KRAKOW, POLAND

This past weekend, I went to Krakow, Poland!  We left Prague on Thursday night at midnight and drove through the night (7-ish hours) to get to our first stop, Auschwitz.  This red bus was out ride for the weekend haha! On the bus, I took two dramamine and passed out, as to aoid getting car sick and being "that girl."

We got o Auschwitz at 8AM on Friday morning, and began the most intense tour I've ever been on!  Here is the saying that you see at all concentration camps, meaning " Work brings freedom"

This is just an image of some of buildings that lined a walkway.  It was all dirt and mud and all the tress were bare, very eery!  We were also all bundled up and freezing in late March, so I can't imagine what people there felt like in the middle of the winter with barely any clothing on an no heating...
This is the "shooting wall," you can come up with your own explanation for this.
Here is the chimney from one of the any crematoriums.  This is also one of the only ones that still stands after the war.  At that time, the SS destroyed many of the gas chambers and crematoriums.
A gas chamber, enough said.
After Auschwitz, we went down the street to Birkenau, which was a camp that was 25 times the size of Aushwitz.  Right down the middle are these train tracks that essentially connected this camp to many other camps around Eastern and Central Europe.  
Here is an example of the inside of one of the living spaces.  Nearly 400 people lived in this room, on bunks piled 3 people high. 
The grounds of the camp are insane, they just go on forever and ever...a lot of it was bombed in the war, but you can still get the picture of how it must have looked at the time.
Here are the remains of a gas chamber.
So, after a long and sad day, we took a nap and then headed out into the city!  Krakow is actually a beautiful city, with lots of night life.  I guess I didn't know what to expect of the city, but it wasn't this!  That night, we just had a Polish dinner and took it easy.
On saturday morning, we woke up and went on a walking tour of the city.  We first visited the Jewish Quarter, which is much like the one in Prague.  Here is one of the temple..the Old Synagogue.  
Yet another temple.  Since it was Saturday we were not allowed to go into them because services were being held.
If you have ever seen Schindler's List, a few scenes from the movie were filmed in this courtyard, as well as all around Krakow.
The courtyard of another temple
This is a memorial for the Jews that is placed right in the middle of Krakow.  It is empty chairs which I guess symbolizes emptiness.
Next, we went up to the Castle, which had beautiful views of the city and the river.  We got really lucky because the weather was SO nice when we were there!  It was actually sunny, something I have not experienced in a longggg time!  I even took out my sunglasses! Woo hoo!

Here is the famous cathedral from a distance!  It was sooo pretty!
Here is Sasha, me, Krista, and Kelsey.  Although we were on a trip of about 30 people from my program, these are the friends I basically went with.  We were just so happy that it was warm out!  Oh, I didn't even wear a full on coat.  I can't remember the last time that was possible!
Here is the inside of The Church of St. Mary. This church is in the middle of Old Town Square.  Since we weren't technically allowed to take pictures, the wall is all I snapped!
Saturday night, we met up with Sean and his friends from Copenhagen who happened to be in Krakow this weekend.  So Random!  We all went to dinner together which was a lot of fun!  Then we went to this random bar that we found, I actually think we were the only ones there!
Here is just a snapshot from the bar that night, we had a great night!  Unfortunately, we did not take into account that we would be up early and on a bus all day the next morning...
Sunday morning, after I woke up an hour too early since I messed up the time change on my phone and didn't realize it after I was all packed up and had eaten breakfast (so annoying!), we went to the Krakow Salt Mines.  It was really strange down there!  It felt like it wasn't real, almost like a disneyland scene.  But, it was still in use only like 10 years ago.  It was a massive area with all sorts of chambers.  It took us walking down 54 flights of stairs just to get to the first little area.  Luckily there was an elevator to take us up!  All the black that you see in these pictures is actually salt.  These figures are all made of salt too, strange!  The tour guide told us we could lick the wall to taste it, which of course I thought was disgusting and a joke, but there were people on my program who actually did...eww!

