. Soon after we get a knock on the girls train by the boys suggesting we start heavily drinking to pass the time. I am almost 90% positive our group of 8 were the best customers this conductor has seen in a loooong time. One huge bottle of beer cost after conversion $1.50-mind you I spent $7 in the NY Airport on one beer at Chilis. This means that my intake could technically be at least quadrupled without wasting a single cent! We started playing the game where the group knows the name posted on your forehead but you do not, and you figure it out by asking questions. If the group answers "no" to your questions, you drink; if the group answers "yes" then the group drinks. And so that went for a few hours til it was time to pass out.

Breathtaking Zakopane. Check it out. Border of Poland and Slovakia.

Licking the salt off the wall in the salt mine...yummmmyyy

Group on the train


After minimal sleep we arrived in Krakow at about 7 am. The cold chill of the city could not break my smile, I immediately loved it. The town used to be the capital of Poland but is now just one of the oldest cities in the country with the youngest population. The streets were crowded with young students dressed adorably ready for school or work. The buildings were so beautiful with gorgeous architecture.


We soon arrived to our hostel, my first hostel experience, which goes by the name of "Mamma's Hostel." So adorable. We napped then ventured out to explore Krakow. We went inside one of the oldest Cathedrals in Poland which if you ask me personally the tour was about an hour tour long, then ventured to a town 45 minutes away to visit the second oldest salt mine in the world. The salt mine was mind blowing. We took 54 flights of stairs downstairs literally to this underground world and toured it for about 2 hours. Our tour guide was absolutely ridiculous. Her game plan was to make sure her tour left no room for questions, so at the end of every sentence she would add something like: “And no those horses are not real,” and pointed to the clearly stuffed animal. After the salt mine we returned to the hostel and took a long needed nap.

Salt crystal chandelier

Jump for joy!!!

After we awoke from our naps we found that the boys in our group ditched us so we went out with some kids in the hostel. One kid was named Andrew and had been traveling Europe by himself for four and a half months; Krakow was his final stop, also James who was an English self-proclaimed bad boy who had ran out of money in Krakow and decided to get a job at Momma’s Hostel, and we also went out with 2 kids who were coincidentally studying in Prague.

I must inform you, dear reader, that Liza and I had never intended for this night to get as crazy as it did. In fact, while we were getting ready for the evening we repeated over and over how we just wanted to get a “healthy buzz.” So why when we showed up at this small and homey pub did we decide it was a good idea to take an Absinthe shot with James…I will never know. EDIT OUT DRINKING. So we decided this pub was becoming to familiar and wandered on over to another more hoppin pub where we met up with the fellows in our group. This is where things start to get fuzzy! Drinking, laughing, having a great time at this pub, real group bonding. We want to dance, so we head over to a night club. Crazy, crazy club or that of which I can remember haha. I start dancing with this cutie from Poland named Robert when Liza decides she’s ready for bed. I guess I give Robert my e-mail address because I wake up with this amazingly hilarious email:

Hello

I met you yesterday in the disco, we spent a great night dancing together, don't you?

So if you want to spend next gorgeous night, tell me what time could we meet and where?

I will come to you, I promise. You are the most beautiful and charming girl in the world.

Lots of Love

Robert

HAHHAHAHA. Don’t you?

Our wake up call the next morning was for 8 am because we were going to Aushwitz by a two hour bus ride. Well from my description of the evening before you could tell that my morning after was going to be less than pretty. After lying in bed and screaming “WHHHYYY!” I decide to try to get up. Imagine Liza and I sitting in a bus whose seats were so upright I felt like I was leaning forward dealing with the worst hangovers of our lives. Long story short, Liza puked in her had and I in a Lay’s Potatoe chip bag until the driver saw me in the rearview and pulled the entire bus over. Classy, the other riders really enjoyed that visual.

After two hours we arrived in Aushwitz and immediately the weather drops 10 degrees and the sun was no longer shining. It was the saddest place I’ve ever visited. I must complain for a second, the welcome video and the tour guide were so impersonal and unemotional that I was very unhappy with the effect they left on me. The facts the tour guide was repeating were common knowledge about the Holocaust. However bad the tour was could not deter from how heart wrenching it was actually being at Aushwitz the place at which 1.3 million people were slaughtered. Birkenau was the half of the tour that really made me ill, seeing the bunkers, the train tracks at which people were dropped off, standing in the place in which Jews were chosen to either work to death or walk straight into the gas chambers, experiencing one of the cold days in which they had to stand outside in and work for 12 hours. It was something I will never forget.

We spent the evening going out to a nice group dinner and hitting up a few pubs. The people in Poland dance so very weird.

On our last day in Poland we took a two hour bus ride to the town of Zakopone to see the spectacular and awe-inspiring mountains. We took the gondola to the very top of this mountain and it was simply unbelievable. Of course I couldn’t walk the entire trail because I slipped on my ass four times before we even started. Then on the gondola back the radio was playing, “Time After Time,” and we managed to get a majority of people to sing aloud and it was hilarious. The town was very cute and after a delicious meal of grilled sausages we head back to Krakow. Say goodbye to Momma’s Hostel and take the train back to Praha.

Classes begin today.

Miss you all.