So we noticed a little fact that the farther east we got in Europe, the crappier the transportation seemed to get. This train was definitely smaller than the last one we were on and the best less comfortable also. But we did manage to get a booking so that we got into Krakow at a reasonable hour unlike our trip into Berlin. We stepped off the train and it looked like we were in the third world. There were a bunch of street vendors at the bottom of the platforms, birds flying through the station, and a creepy guy following us the whole time we were there offering to give us a better exchange rate for the Zlotty. Anywho, we went straight to the ticket booth to confirm our next train out so as not to have another mishap like Berlin then checked into our hostel, which was named Tutti Frutti, and the decor defiantly fit the name. We managed to get all six of us into one of the 8 person rooms (plum room) which made it a lot more comfortable to just kick back and unwind while we were in the actual hostels. And it was a really nice place overall, the bathrooms were the cleanest I'd seen in a while but you did have to hop up and down every 5 minutes if you were taking a shower because the lights were on a timer.
After dropping anchor we set off again to explore the city. Krakow was exponentially smaller than Berlin, and most of the metropolitan part was concentrated in what i would say a 1/2 square mile area full of normal looking shops. We wandered around until we found this guy in a beer mug costume that gave us coupons for free beers at this restaurant by the Royal castle towards the southern tip of the city. This is where we fully began to appreciate the power of the dollar. I ate the equivalent of what i would say is a 60 dollar meal in the US for about the equivalent of 10 bucks. Nathan and Daniel got it even better. They ordered this plate of every type of fish you could imagine that could feed 4 people easily for about 23 bucks US. After gorging ourselves like kings we wandered around the castle and church for a bit. Like I said i'm not really able to describe fully how magnificent and elaborate the church was, but take my word for it, the thing was marvelous. There were a bunch of decorative caskets inside commemorating some of the polish nobility that died during the crusades and other historical periods and of course almost everything had some kind of gold inlay in it. We witnessed some kind of ceremony occurring at John Paul II's (yes the former pope) grave and then headed back to the hostel to watch Obamas Inauguration. Good ol W looked pretty miserable.
We went to a Chopin/Mozart concert around 8 and I realized that although I appreciate classical music, i'm not too much of a fan, but I did enjoy "The Tango". We had another amazing Kebab on the way back towards the hostel at this cool kebab shop/hookah bar. Its great how food always turns out better if you're the only people in the shop. Somehow that night we started a running joke that it was Julians birthday which somehow attracted the girl that was working at the hostel that night. We managed to convince her to come out with us instead of studying for her exam so she took us around a couple clubs then took Julian to the dance floor. This girl ends up being one of the creepiest people i've met in a good long while. Manages to friend all of us on Facebook by looking up our names in the Hostel registry, then relentlessly messaged us for the next couple of days until i decided to defriend her and never have anything to do with her again.
The next day was the real heart of the Krakow experience, the Auchwitz-Berkanow tour, and I can honestly say i've never been more scared to be in any place my whole life. I don't even think scared is the right word. It seemed as if the life had been sucked out of me while i was inside the gates. Our first stop was Auschwitz where they took us around some of the old barracks and holding cells for prisoners. We passed by rooms the size of my parents bed room at home where 30-40 people were forced to sleep. One building had a bunch of different exhibits of belongings which the Nazi's confiscated from those interned at the camp. One room had a few tons of hair belonging to prisoners that the Nazis cut off to make blankets and socks. Another room had thousands of shoes, another had pots, pans, and other China, and yet another had eyeglasses. Just to see all these dilapidated possessions that once belonged to people who were senselessly murdered, the feeling is indescribable. Next we went to a building full of cells for defiant or difficult prisoners, which included standing cells no bigger than 3 feet by 3 feet which held 4 prisoners at a time. We actually stood in one of these cells and I had probably one of the most claustrophobic experiences of my life. The last part of the Auschwitz camp involved actually walking inside the only remaining gas chamber and oven (the nazi's burned down most all of them as they fled). I actually stood in a room where thousands upon thousands of innocent men women and children were gassed to death, then cremated next door. Birkanow was an expanse going off to the skyline filled with single story buildings that looked like stables because frankly, they were stables. Our tour ended in one of these that was designated as a shower/toilet room where on occasion, prisoners were allowed to shower and use the toilet (which was essentially a long concrete block with holed down to a trough) but only for a total of 5 minutes. We heard her recount prisoners fighting each other just to be able to use one of the holes, some having to simply choose whether it was more important to shower that day or use the bathroom. Absolutely horrible. I think everyone needs to see this place once, but having done so, i never want to go back again.
