Krakow

Krakow, Poland really impressed me. I came in with pretty low expectations considering no one ever really talks up Poland, aside from our friend who we met there, Krys. We got into Krakow around 7:30 PM last Thursday. Immediately, we showered and walked to the Old Town Square. It is one of the largest squares in Europe and it is incredibly cool. Throughout the square are restaurants – cheap too! So we went and ate some Perronis and Polish sausage. The food was incredibly good everywhere we went. I wish we had had this food in Spain! After we ate, we walked around and went to a few bars then called it a night.
Day 2 in Poland we went and saw the Wawel Castle. We woke up, grabbed some breakfast and started hiking to the castle. It was really cool; it is up on a hill and overlooks Krakow. So we went and ventured around that for a while. Hundreds of years ago, they supposedly had a dragon that tortured the people of Krakow for years. Finally, a chemist decided to put acid into a sheep and then lure the dragon into eating the sheep. This worked and he was deemed a hero. So now at the castle, there is the lair that the dragon allegedly lived in. So of course we went and checked it out ;) The rest of our day was spent hanging out in the square, shopping around, and eating great food. It was a beautiful day out and really relaxing. It was nice to slow things down after being on the go for 5 days straight!
Day 3 was by far the most interesting! We took a train to the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was insane, I couldn’t believe I was actually there considering we have learned so much about it in school. It was insane seeing the last remaining gas chambers and crematoriums. It was also crazy seeing the wall where the majority of executions took place. Just thinking about how many people died there is incredibly overwhelming. Auschwitz was just the first camp we saw. We took a shuttle bus over the second concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. You could tell that they knew what they were doing when they built this camp. It was MUCH MUCH bigger and laid out a lot better. The thing is though, not much of this camp actual exists anymore. The majority of buildings are ruins because the Nazis tried to burn everything down and erase the evidence. Pretty much all of the gas chambers and crematoriums are just ruins now. It was still cool to see, and we saw a lot of pictures of how it used to look so we still were able to get a good idea!
On Sunday we were set to depart to Budapest, Hungary. However, because the Eurail timetable messed up, we ended up in Prague again! We were told online, at the ticket counter, and by multiple workers on board that the train EC 110 would be going to Budapest. Us and other people, also headed to Budapest, jumped on the train and ended up in Prague. So we got off, spent a few hours there and grabbed a bite to eat. We ended up catching a night train from Prague to Budapest and arrived at 10 AM on this Monday morning. We are about to head out and see Budapest for the day and head to Bratislava, Slovakia in the morning. Love you all!