Krakow

Our last stop on the mid-term break was Krakow. Poland was not my first choice of venue and i was very reluctant to go. When i thought of Poland, I thought old, destroyed, dirty place...but man oh man was i wrong!

However, before we made it to Krakow, we had a bit of an adventure on the train! We got on the train in Vienna at 10:30pm and sat in the carriage we were supposed to be in. We shared it with some very odd Polish people...Anyway, the ticket man came around literally every hour to check our tickets and all was fine...until 4:30am when the ticket man came around and told us that we were actually on the wrong train and were heading towards Warsaw...fun times! After much confusion and a mix between english and polish, we learnt we were supposed to change trains at a specific stop in Poland which no one had told us. So we ended up getting a new ticket from Warsaw to Krakow. We spend an hour in Warsaw, got on the train to Krakow and finally made it to Krakow 12 hours later...missions!

We arrived at our hostel and it was lovely! It was homely and warm and they gave us crepes and coffee as we arrived. We had a really nice room and the people were great. We set off to explore the town which was the complete opposite to what i expected. It was beautiful and sunny and definitely not as cold as i expected!

The town itself is beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Prague, with lovely old buildings and a lake and bridge, lots of hostels and bars and a place full of visitors. We took a walk through the old town, to the castle, saw the famous dragon and then joined a tour through the Jewish district. Krakow has a lot of history to it and the fact that it was not bombed during WWII means that the buildings are all in tact.

After a long walk, we headed back to the hostel where we joined a all-you-can-eat polish food night with lots of vodka flowing. We met some interesting people from all over the world doing all sorts of adventurous things. We headed home early that night because we had a long day the next day involving a tour to Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was, well, quite hectic. It is of course very emotional and very surreal to be on the site of the Holocaust. The place is very well done and is a great museum. It should really be visited by everyone, and especially to take a tour and learn about what each area was.

After a long tour, we ended the day with a great polish dinner with ravioli and a variety of interesting types of soup! Sadly though, that brought our time in Poland to an end. Two days is really not enough and i will definitely be back to see some more areas and learn more and drink more vodka and eat more wonderful polish food!