Our last day, like in Berlin, was souvenir day. I got my Polish flag while the rest of the guys bought Chess sets for some reason. Our last tour was of Krakows famous salt mine which was 400 meters below ground. We first had to take the stairs down to the actual mine. I can't even remember how many flights there were, but there were a lot. Essentially our guide told us that when the mine was first opened, salt was worth more than gold because of its value as a preservative, and miners were filthy rich. These same miners managed to carve elaborate statues of the most random things while they were on their breaks. The pictures on my photobucket'll show you what I mean. There was even a church down there with salt chandeliers, and even a copy of "The Last Supper" done with impeccable detail. And apparently, I am one of the privileged few that used the lowest toilet in the world. After we got out, we at some traditional polish food which were these mediocre dumpling type things, hung out for a bit at the hostel taking in the last of the Polish sights, then jetted off to Prague.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Berlin
After our exams on the 16th, Nick, Mike, Daniel, Nathan, Julian and I headed out to the train station for Berlin. We decided to take the night train to each city to save the money on hostels, and surprisingly, the bunk I had on the train was more comfortable than the bed that I had in Utrecht.
We arrived in Berlin at 4:30 in the morning and got completely suckerpunched by the cold as we walked off the train; it was a good 5 degrees C colder than Utrecht. Better yet,the busses didn't start running till 6 so we decided to take the hour long walk to our hostel which was a really cool bar downstairs w/ cheap jager shots and then the hostel upstairs, then found out that our rooms weren't gonna be ready till 2 so we just all crashed on the couches in the lounge for a couple hours, ate the free breakfast and took off to explore the city. We took the free walking tour with a riot of a tour guide that showed us Brandenburg Gate, The Richdag, The Holocost Memorial, The Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and some other random lil blurbs about the city like the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his kid off the balcony a couple years back. The Holocost Memorial probably had the most impact on me in Berlin. It's made out of a square blocks worth of concrete pillars which get taller towards the middle while the ground gets lower. When you're in the center of it, u get this really claustrophobic and lost feeling, which of course is the point of the memorial. Because of its construction, a lot of the ice that covers the ground inside the memorial doesn't melt, so we ended up slipping and sliding around the whole thing too. The Richdag (the parliament building) also had a lot of meaning in the design. There's a glass dome on top which people can walk around on which is directly above the parlaiment room, and it was constructed this way so that whenever parliament members needed a reminder of who they worked for, all they had to do was look up.
The architectural layout of the city was absolutely gorgeous. I wondered for a while why buildings aren't built in this classical style anymore until i realized that gold inlays and michaelangelo status statues all over the place aren't the most cost efficient way to build. And despite the fact that most of the city was destroyed in the 20th century, most of the buildings were rebuilt extremely similarly to their original looks. I really wish I paid attention in AP Art History so I could better describe everything.
That night on our way to a pub crawl we discovered the greatest food known to man, the kebab. Its this turkish pita type thing filled w/ veggies, meat and spices, and only cost around 2 Euro. We pretty much lived off these things for the rest of the trip. While we were buying the tickets for the crawl some guy tapped me on my shoulder, turns out it was my friend from freshman year's ex-boyfriend who i hadn't seen in 2 years. Small world huh? The actual pub crawl was a lot of fun but really sketch. We started off at this place called Zepatas where they led us into a creepy back room, then led us out the back and started pouring premixed screwdrivers down our throats. Between pubs we would stop under random overpasses and do the same and randomly got into an argument with some British guys about how David Beckham is garbage. We ended up at this really eurotrash club (like girls dancing in cages Eurotrash) called Matrix which looked like it was carved out of a sketchy mountain. Apparantly there was a room in the back where people were breathing fire but i never made it back. Me and Nathan headed out back to the hostel but realized we had no idea how to get back on public transit so we ended up walking an hour and a half on completely iced over sidewalks back to our hostel doing charlie brown falls the whole way back. Pairing this walk with my vans slip ons that provide no support what so ever destroyed my feet and put me in a good deal of pain for the rest of the trip.
The next day we took another tour through the same company of the 3rd Reich which we actually had to pay for, which was kind of a waste of time. Our guide essentially took us through all the same stuff that we saw the day before but with a different lecture that went along with them. On the way back we stopped at this one deserted island themed restaurant and had a long interesting conversation with the waitress about her going into psychosis by age 16. That night we just stayed at the hostel bar to watch the playoff games coz we were so exhausted. The third and last day in Berlin we just took time to walk around and window shop. Bubbles gave me the idea to collect a flag from each country that I visit while i'm here which as expensive as its gonna be to do, is gonna look sick when I put em up when i get back to Berkeley.
