Trip
After few hours of bumpy ride and crowded ladies rooms we finally got to Poland, specifically to Krakov. We headed off to the castle. By the way we saw the dragon “Smok” (translated dragon Dragon), which entertained the visitors by spouting fire.
The castle Wawel is the promiment of Krakov, as the guide told us. Unfortunately, the impress of a beautiful building was little destroyed by the scaffold that was everwhere around, but it was compensated by the eaves with gargoyles, a lot of beautiful trees and a chapel, which looked like it was glued from five another churches. Really impressive.
We were also enabled to visit president Kaczynski in the place of his final rest (one well-taned tiny room with lots of flowers and admirably patient guards).
From the walls we had a nice view of all the city including the Jewish quarter. We started our tour around countless churches, schools and monuments of Adam Mickiewicz. Sometimes we hit some interesting contrasts – for example when there was an old shabby gothic church with imposant baroque altar (we all agreed it looked really weird).
Getting to the allegedly third largest market place in Europe, we had some free time which took unbelievable two hours and a half. Our group splited up to smaller groups that started to occupy shopping malls, parcs, McDonnald’s and eventualy some of the churches. But finally we all ended near the fountain with chlorinated water surrounded by the locals. Obviously it was some kind of local culture centre, because some of them even slept there.
After a snack and group photo we all got back to the bus. It felt like grill in there, before we arrived to the hotel, we were all baked. During the dinner we ate up the hotel kitchen and felt in love with their rhubarb tea (well, some of us). I don’t know what about the others, but at our table we discussed addicted to drugs and horror movies.
And in our room there was a ghost. Ok, not important. Back to the theme, after the dinner about 90% of the class nestled down in front of the tv and four girls went with mrs. professor to a little walk. They saw the nigth city, shining water, 3D painting on the square and they spent an hour by looking for some place in a map to which they in the end actually didn’t go. And they saw one security camera too.
We had to wake up at 7:00. Everyone was pretty upset and grumpy, but as soon as we fed ourselves with really good breakfast in the hotel we were quite satisfied. As true Czechs, we put on socks in sandals, unless we had proper shoes, because it’s not really comfortable to go in the salt mine just in sandals.
Immediately after entering the mine our first words were “That is really lot of stairs”, but fortunately we didn’t have to climb them up. The rest of our program was walking, walking, sightseeing, breathing, breathing, again sightseeing and also licking the salty walls and tasting the brine, all of this under experienced leadership of our guide Eliška. From mysterious reason we were constantly loosing professor Effenberk. Fortunately, we always found him.
After the salt mine we head up to the city square with its 3D picture on the ground. We were balancing over the cliff for almost an hour, which was pretty funny as it was raining and we took plenty of pictures by using very sophisticated machine.
That was the funny part of the day, because we spent the afternoon in the Auschwitz – Birkenau concentration camp. We began in Auschwitz, where we were given headphones, thanks to which we were listening to very depressive lecture by our even more depressive guide. I think there is no point in describing our feelings when we saw what we saw. Lets just say that some of us wanted to vomit. Literally.
Little bit less frightening Birkenau, where we went by bus, was big, empty and full of sadness and grief. The entering gate and lodging houses are known everywhere in the world. Some of us were pretty amused by the fact that Nazis blew up the gas chambers to cover them up. I am sure that it was not suspicious at all.
That is all from our not very entertaining afternoon. To cheer us up after this very depressive experience we watched Love actually on our way home. Fortunately it worked.
Anyway, while getting off the bus in Šlapanice we found ourselves tired as hell, but content. It could take longer... And by the way, some of us want to move to Wielizcka, anyone wants to join?