19 Day Trip: Krakow

Travel and Arrival
  On the way to Krakow, I saw lots of interesting country on the way to Krakow. A few small towns had impressive churches that I was able to look at through the train window. The only stop I had between Dresden and Krakow was Wroclaw, and at that station, I had my first taste of Polish perogies, and they were great. After my long travel, I finally arrived in Krakow and was able to tour their Christmas Market.

  The Christmas Market here was one of the larger ones I had seen. There was horse-drawn carriages, lots of candy, and many booths selling a large selection of items. When I was finished touring around the market, I decided to go and check into the hostel.
have photos of Christmas Market
  It turned out checking into the hostel was not going to be that easy to check into. I was turned away at the door because I was wearing sweats. The only way to get into the hostel is to go through a somewhat exclusive club, so it was actually the club who turned me away. The security guard at the club said that I could not enter with sweats I then told him I wanted to enter the hostel and he asked me a question I did not know how to answer, so he told me to go away.  I decided to go back to the Christmas Market and email the hostel about this. They told me what to say to get into the hostel, and so I was eventually able to check in.
  The people at the hostel were very nice about it and gave me a free beer. In the bathroom, they have a message saying that the club security guards are not your friend and to just ignore them and you should be fine. Evidently, it does not sound like this was the first time they had a problem like this.

Auschwitz
  On my first day in Krakow, I went to the infamous death camp Auschwitz. This is one of the most disturbing experiences I have ever had. Since it was such a significant experience, I made a separate blog post about it which can be found here: https://belgiuminternship.blogspot.com/2019/05/19-day-trip-auschwitz.html.

Christmas Market
  The Krakow Christmas was lovely and located entirely in the main square. It is also legal to drink alcohol in the market, contrary to the normal law of no drinking in public, so I had some gluhwein while touring around. I ate some perogies several times and learned that the ones we eat are called ruskie perogies, but there were many others to try. On top of perogies, I ate a lot of other food that was for sale there. There was lots of candy as well, and I had some strawberry covered chocolate. I also bought a few trinkets at a few of the booths.

Salt Mines
  One of the other tours I went on was to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. This was an exciting and unexpected tour. During the tour, we went up to 130 meters underground, but only saw 1% of the mines. This was one of the reasons that the guide told us at the start to stay close to the group or else we may get lost. Many exhibits were explaining how life was in the mines historically.
  They showed how horses were used to move things around the mines. The guide explained that when a horse was brought into the mine, it never left because it was too hard to bring them back up. There were horses down there until modern history, but they were eventually phased out in favour of current methods. The last horses down there were more like pets than actual workers.
  The various churches that were built into the mine. These chapels were made because, historically, people were very religious, and the dangers of working in the mine were high, so they did not know if they would get back home alive. Therefore the chapels served as an area to make prayers during the day in case you died later that day. Now, however, building chapels in the salt has become a sort of tradition. A large church was built deep down that has been used for various events even. This large church has a replica of the last supper carved into the salt. It was really cool to see these rooms that were built into the salt.
  On top of chapels, there was also statues and other art-pieces carved into the salt. The photos below show some of these.

Some of the sculptures and designs

  There was also a shopping mall about 100 meters in the ground that had cell reception. I asked the guide how did they accomplish that, but she did not know. I would guess that the must-have piped the output of a cell reception booster to the underground mall (this is just a theory).
  Overall it was a great trip.

Actual Krakow Touring
  The majority of this blog has been about trips to places around Krakow, but Krakow itself has many interesting sites itself. There is a beautiful old castle, a running path where the old city walls used to be, ancient churches, the Schindler Factory, and many others. Let's talk about them 😀.
  Wawel Castle is a massive and beautiful castle. It is also is the center of the story of the dragon of Krakow. It also has many different architectural styles in its cathedral area. This is from its history spanning so many years.
  Krakow is also the center of the oldest university in Poland, Jagiellonian University. Interestingly it is not certain where the university started since it was declared, but the declaration did not specify where. Now it is spread throughout the city like many old European Universities like it. My favourite alumni of the university is, of course, Nicolaus Copernicus and just because I am physics student does not mean I am biased.
  The oldest church in Krakow, St. Andrew's Church, was also built as a fortress. Right beside it was a very different church called Saints Peter and Paul Church, it is effortless to tell these two apart since there architecture was very different. The other main church that I saw was St. Mary's Basilica, and it was located in the main square. It was also where all the 'free tours' started.
  Also located in the main square is the cloth hall and the town's tower. The Tower used to house a jail and torture chamber, and today it has a bar at the bottom. Nowadays the cloth hall is home to many little shops. The main square is also where the Christmas Market was located, so it had a very surreal feel to it.
  The other neat part of Krakow is where the old city walls were, and where the city fortress still stands. The fortress, called the Barbican, was planned to be demolished but the people came and said it would be harmful to lose that part of their history. One professor said that if they removed the Barbican, it would cause the wind to blow women's dresses up, and during that point in time, it would be scandalous for that to happen. During my last morning, I went for a run around where the town wall used to be.

