Saturday, August 13, 2016

A guest sees more in an hour than the host in a year

One of the streets of Krakow
The title above has got to be one of my favorite sayings ever. I feel as though it's incredibly accurate. I valued my time in every city and every moment I was abroad. I took the time to look at everything, try everything and love every moment while doing it. I am home now and yet all I do is still see myself back in Europe. I remember every detail, every person, everything and I miss it more than ever now. I also keep swearing I'm going to runaway back to Europe whenever it's too hot here, which it always is. I'm sure you're wondering where my trip ended and my trip came to a halt when I got to Krakow, Poland.

I love these carriages
     My whole trip I met tons of people around my age, whether a ta younger or older and all of us had the same thing in common which was to go to Poland and see Auschwitz. A dark past that is still so present. I had to meet at least 40 other people who were all going here. It was meaningful to see so many other people, especially young people who wanted to never forgot, who wanted to revisit the past to learn from it and to pay their respects. I spent two days in Krakow, one seeing the city and one in Auschwitz. I'll start off with the city part first. The city of Krakow is a boring city, the people there realize it, so there isn't much there besides a really cool market and square. I did a walking tour and then some shopping of course. I found a Mexican restaurant that was just about as far from a Mexican restaurant as it was in Dublin. The guy just kept repeating that the Jalapenos they had were imported from Mexico. So I guess that is now what makes a Mexican restaurant. Main market square was pretty and I really enjoyed shopping around especially because my hostel was about a 20 minute walk to it, it was a nice walk. When I left Krakow, I took a taxi to the airport and I met such a lovely man. He was learning English so he could move to Australia and he was happy to have me help him with it. He was saying how he was struggling and how he couldn't imagine that I was able to do my trip all by myself for so long. I told him one of my favorite sayings which is 'Where there is a will, there is a way'. He had my write it down for him and he was truly obsessed with the quote after I told him it. If you want to do something bad enough you will find a way. There is always a way no matter how hard the path may be.


     Now onto the more difficult part of my trip which was Auschwitz. I caught a bus here at about 6 in the morning with a tour group. We split into 5 people groups and had headphones on while our tour guide whispered into a microphone on her shirt. The whole experience is surreal and very quiet. No one is talking much and everyone is just silently shuffling around following their tour guides. Auschwitz has now been turned into a variety of museums to commemorate the former concentration camp. They have rooms dedicated to the belongings of those left there, such as a room of shoes, prosthetics, luggage and even a room of hair. There was one exhibit in particular that sticks out in my mind. This exhibit had videos playing from videos of families at the park and river, doing fun family things and then slowly the exhibit turned to Nazi rallies and camps. It was, well honestly I don't have any words to describe any of this, I don't know how I felt, I don't know how to describe it. We soon went onto Birkenau which was where the majority of crematoriums were held. We saw where certain ones had been blown up and the tracks that many came in on. The whole thing was surreal but I find it crazy that NO grass grows around where the crematoriums were. It is a solid 3 feet of dirty with not one blade of grass. The rest of the site is covered in weeds, flowers and grass except certain areas. I feel like I do not need to add captions to these photos.


You might wonder why end my trip on this, well it worked out for the way I was moving across Europe first and I didn't think of it as me ending on a bad note, it was more, me ending on a solemn note to think about the past, present and future. I won't forget the past, I will honor it in the present and it has shaped my future, which is ever so bright.

I think it's a sign for me

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