The Road to Auschwitz

We had a great weekend in Kraków, Poland this last weekend. This was my treat for Mark's birthday, and am chuffed that it all went to plan...

Got up at ridiculous-a-clock (3am or something) on Friday to catch the early morning flight out of Stansted. All pretty straightforward really... Kurt dropped us off at the airport in plenty of time for the plane (we parked at Mark's work), landed in Kraków on time, and the taxi was waiting for us at the other end to take us to the Hotel Pod Wawallem (thanks for the recommendation, Nigel!). That lunch time we mooched around in the rain for a bit, and sat in a cafe and had a few beers... then headed home for a snooze before a night out in an underground bar called The Tower Bar (these smoky little cellars are everywhere in the city), and then to a rather nice fish restaurant called Farina. We both had delicious food there - starting with a lovely seafood soup, bread with mushroom pate and truffle oil, and then a steamed Dorado fish with spinach and courgettes and salt roast potatos... followed by a naughty ice-cream with caramel sauce and a decent bottle of Malbec. Very nice!

Saturday, we got up fairly early for the trip to Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau; the two WWII concentration camps in the area. My goodness... words do not do it justice. A very humbling experience, and extremely moving. The sites were situated about an hour and a half away from Kraków by mini-bus, and we were shown around in a small group by an extremely sombre female tour guide. We walked around the camp itself, saw the 2.5 tonnes of human hair the Germans had collected from their victims to make fabrics for clothes with, and saw the thousands and thousands of pairs of shoes they had stockpiled from their victims. For me, the most harrowing part was the children's clothes and shoes, and for Mark the prosthetic limbs (of which there were many) made him realise that each of these very personal items represented a lost human life. The weather that day was befittingly cold and bleak... when we get our photographs online, I will let them do the talking for us. Not sure I can say I "enjoyed" the trip, but it was deeply moving and very interesting.

That evening, we went for a few drinks in the city, caught up with the football in an internet cafe, and then went to a polish folk-style restaurant for dinner, called Chlopskie Jadlo. An interesting assortment of food here! First off they serve you bread, with a mug of cottage cheese and (wait for it), a mug of lard!!?!!!! Is it possible that ANY country would serve this instead of butter these days?! I secretly found it delicious, but made sufficient puke noises for Mark's vegetarian benefit ;-) I then had a lovely pork and plum dish, with red cabbage and potatoes... delicious!

Sunday, we got up early (thankfully realised the clocks had changed - which could have ended in disaster with regard to flight times - made me wonder *how many* people missed their flight as a result of that!). We walked in the morning to the "wrong side of town", to find Oskar Schindler's factory. This was in a fairly bleak industrial part of town, inhabited mainly by very vocal polish drunks and their dogs... the factory is pretty amazing to see, but is made hardly anything of by the Polish tourist board - although we got the impression that this was due to change in the next year. I am amazed that they hadn't jumped on the bandwagon when the film was released? Anyway, we were given a brief tour by a polite young man that seemed to be something to do with the regeneration programme, although we weren't quite sure... lunch time we headed to the ancient Jewish quarter called Kazimierz and visited an interesting Jewish bookstore (bought our reading material for the flight home; books about Schindler and Auschwitz). We had some delicious lunch (spinach and mozarella on toast) in a little square there overlooking the Old Synagogue, and then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around in the sunshine (glorious weather on Sunday) and sitting in the main square and drinking iced coffee and the rather gorgeous polish cheesecake. In fact my cheesecake quota and Omnicek beer quota was fairly impressive over the course of the weekend ;-> (......and garlic - the Poles LOVE their garlic!).

We had a rather nice pizza in an Italian-polish folk restaurant, watched the sunset over the Wistla river by the Castle, and then sadly got our taxi back to the airport... fantastic! We had a lovely weekend, and Mark loved it too (which was the main thing!).

Tomorrow, I am off to London for work, but then am heading off on my own to visit Jen in Glasgow on Weds night - cannot wait to see her!!!!!!!!!!! Like many of my friends, it has been far too long since I saw her last! SOOO looking forward to meeting her child, Helena, too.

Speak soon - wish me luck for the drive tomorrow. Let's hope my TomTom makes it! ;-)

Best wishes
Hayls
xxxx