Polishing our Polish

On May 10th, we said good-bye to the Czech Republic and drove across the border to Poland. Our first stop on the tour was Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp that housed 1.5 million people during WWII. When we pulled up, it was nothing like I expected. It was orderly and not at all what you initially imagine. Upon entering and buying our ticket, we realize that Ellie’s camera has broken, much to our huge disappointment. We hit a bump on the bus and it fell into the aisle. The lens is apparently broken and it doesn’t take photos. If it had to happen sometime, at least it happened right before we went into Auschwitz because it’s pretty hard to remain upset about a material possession for long at a place like that. We began our tour watching real footage of the camp and it’s prisoners. Afterwards, we split into groups to meet our tour guides. They showed us around Auschwitz and the grounds. It was really creepy because everything is original and there are the same bunkers the prisoners were kept in. The guide opened our tour by pointing at a row of trees and saying that those trees we were looking at were planted by prisoners and are now fully grown today. Also, she mentioned the path we walked on was the exact same one.

Going under the archway, that says “Work will set you free” in German, we continued on to the huge exhibit of all of the artifacts left behind in the camp.

They have one showcase that is absolutely just full of human hair and another with children’s clothes. We were emotional pretty much the entire time. The worst bits were the original beds and prison cells, the original walls where prisoners were shot in the back of the head, as well as the original crematorium.

The Women's Bunk, where they slept 5 to each bed.

After our tour, we took a shuttle bus to Auschwitz II Birkenau, the second concentration camp that was built by the Nazi’s. This camp is absolutely huge compared to little Auschwitz. This camp is about 50 football fields and is mostly destroyed as the nazi’s destroyed it as the war was coming to an end. We saw the original train tracks where the Jews got off thinking they were at their new home only to realize they were at their hell.

They still have all of the original Nazi watch towers over the whole camp and the original toilets and beds in Auschwitz II Birkenau. We recommend that everyone go see Auschwitz sometime in their life. It was the most humbling experience and we had to keep reminding ourselves that this was real and that this really happened and that we weren’t on some movie set for a horror film. It was surreal and emotional how one man can slaughter an entire race.

Moving on from Aushwitz, the tour drove to Krakow, Poland. Upon arriving in Krakow, I knew I was going to love it. It felt much more authentic than Prague. The Polish were instantly perceived by us as passionate and exciting people. We checked into our group hostel where we were rooming with two Australian girls on our tour. The hostel was clean and nice even if the receptionist was as mean as a snake. The tour group was going out for dinner but we had heard polish cuisine wasn’t top on vegetarian specialities so we were so excited to find the only vegetarian restaurant in Poland to be right next door to our hostel. So, we skipped the group dinner and headed to Bar Vega, home of authentic Polish vegetarian food and a delightful fresh salad bar. We are quickly learning as backpackers that our main diet consists of bread and cheese as it’s the cheapest option and the only vegetarian friendly thing that we can often steal from breakfast for lunch at our hostels. Vegetables are few and far in between on a budget so this place was a real gem. We order potato pancakes with mushroom sauce, a soybean rump steak with onions and mushroom and cabbage pierogis. We split everything and it only cost us 5.00 USD each. The soybean rump steak was a bit odd but I should have guessed that, but everything else was perfect.


Afterwards, we met up with the group and were keen on getting a few Polish beers.. To meet up we walked through the main square that Krakow is built around and it was absolutely stunning at night and all the locals were outside drinking and eating. This square is in competition with St. Mark’s square in Venice for being the largest square in Europe. After meeting up with group, we saw a huge huge group of polish people in the middle of the square wearing scarves and screaming and chanting things. Apparently, there was some sort of soccer championship won and everyone was out celebrating.


Kelly and Carlos, our South African tour guide

Everyone was getting drunk and smashing beer bottles and shouting and giving high fives. It was fantastic and so real. Poland is famous for flavored vodka so we tried honey vodka which was smooth before heading to a sports bar with part of our group where all of the Polish people were celebrating their win. We slipped away just as the riot police embarked with their crazy masks on the square to break up the broken glass party going on. At this place, we so excited to find out it was a brewery that served Polish wheat beer out of huge personal table taps. They give you a beer tower that is so huge it serves about 20 people and everyone just sits and enjoys.


The Polish men kept breaking out in song about the soccer event and began teaching us English people how to sing the songs in Polish to lead the chanting. It was amazing, even if they were just humoring our funny accents. We all tottered home, excited for our free day tomorrow.