Some photos of Krakow at night

Some other photos of Krakow

Saint Andrew's Church on the right and 

Saints Peter and Paul's Church on the left

The Hostel
  The hostel I went to was great, Little Havana Party Hostel. They had the option to buy tickets to Auschwitz and the Salt Mines when booking the stay, which was very convenient. They also organized a pub crawl, which was very fun. The people working there were always friendly, and most of them are travellers as well. The other guests were also entertaining to hang out with. Two things should be kept in mind, though:

1. It is a party hostel, and it can get loud
2. The club security is not your friend.

19 Day Trip: Auschwitz

  On my first day in Krakow, I went to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. This was a very creepy and eye-opening trip. I would recommend it to anyone who is visiting the general area, but I would say be aware that there are some disturbing sites inside.
  There were entire rooms full of belongings from prisoners. The people going to Auschwitz were not told it was a death camp but instead told they were going to start a new life in Eastern Europe. When they arrived at Auschwitz, they then had all their belongings were taken away from them. These items were put into warehouses the prisoners called the Canada Warehouses. They nicknamed these warehouses that because Canada was seen as a country of abundance. It was quite appalling to see how much the Nazis deceived those poor people, and it makes what happened there even more morbid.

  The most disturbing part of the Auschwitz I saw was a room full of hair. This room of hair is from some of the victims of the camp. When people were sent to the gas chambers, they first were shaved clean and then sanitized in a shower. The hair from them was put on top of the furnaces, where the victims were being burned so that it would be dried out. It was then used to make various textile products such as pillowcases, bed sheets, shirts etc.
  The absolute cold thought that was put into this is appalling. The fact someone was thinking about how to utilize parts bodies so that those bodies did not go to waste is disgusting. These were people and from what I can tell all the NAZIs saw were a sort of asset, not a person. In this part of the tour, no pictures were allowed out of respect for the victims.
  The next stop was to look at the actual gas chambers. Most of the gas chambers were destroyed before the Soviets liberated the camp. Apparently, the NAZIs did understand that other people may find what is happening a horrible and may be upset with them. There was one gas chamber that was still intact because it was converted into a bomb shelter.
  The guide explained how the people were 'herded' into the gas chambers and furnaces. They were guided into the gas chambers in such a way that people could not see those ahead of them heading into the chambers. This was done so that people would not panic. The guide did take us into the gas chamber that is still intact.
  The guide asked everyone to stay quiet out of respect for the victims that died there. The guide pointed to the ceiling where there were holes, and that is where the gas was dropped from. It felt eery being where all those victims died. Thinking about how they did not know they were going to die and then imaging their thoughts when the gas fell from the ceiling.

Demolished Gas Chambers

  The guide showed us where the longest-serving boss, Rudolf Höss,  of Auschwitz lived. This house was very close to the camp, so it would make sense that the family and everyone there would have known roughly what was happening. This is not what Rudolf said though in his confession. He completely threw himself under the bus by admitting to everything; however, he did say that his family knew nothing about what was happening. The result was that he was an excellent witness for the allies and eventually was hanged, but his family faced no consequences.

  We also saw the Barracks where prisoners stayed. There was a variety of barracks and the best was were the people how to monitor the other prisoners. These prisoners were very aggressive at times because they did not want to end up like regular prisoners. Most prisoners were put in a place where it would be more likely for pigs to live.

I think where the preferred prisoners lived.

Where regular prisoners lived

  The guide also discussed how the Soviets were treated worse than all other prisoners. The Soviets were used as test guinea pigs for the NAZIs when they were testing there gas killing machine. The NAZIs put some Soviet prisoners in a room and then released gas. When they opened up the room and saw the Soviets were still alive, they put in more gas. This was how they learned the correct dosage to kill people. This is another example of how sick the people who created these methods were the cold calculation is morbid.

  The medical experiments that were conducted at Auschwitz were also discussed (http://auschwitz .org/en/history/medical-experiments/). The guide mentioned how it was because of the prisoners who were working at the furnaces that the allies discovered what was happening (https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Sonderkommando_photographs). The story about how prisoners escaped by stealing SS uniforms was also told (http://auschwitz.org/en/history/resistance/escapes-and-reports).

  This was the most eye-opening experience I have had, and I am glad I did it even though it thoroughly creeped me out.

19 Day Trip: Dresden

Arrival:

  The travel to Dresden was a little bit crazy at the start. The first train was from Brussels to Frankfurt, but unfortunately, it did not initially make it that far. It had technical problems in Liege, the train did not have enough power to move forward 😒😒, and I had to wait in the Liege train station for 1 hour. I did get to Frankfurt fine, but then the train to Leipzig had to make a detour since the regular tracks were under maintenance. I was then able to get on a train to Dresden, and an 8-hour train ride took 14 hours. 

  After I finally got to the hostel, Lollis Homestay, I dropped my bag on my bed and went to a metal bar around the corner for a beer 🍺🍺. Then I finally went to bed 💤💤💤.

Full Day:

  To start my day I had breakfast at the hostel. It was 5 euros and all you can eat. There was some neat homemade sauce that the staff made. It was 'tomato butter' or something, and it tasted great on my bread. 

