Polish Adventures

This past weekend we added Poland to our list of countries that we visited. It was one crazy adventure that we will never forget that's for sure.

We got in on Friday night. The hotel was right next to the Warsaw train station since we had a 6 am train on Saturday to go to Krakow. The Hard Rock was next to the train station on the other side, so we checked in to the hotel and dropped our luggage off, then went to grab dinner...NACHOS! :) Since it was late and we had to get up a little after 4 am, we headed back to the hotel.

Saturday morning we got on the train to Krakow and both proceeded to take a nap on the train. This train ride was not like most of the others we've had in Europe. The train was quite bumpy (to an extreme) and kept stopping and stopping and stopping some more. Somewhere on our scheduled 3 hour train ride, we managed to stop for about an hour and didn't move at all. Then, some other places along the way, we stopped for about another 45 minutes in total...so we arrived about 1 hour and 45 minutes behind schedule. This really was not cool because we had only planned on having 15 minutes before we needed to catch a tour to go out to Auschwitz. So...we completely missed our tour. It was a nice bus tour that drove you to Auschwitz and you received a guided tour. Instead, we got to the train station at 10:45, we went to the information desk and bought train tickets that left at 11:45 (we just missed the one at 10:45). So, we hung out for an hour before getting on the train that was supposed to be a 90 minute ride. Ha! Again, fooled by the thought we were in a Western European country where the trains may be close to on time all around. We got there about 1:40, took a taxi with some other Americans on the train and got in line to take the tour starting at 2 pm. We didn't realize that it would actually be another hour before we really got to take the tour and that you couldn't go on your own to tour Auschwitz between the hours of 10 and 3 (had to pay for the guided group tour). We paid and then watched a quick film then waited some more before finding out that we would get on a bus to go tour Auschwitz II (Birkenau) at 2:35 that would get back at 4 pm to Auschwitz I (the main camp). We needed to be on a train back to Krakow shortly after 4 pm...so we would not get to see Auschwitz. We then made a split decision that we would wait some more until 3 pm and tour it on our own. It was worth the wait and headache, but man were we cursing the Polish rail system!! Ruined our entire day!!

At 3 pm, we toured (via a fast walk in the rain) Auschwitz on our own. It was quite humbling to be in a place where so much wrong had happened in the past. This camp is still highly intact compared to Birkenau, which was even worse for the prisoners. The displays at Auschwitz will take your breath away and just make you wonder how can such evil exist in this world. We saw the displays of belongings that were taken away from the prisoners upon arrival at the camps, saw their living conditions and also saw where they were killed by execution, gas chamber and incineration. There was so much more to see there, but we had only 1 hour to see everything unfortunately.

After leaving Auschwitz, we got back on the train a little after 4 pm and again our 90 minute train ride was almost 2 hours. We had less than 2 hours to see Krakow, a beautiful city that we had recommendations to spend 2 days here. We took off at an extremely fast walk and went to the fire department so Gene could get his usual picture. Then, we headed to the Old Town to visit the Hard Rock Cafe. Luckily, the Old Town area let us knock out several of our key stops!! Got to see a beautiful church, the Main Market Square and a fountain there. We got our usual souveniers and even found a guy selling beautiful water color paintings. We then headed back to the train station to grab some McDonald's to eat on the train that was scheduled to leave at 8 pm. Again, HA!! We ate our McDonald's on the platform and waited, waited and waited some more. Our train was delayed 80 minutes and finally left about 9:20 pm. Damn them as we could have spent a lot more time sight-seeing!! Argh! At this rate, we were scheduled to get in at 11:30 so this put us at 1 am-ish. We found a compartment in the train and happened to be by ourselves and went to sleep. I kept waking up and realizing that we were stopping about every 30 or 40 minutes and stopping for about 20-30 minutes each time. We were delayed another 1 hour and managed to get in to Warsaw at 2 am on the dot. We spent about 14 or more hours waiting or on a train at this point in time. We were entirely exhausted, even though we didn't do much. It was a long and not so fun day.

We slept in until a little after 9 am. We got up and grabbed some free breakfast at the hotel. Then, headed out to see Warsaw. First we had to hit the Hard Rock again. One of my co-workers, that moved over from the US, grew up in Warsaw, Missouri - she and her husband had been in Warsaw the weekend before and they were out of the traditional white HRC shirts - so we picked them up a couple. From there, we walked to the Old Town. It was a beautiful area of town. Warsaw had been almost devasted by WWII and the buildings that were left are still very beautiful. We walked around the city walls that were still there and all over the Old Town. We tried to find a fire department that Gene found online but had no luck. We had enough time to go find some lunch and then head back to the hotel for the luggage and to the airport.

It was a super, super quick weekend and full of memories that we'll never forget! But worth the trip. We would love to go back, especially to Krakow, and spend more time at a slower pace. And for anyone else that goes there....AVOID the Polish rail system until they get it upgraded to a more modern system like the rest of Europe!! (pictures will hopefully be up soon)