The next day we awoke and went into the square to catch our free bike tour. Phillip from Latvia was our tour guide on the 3.5 hour tour.



He toured around the trendy Jewish area called Kasimerz. Krakow is a huge student town approximately a whole quarter of the population is student age.


Ellie is standing in front of the Jewish Ghetto Monument. It is a square filled with nothing but empty iron chairs to signify how it looked when the last of the jews were being taken away to concentration camps, the once full ghetto was filled with nothing but furniture and other items the Jews couldn't bring with them.

We saw the Jewish Ghetto including where Schindler lived while involved with helping the Jews as well as Schindlers original factory.


Apparently, Krakow was completely off the radar of tourists until Spielberg did his movie, Schindler’s List. He showed us the River Wista as well as the castle on the hill. He also told us a funny story about this dragon which a piece of folklore from Krakow. This dragon was eating virgins and tried to eat the King’s daughter but apparently they fed him a sheep full of sulfur instead and when he went for a drink of water in the river, he exploded from the sulfur and water combo. His bones are hung above the church next to the castle still.


It’s a very odd story. Even more odd, is they have a statue dedicated to this dragon which blows fire from it’s copper mouth every few minutes, but a few years ago, the only way to get the fire to come out of the statues mouth was to send a text message to this number and then it would send you one back to tell you the fire would blow fire just for you. We thought that was hilarious that even Krakow is so modern and trying to capitalize on the boom of cell phones with a national monument of sorts.



After, the bike tour, I had felt like I was catching a cold so we got some soup from the veg place and came across this crazy man who felt personally offended that ellie has her nose pierced and he wanted some of my soup. He didn’t speak, but just made signs at us and was very odd. After dealing with his signs, I took a nap for a while. After I woke up, we walked to the castle hill and the church, saw the bones and took some photos and then sat on the hill next to the river enjoying the views and the sun before heading home, eating our final helping of vegetarian dumplings and drinking lots of hot tea for my cold opting to stay in and relax instead of hit the town again.

the main square of the city


At the castle:






We also learned that Poland invented the bagel, they were sold on every street corner. so of course we had to try one.




............

The next day we headed to mountainous Zakopane and arrived at 10 am. We checked into our hotel and went for a walk with our group to explore our options as what to do in this little mountain town.

view from the hotel room

Zakopane is normally brilliant for skiing in the winter with snow-covered mountains and chair lifts and cable cars, but in the summer there wasn’t a whole lot of skiing or chair lifting going on. We walked around for a bit exploring the scenery and the Tatra mountains.






Everywhere we went there some vendor selling what we thought was bread in all different shades of browns and whites.

One of them offered us a sample and then we finally realized that it was cheese. It was so werid, it looked so much like bread. We tried going to three tourist offices until one girl spoke decent English to tell us that our only choice for getting to the top of the mountains were a train that took you to the top. So we took the train, enjoying the views and then walked around a bit, taking tons of photos of the Tatras.



us on the mountain, with the small town below us

We sunbathed with a ton of Polish people at the top who were all just in their bras and underwears.

We got hot and got a beer and were asked to sit with this Polish girl and this awful American man who was balding from Georgia. He wanted to exploit all of his “travel knowledge” but got off on a bad start with us as the first thing he asked us is if the English were really as stupid as he thought they were. We were so annoyed as he completed his list of every place he’s ever gone and gave us his thoughtless political opinions. The girl, Blanca, he was with was really cool though so we invited her to Florida. After our beer, we headed back down and met up with some of our group and had a tall skinny ice cream and went back to the hotel, all agreeing that Zakopane would be absolutely perfect in the winter around Christmas time with it’s little log cabins and quaint architecture. We all had happy hour with wine at one girls hotel room before heading out to dinner with the group at a traditional Polish restaurant. I had a potato pancake and Elie tried some fish that was whole with bones and head! It was pretty nasty, but mine was delightful.

The main dishes in Poland are always lots of meat... (this is for you mama z)



They had traditional music from a band and Carlos, our tour guide enlightened us with his dancing before we paid the bill and all went to bed, getting ready for Budapest the next day!

Live traditional Polish music



Traditional Dancing??


Poland was absolutely fantastic and is totally somewhere we want to explore more what with it’s varied scenery, including the mountains, the ocean and all the big cities in between.

Czech It Out!