When we got to the train station that night we found out that the person we booked our tickets for the train from messed up and we only had 3 tickets between me, Daniel, Julian and Nathan and the ticket office couldn't sell us another ticket. Weighing out our options between sneaking one guy on the train, or leaving a man behind, we decided that we didn't want to go to German/Polish jail so one of us was going to have to stay behind and catch the next train out. Because me and dan had the tickets on our cards, it was between Nathan and Bubbles. We flipped a coin and Nathan ended up getting assed out. Luckily, the train conductor was able to sell us an extra ticket. So 60 bucks and a near heart attack later, we were on our way to Krakow, Poland.
We arrived in Berlin at 4:30 in the morning and got completely suckerpunched by the cold as we walked off the train; it was a good 5 degrees C colder than Utrecht. Better yet,the busses didn't start running till 6 so we decided to take the hour long walk to our hostel which was a really cool bar downstairs w/ cheap jager shots and then the hostel upstairs, then found out that our rooms weren't gonna be ready till 2 so we just all crashed on the couches in the lounge for a couple hours, ate the free breakfast and took off to explore the city. We took the free walking tour with a riot of a tour guide that showed us Brandenburg Gate, The Richdag, The Holocost Memorial, The Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and some other random lil blurbs about the city like the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his kid off the balcony a couple years back. The Holocost Memorial probably had the most impact on me in Berlin. It's made out of a square blocks worth of concrete pillars which get taller towards the middle while the ground gets lower. When you're in the center of it, u get this really claustrophobic and lost feeling, which of course is the point of the memorial. Because of its construction, a lot of the ice that covers the ground inside the memorial doesn't melt, so we ended up slipping and sliding around the whole thing too. The Richdag (the parliament building) also had a lot of meaning in the design. There's a glass dome on top which people can walk around on which is directly above the parlaiment room, and it was constructed this way so that whenever parliament members needed a reminder of who they worked for, all they had to do was look up.
The architectural layout of the city was absolutely gorgeous. I wondered for a while why buildings aren't built in this classical style anymore until i realized that gold inlays and michaelangelo status statues all over the place aren't the most cost efficient way to build. And despite the fact that most of the city was destroyed in the 20th century, most of the buildings were rebuilt extremely similarly to their original looks. I really wish I paid attention in AP Art History so I could better describe everything.
That night on our way to a pub crawl we discovered the greatest food known to man, the kebab. Its this turkish pita type thing filled w/ veggies, meat and spices, and only cost around 2 Euro. We pretty much lived off these things for the rest of the trip. While we were buying the tickets for the crawl some guy tapped me on my shoulder, turns out it was my friend from freshman year's ex-boyfriend who i hadn't seen in 2 years. Small world huh? The actual pub crawl was a lot of fun but really sketch. We started off at this place called Zepatas where they led us into a creepy back room, then led us out the back and started pouring premixed screwdrivers down our throats. Between pubs we would stop under random overpasses and do the same and randomly got into an argument with some British guys about how David Beckham is garbage. We ended up at this really eurotrash club (like girls dancing in cages Eurotrash) called Matrix which looked like it was carved out of a sketchy mountain. Apparantly there was a room in the back where people were breathing fire but i never made it back. Me and Nathan headed out back to the hostel but realized we had no idea how to get back on public transit so we ended up walking an hour and a half on completely iced over sidewalks back to our hostel doing charlie brown falls the whole way back. Pairing this walk with my vans slip ons that provide no support what so ever destroyed my feet and put me in a good deal of pain for the rest of the trip.
The next day we took another tour through the same company of the 3rd Reich which we actually had to pay for, which was kind of a waste of time. Our guide essentially took us through all the same stuff that we saw the day before but with a different lecture that went along with them. On the way back we stopped at this one deserted island themed restaurant and had a long interesting conversation with the waitress about her going into psychosis by age 16. That night we just stayed at the hostel bar to watch the playoff games coz we were so exhausted. The third and last day in Berlin we just took time to walk around and window shop. Bubbles gave me the idea to collect a flag from each country that I visit while i'm here which as expensive as its gonna be to do, is gonna look sick when I put em up when i get back to Berkeley.
When we got to the train station that night we found out that the person we booked our tickets for the train from messed up and we only had 3 tickets between me, Daniel, Julian and Nathan and the ticket office couldn't sell us another ticket. Weighing out our options between sneaking one guy on the train, or leaving a man behind, we decided that we didn't want to go to German/Polish jail so one of us was going to have to stay behind and catch the next train out. Because me and dan had the tickets on our cards, it was between Nathan and Bubbles. We flipped a coin and Nathan ended up getting assed out. Luckily, the train conductor was able to sell us an extra ticket. So 60 bucks and a near heart attack later, we were on our way to Krakow, Poland.
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