After the mines, we got back on the bus for 7 hours back to Prague.  I was lucky enough to get my own row, so I laid down and slept the entire time, once again avoiding car sickness! And, I was successful! So, sorry this is a boring post compared to most of my other ones, but there is really not much to say about Auschwitz, obviously!  I am going to Amsterdam next week, so get excited for me! xox

PRAHA with Daylin

On Sunday, Daylin and I got to Prague.  Some of our friends from USC were visiting for the weekend, so we caught them on the tail end for Sunday night dinner at Lemon Leaf, a Thai place! We met up with Jarrett and Miriam first to walk around Old Town so that Daylin could see it!

After dinner we went to U Sudu, which is a bar we go to a lot.  It is in a dungeon type place and just keeps going down and down and down.  We hung out there for a while with our friends and then headed home to get a good nights sleep.

On Monday, we woke up to go to my Art and Architecture of Prague class.  Conveniently, my class was going to PRague castle that day, so Daylin came along! 

After class, my original plan was to go back to school for my next class...but that changed! Since we were already up at the Castle, we decided to walk around there a bit more and then go enjoy ourselves in Old Town for the day.  So, we went to "Golden Lane," which is a very famous street in Prague.  It was the place of the first homes in Prague.  These homes are now little shops.  The doors are so small and so are the houses, they were so cute! 

At the end of the lane there is an old Prison down underground.  So we went into it and saw many old Torture devices like beheading things and chains..it was creepy!
The Views from the Castle are amazing! (Not to mention my photography)
That night, Daylin, me, Sasha, and Kate went to dinner at this Cuban restaurant called La Bodeguita Del Medio.  After dinner, Daylin and I met up with Jarrett to go to this little jazz place across the river.  The singer, "Dan the Man" was unbelievable, and we even talked to him for a while on one of his breaks.  Interesting guy...
Here we are at the Jazz Club!

On Tuesday, after I was done with class, Daylin and I went to the Jewish Quarter.  It consists of a bunch of synagogues and of course the Jewish cemetery.  It is a bizarre place, because the stones are all falling over and all the writing is worn off of the stones.  Apparently, there are multiple layers of graves one on top of another at this site.  
On Tuesday night, we went to Chapeau Rouge, one of my favorite bars in Prague!  We went with Kate and another one of her friends, Daniel.  First, we went to dinner at this really good Italian place with Jarrett (no joke, theme of the trop= food).  I think Daylin thought that it was a really grungy, gross place...but, so did I at first...you learn to adapt!
The next day, Wednesday, I had two midterms (fingers crossed that I passed them!).  So while I was doing that, Daylin and Jarrett walked around Vysehrad, the area where my school is. It is an old fortress, with a castle, and really pretty parks!  They also did the walk up this really big hill to the clock that represents the Czech Republic's part in the EU.  And, then that night we went to this restaurant called Kampa Park which is right on the river and such a pretty view, we basically were sitting in the water right below the Charles Bridge.  
On Thursday, I had midterms in the morning while Daylin slept, and then when I was done we went and checked into a hotel in Old Town.  After we checked in we went on a long anticipated and planned out search for a restaurant that Roachie recommended to us near the castle, the "best sandwich place ever".  So, we walk across the bridge and get on the tram at this one stop that will take us all the way up the hill.  Once we got to the top, we followed his directions (since he didn't know the name of the place), and we ended up right where we started, literally, at the bottom of the hill directly across from the tram stop.  So, we are all excited that we finally find the "place with the blue signs outside," and we go in and realize the food looks exactly like the lunch we had eaten two days earlier.  Looking closer, the wrapping on the sandwiches IS the same...my favorite little cafe in Old Town has a second location apparently...the one that we went on a wild goose chase for.  Slightly disappointed, and not in the mood for the same food again, we walked back across the bridge to eat somewhere else.  

We ended up at Kavarna Slavia, which is a famous Cafe in Prague.  During Communism, this is where are the artists, professors, poets, and intellects went to complain to each other basically and to do there own thing.  It is right below the film school, FAMU.  Daylin loved the view and tried to capture it in this picture...

Afterward, I took him to the Lennon Wall (my 4th time there), made him take some korny pictures, like this one, made him read some of my favorite quotes on the wall...and then he made me leave.