We arrived in Prague after a long night of travel which included a bus to Golders Green in NorthEast London, a bus to Stansted airport and our last English breakfast at 5 in the morning, including a serious questioning of Ellie’s carry-on because of all the locks we were carrying for the hostel lockers. We were a little delirious and exhausted with all of our luggage but excited as our Easyjet flight touched down at the Prague airport around 9:30. During the landing we could see quaint Czech villages and towns and couldn’t wait to start exploring the Czech Republic. We changed out pounds to Krowns which is an entirely different form of money as 200 Krowns is merely 5 pounds so the conversion was a little tricky. We managed to buy a metro card for 24 hours to get to our Couchsurfing host’s house in Hradcanska, a neighborhood right near the centre of Old Town. We got a bus and then a metro with ease and that was about all that was easy as we struggled to find the house from the metro station, asking a man covered in paint who was working on sanding something on the sidewalk, who spoke no English whatsoever and could only grunt basic directions accompanied with hand signs at us, but eventually we found it and we were so happy we did because Ines and Michael, who are a young couple, both 26 have a very beautiful apartment. We had to wait for Ines to meet us from work and we were about 45 minutes early so we sat on her shaded porch in her garden out back and waited for her.

(Us on Ines's back porch, waiting with our things!)

When we met her, she was rushing off back to school so she gave us a key and our own room, breathlessly excusing herself. Ines is apparently a working on her PHd in biology and very busy with thesis papers and experiments so we knew we wouldn’t see much of her or Michael, who just started a new job. Their flat was fantastic though, as it had been passed down through Ines’s family for years, sort of a living museum and our room was huge and even had a knight in full armor in it.


Our room..




Anxious to explore, we dropped our things off and headed to the Charles Bridge which separates Ines’s neighborhood from the Old Town and is a famous landmark.


We found a little outdoor café on the way and tried our first dark Czech beer, soaking up the sun and costing us a mere 29 Krowns = 1 pound or 2 dollars. At the restaurant there were these pretzels that hang on every table to entice you to eat them and then they charge you for them. It was a very sneaky trick which we were not hungry enough to fall for.


Ellie with our untouched pretzels


Stopping by the Kafka museum along the way to the bridge with this really cool statue that actually moved so the pee squirted around...

After walking across the bridge and commenting on how touristy Prague seemed to be and noting all of the jewelry, caricatures and other tourist trap stalls along the bridge, we decided to climb one of the towers that stand on either side of the bridge.


We climbed it and took some pictures of the pretty colors and architecture that is the Old Town of Prague.


The View of the Charles Bridge from the bridge tower.

Afterwards, we went to Tesco (a huge superstore with 5 departments) to get an adaptor for the camera and some picnic lunch for ourselves to enjoy. We found the adaptor very cheaply and then go some Czech cheese and bread for lunch. We walked to the main Old Town square to picnic. The Czech cheese was a nice smokey cheese, but the bleu cheese we got was salty and horrible. The Old Town Square has really gorgeous churches and clocks and architecture in it, but is slam packed with tourists everywhere. We were really amazed at how Prague has become this huge tourist destination to the point of losing a sense of authenticity that is supposed to accompany Eastern European countries, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Afterwards, we went back to Ines house for a nap since we were exhausted. We awoke refreshed and went to a veggie restaurant recommended by Lauren and our guidebook which was phenomenal.

On our way to the restaurant with the sun setting over the city.


We ate some of the best vegetarian food I have ever experienced and so cheap. We split two appetizers and then shared a platter of eggplant quesadillas, veggie skewers and some potato casserole thing and the whole bill was only 345 Krowns being about 12 pounds = 24 dollars.The restaurant was very modern for Prague and the owners had three artists come in to paint it. Our room was a private room with stripes and a cool light fixture and one room had twinkle lights built into the ceiling to make a star effect.

on our way to the metro, we saw Prague Castle, all lit up at night.

On our ride home, we met a funny family from Holland who thought we were Czech. The dad was hysterical and so happy and funny to talk to. He mentioned that there was a holiday in Prague the next day, the holiday of liberation but we weren’t sure of the details. This other American woman rushed over being a know-it-all and began chatting with us uninvited and was snobby and pretentious. Once on the train, we couldn’t read the sign telling us what stop we were at so she told us we were at Mustek and we thought we were going the wrong way so we got off. Turns out the annoying woman was wrong all along and we were going in the right direction, but had gotten off and had to wait a half hour for the next train all because the woman was a know-it-all who apparently knew nothing.

The next day, we slept in which was nice and with the weather being so hot and sunny, we decided to rent a row boat on the River Vlatva.

