Poland

Auschwitz is actually a town. You probably already know this, but honestly I had no idea. I literally thought it was just a concentration camp. It makes sense, though, that the Nazis would have named the camp after the town it was closest too. I understand why they chose that town as the site to build an extermination camp- there is NOTHING there. NOTHING. I only saw two restaurants, a train station, and some apartments. Maybe we were just far from the actual center of town- I don’t know. I do know that the town was foggy, dark, and colorless.
As soon as we got there, we went to eat in one of the two restaurants. This was actually one of the best culinary experiences I have had since I have been in Europe. Everything in Poland is dirt cheap (for once, we went to a place where the American dollar was strong!) and so took the opportunity to order a massive amount of food. I had my first bowl of borshe, which is a beet and cabbage soup eaten in North Eastern European countries and Russia. Borsche is mentioned in a lot of novels by Russian writers, and I have wanted to try it for years. I thought I would hate it, but it’s great! We also ordered bread and butter that tasted like it just came out of a cow (and maybe it had…)
After lunch, we walked to Auschwitz. We signed up for the last tour of the day. I began to get a little nervous when I saw the sign that said that children under fourteen were not allowed to see the video or the museum. I’m not going to write very much about Auschwitz, because I don’t want to….. I just wrote a paper about it and that’s all I can handle. Feel free to ask me about it when I get back!
When we finished at Auschwitz, it was very dark and very foggy. We walked back to the train station and saw not a soul. By this time, we were all upset and scared, and we still didn’t know if we could get out of the country without having problems. We ate dinner at the other restaurant (unfortunately the first one was closed for a private dinner party), and then we didn’t know what to do. We still had over five hours till our train left. Our original plan had been to go to Krakow after Auschwitz, but out train was delayed coming into Poland which meant that we didn’t have enough time. Since we didn’t know where else to go, we went to the ATM, took out fifty dollars of Polish money (which is only like 13 Euros) and spent it all on junk food. Then we went to the train station, found a bench, and camped out. The whole thing was still scary…. No one else was in the train station, and it probably wasn’t the safest place to be. We made it through the ordeal, though, and got on the train safely and successfully. We had sleepers that night, which are even nicer than couchettes, and I slept great. I can say though, when we got to Vienna on Sunday morning, that I had never been so glad to be home!