That night we went to dinner with a huge group of my friends at Banditos, a Mexican restaurant.  Pretty much all of my friends had boyfriends visiting this weekend, we coined it "boyfriend weekend," so it was a fun dinner to meet everyone's boyfriends and for all of them to meet us!
After dinner we went to our Thursday night club, Radost FX. It was a ton of fun, we danced the night away!
On Friday morning, we woke up and realized that I had pretty much shown Daylin all of Prague, and unless we were to hike a few more hills (which as you can imagine, he was very opposed to), we ran out of things to see- well that we wanted to see.  So, we decided to get on a train and go to Pilsen, which was about an hour and 40 minutes away.  We could have taken a bus, but Daylin wanted a "European Train experience."  He spent his experience on the way there sleeping...so I documented it for him!
We did not do any planning in terms of the times things are open, what to see, or where to go once we were there.  WE got really lucky, and everything worked out perfectly though!  When we got there we went straight to lunch at the biggest pub in the Czech Republic, and naturally, drank Pilsner Urquell beer.  

Then, we went to the Pilsen Beer museum which was interesting and funny at the same time.  There were all these scenes made up with these fake, figure men drinking beer in the pub, or serving it, or making it.  Then there were also all these beer making "instruments" I'll call them.

After the museum we had a little time to spare before our tour, so we used the "beer tokens" that they gave us with our tickets and experienced another famous Czech Pub.  Oh, there was a man there who brought it one of those hugeee bottles of coke, empty...and had them fill it up and then left with it.  Casual afternoon 2 liter beer.    
Walking from the museum to the Beer factory allowed us to see a little bit of the city, which we did not have time to see.  So here is a view of the Church from afar, a Pilsner truck driving by, and a pretty river.  


This is the courtyard of the Beer Brewing Factory.  It has been there forever!
We went into the plant where they manufacture, fill, package, etc. the bottles.  The machinery was so intense, and the place had the strangest beer stench I've ever smelt.  It was like a old, wet towel soaked in beer..not good!

Then we went to the part of the Brewery that houses the actual beer and holds it for fermentation and all that...I don't know too much about beer.  We went to the old one, and the new one, but to me they kind of looked the same because they both had these huge gold things.  
We were taken through this underground tunnel system (they like those in Europe) and walked through all the barrels of beer and its ingredients.  Well this is what they once used at least.  At the end of our tour they let us taste the beer out of one of the barrels :)  
At the end of a long day, we headed back to the train station...and this time, it was my turn to sleep on the train!  That night we had dinner just the two of us (we got back too late to do another big dinner that was planned with my friends), and then went to sleep for another long day ahead of us!
On Sunday, our last day together :(, we went to Terezin.  Terezin is the Nazi concentration camp outside of Prague.  It was used as a holding camp for Jews before they were sent east to places like Auschwitz.  First, we went to Hidden Synagogue. This is a picture from inside, the walls were painted with murals and prayers.  The synagogue is in the back corner of a courtyard, and as the communists never found it..neither would we have without a tourguide.
We also went to the Magdeburg Barracks where there were exhibits of how different parts of the camp looked at the time.  This is an example of the "Girls Room" where teenage girls lived.  There were about 40 girls to a room, and they slept in bunk beds, 3 beds on top of each other.  
We also saw the Jewish Cemetery which was interesting because there were no names on the stone, just numbers.  They have no record of exact names or exactly where the people were buried, if they were even buried there at all.
Our last stop was a small fortress.  This fortress was used as the prison for both politicians at the time and Jews.  We saw the prison cells, group showers, and even another cemetery.  Of course, we also walked through an underground tunnel system.  


On our last night together, we went to Cowboys, a great steak place by the castle.  It was delicious and a great way to spend out last little time together!
Then, we decided to go meet up with my friends for a little while at a place called "The Beer Factory."  Since we really hadn't seen my friends too much this week and we weren't tired (other than the fact that he was getting up at 4:30 AM the next morning), we decided to join them for a while.  It was a ton of fun, and we even left at a very decent hour!
The Beer Factory is located on Wenceslas Square in New Town, and so here is Daylin (he lovedddd the single photos still at the end of the trip) in front of the National Museum and in the middle of the square.  An appropriate last picture I would say...Daylin, the new King of Prague!