River Vlatva

First we went back to Tesco to get some more smoked cheese and some bread and tried to find hummus but resulted in actually buying French Onion dip which was really good. Rowing a boat is a little challenging and since we only had it for an hour, we didn’t get very far but it was a lot of fun to be on the river in a t-shirt, eating smoked cheese and admiring the Charles Bridge.






After rowing we had a beer outside, next to the river


and then walked to the park right near where we were staying.


A sculpture series in the park, very nice as you notice the man tapers off at the top.


It’s a huge park where the Prague castle sits on and is quite hilly. People were just sitting outside soaking up the sunshine, since they all had the day off for the holiday.

We sat for a while enjoying the view


and then headed home to pack and get to bed early for the next day when our Eastern European tour would begin. When we arrived home, Ines and Michael were home finally, after not seeing them for the 2 whole days we had been there.


Ines and Michael over some Riesling that Michael couldn't quite commit too.


They invited us to share some conversation and white wine with them in the dining room which was really nice learning more about them. They told us funny stories about their neighbors and answered some of our questions about the Czech Republic. They mentioned that we were the second people they have hosted and that they hardly ever do it so we felt really happy that they chose to host us. They were really kind to us and obviously raised the bar for other couchsurfing hosts. They spoiled us basically with our own room and key and privacy.

Our thoughts on Prague were mixed. It is a really beautiful place, but so overrun with tourists that you can honestly tell that the Czech people who live in Prague are completely over it and can be quite cold. Prague at night is something that is stunning with the castle all lit up over the bridge and we heard from other people that the nightlife was fantastic, but we didn’t really participate in it very much. I don’t think I would ever want to live in Prague, although the more time we spent the better it did get. We just weren’t taken with it immediately. Too many English menus, not enough time to explore everything.

The next morning we awoke in Prague very early to get to the hostel where the tour would start. We took the number 15 tram in hopes of getting to the correct stop but apparently we got on it going the wrong way and were put far behind schedule. It’s very hard to ride a tram when you don’t underatnd the names of the stops that the woman is calling over the loud speaker. After we got off and back on going the right direction, we rode the tram for ½ hour until we got to Prague Plus, the hostel where the tour was meeting.
Upon arriving at the hostel, we were instantly confused as we couldn’t figure out where the group after asking the very clueless front desk clerk, we realized that the whole group was out back and on the bus already. We climbed aboard and headed off towards Kutna Hora, a little town in the Czech Republic. We began to meet our group mates which were 24 other people with pretty much everyone under the age of 30 except one older dad guy. On the entire tour, there are only 3 Americans(including us), 2 UK people, 1 Irish girl, and the rest are Australian. I have never been around so many Australians in my whole life. Our tour guide, Carlos is an amazing South African guy who is full of energy and so fun and easygoing. He made us all get to know each other with games on the way to Kutna Hora.
Kutna Hora is a small town that literally has two streets and is most famous for a special church. Why is this church special, you may ask? Well, the interior is completely made out of human bones. In the center, there is a chandelier that is made up of every single bone in the human body.
The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints. The ossuary contains approximately 40,000-70,000 human skeletons which have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

looks normal from the outside


the entrance way







the chandelier






We got a pizza at a restaurant after viewing the church and then headed to Olomouc, which is a small university town in the region of the Czech Republic called Moravia.

our view of beautiful rape seed fields from the bus


The view of Olomouc from our hotel window



hotel room... better accommodation than expected.

Upon arriving and checking into our hotel, we went on an orientation walk with Carlos and he told us about the main sights of the little town.








Ellie was especially excited, being a huge fan of Mozart, that he was born in Olomouc and actually composed his first symphony here at 9 years old.






Then we went to dinner, but because it was some sort of religious holiday, most of the Moravian restaurants were shut down so we ate more Italian with the group. We got some weird and watery pasta, some Czech beer(which is delightful) and some pizza bread. The group then decided to continue on with some bar hopping. Carlos took us to this small bar that only had 2 patrons drinking and watching a hockey game on the television and the bartender, eyeing us warily. We had some really funny smelling beer and then Carlos took us the best bar ever. An airplane bar! An old airplane in this weird parking lot next to this defunct carnival. It was an actual airplane on cinder blocks and the inside was fantastic with airplane seats and a little dance floor. An aged bartender in a fancy coat giving us cans of Staropramen for only 2 dollars each. It was a perfect way to get to know everyone and we stayed until the bar closed.




The next morning, we hurriedly packed our things and headed down to the bus as we were heading off to Poland next!
We loved Olomouc much more than Prague as it had the same lovely architecture but more local character and the people were friendlier. Next time we will be in the land of Pierogi and sour soup, Poland!