Krakow and Auschwitz with James

Post date: Jun 10, 2019 2:2:53 PM

James is the flakiest friend I have. His cancel rate hoovers around the 50% mark, which is the “I won’t hang out with you anymore” cutoff.

But, he was excited willing to go to Krakow with me. He even suggested we should go to Auschwitz!

I assumed he wasn’t going to be at the airport when the plane left (again, he doesn’t have a great show-up rate).

But he was at the airport! Even though I had scheduled our flights for absurd hours (I will admit this, but only now).

I’ve always noted two things about Poland: 1) I love traveling there because it’s a lovely country that’s SUPER cheap and 2) because everything there (the people, the buildings, the everyting) is very distinctly “Polish”.

James put it best: “These people all look like they have seen a war crime”

Which is why it didn’t seem unusual that the trashcan in the bathroom had this on the lid.

James and I have a similar approach to travel, we don’t actually want to do all the tours and touristy things. We just want to point at the touristy things.

See that neat-o statue? Don’t really need to know what it’s about, let’s just point.

We did however, make an exception for the Schindler Museum. Given our trip to Auschwitz the following day, it seemed appropriate.

One problem. James doesn’t stand in lines. Luckily, he made an exception (just this once!)

There was a wall with the names of the thousand + jewish lives he saved.

And a wall with the faces of the people as well.

At which point we needed a drink. Enough tourist things, let’s get back to pointing.

Look the Krakow Castle! (points)

What a delightful looking alleyway (points)!

Ohh cool looking clocktower (points)

In all seriousness, Krakow is a lovely city and we really enjoyed wandering around, eating terrible cake and drinking. We tried to find a pricey cocktail, but to no avail. Seriously, the most expensive one we found was only 5 euros.

Sunday morning one of us woke up bright and early (me) and went and got the rental car (also me). That person came back to the flat where the other person was sleeping (James) and they were roused.

And we almost didn’t make the tour, because you’ll like this… we went to the wrong Auschwitz. Turns out there are 3! We had to pay an insane parking price, before running to the other one.

Similar to the trip to Warsaw, I was completely baffled by the scale. Also, reflecting on these photos is better than without words.

What remains of the ovens where more than 3 million people were killed using zyklon b and then cremated. Insane.