  After my breakfast, I took out one of the hostel's bikes to the city center. The bike I took was an ugly pink one, so I was quite sure that no one would be stealing it. The first stop I made was to Zwinger. This place is a gigantic palace. It has many statues and a beautiful garden which is shown below. What is hard to see from the photos is the sheer magnitude of the size of the grounds they are huge. It was used by the Royals for many things and was part of the outer walls of the city. Nowadays it is a museum complex with the gardens open to the public for free. 

Here are some photos from Zwinger. 

  The next stop was the "Church of our Lady". This Church was completely destroyed during the war, but as can be seen from the photos included below this paragraph it has been rebuilt. It was rebuilt after 50 years of being left in shambles as a war memorial. It is a beautiful domed church with an interesting history. 

The Church of our Lady

  The must-see part of Dresden is the Dresden Castle, which is what I saw next. The Dresden Castle itself is pretty impressive, but what is inside is even more impressive. Inside contained the treasure rooms, which included the new and historic Green Vault. The in the New Green Vault photos were allowed, but for most of the Historic Green Vault, photos were not allowed. Based on these treasure rooms, I was able to deduce that the Saxons were very rich. The first treasure room contained the most magnificent treasures, and unfortunately, it is not allowed to take photos in those treasure rooms. It was also a bit eary having a security guard in every room, making sure no one tried to run away with everything. 

  The stuff I was most impressed with was the statues made out of ivory. It seemed to me that it would have taken a lot of time and skill to make those statues. Some people, such as my sister, maybe saddened that elephants were every killed to create those artifacts.  

  The audio guide said that a lot of the artifacts were made just to be looked at. Now to me, I think it is a waste to make a cup or a spoon and never use, but each to their own.

Here are some of the artifacts. As said before there was many more which I was not allowed to photograph.

  At the end of the treasury room, they had coats of arms from different States that existed during the reign of Augustus II the Strong. It was interesting to see that these coats of arms were in various states of damage from the war. During World War II, when all of Dresden was practically demolished, many of these coats of arms were severely damaged or destroyed. If they were at all recognizable after the war, people decided to leave them up so that visitors could see an example of the damage that was caused.

  In the castle, there was also some exhibits about the history around Saxony. This included how people dressed, the weapons that were used and other stuff like that. I have included some pictures below of how that looked like.

Here are those photos 😀

  I also walked along the Dresden river for a bit and looked at the castle from there. It is interesting to note that the Dresden Elbe Valley used to be a World Heritage Site. It had that honour revoked because of a 4 lane highway that was built alongside it. The Valley is still frequented by tourists. 

  After doing all this, I went to go and participate in my favourite part of the city the Christmas Market. I walked around the one in the city center and ended up buying a pair of Santa Clause boxers. I also tried many foods, such as a pancake made potatoes onions and cheese with apple sauce on top. It was delicious. I also had mushroom soup with full mushrooms and some currywurst. After eating all this, I was very full. Since I was very full, I decided to walk all the way up to the top of a cathedral 😂😂. 

  I noticed this cathedral while walking around and decided to give it a look. At the very top, it provided an excellent view of the city and the Christmas Market below. I believe that the cathedral is Dresden Cathedral, but I am not sure and may update later if I remember.

Here are the photos from the top

  This was the point I decided to take the hostel's bike and head back. Unfortunately, I got a flat tire on the way and had to walk it back, but it was a lovely walk either way. When I got back, I enquired about any other local Christmas Markets and was advised to go to one in Radebuel. 

  This was a delightful Christmas Market because it was so local. Very few people spoke English, so I had to give some attempt to order gluhwein in German. I must have done ok because they did give me some gluhwein. There was also some people doing live metalworking, which was cool to watch. Many booths were selling food and trinkets. The city Christmas Markets seemed to have more trinkets for sale. At the end of the line of booths, there was live music playing. When they were done playing, I walked back to the other end of the booths looking at the booths on the other side. 

  One booth on the other side had deep fried mushrooms which I just had to try. They tasted glorious, and I would have had more, but my stomach was already starting to hurt from the amount of food I was eating. The biggest problem with these Christmas Markets is that there is never enough time to try all the food. Shortly after those mushrooms, I decided to head back to the hostel to have a sleep. 

  The next morning I woke up had some of that wonderful breakfast, watched an episode of That 70s Show, and did some work on my Chromebook. Then I had to go catch my train to Krakow.

Berlin

Arrival
  I took a bus from Antwerp to Dusseldorf, and that bus was late (I think). Either way, I missed my connecting train and had to try and get Deutsch Bahn to pay for it. The first person I talked to told me, no, but then the second person I spoke to said that it was hard to tell and signed my ticket saying that it is ok for me to take the next train. This was good because I did not want to pay another 100 euros for another ticket.
  I finally arrived in Berlin later in the evening at the HBF. I then took a subway to Alexanderplatz and walked the rest of the way to the hostel. Once I got to the hostel, I checked in and dropped off my backpack. The person at the hostel check-in told me where to find a street full of nice bars.
  I decided to go check out a couple of those bars and eventually went to two. They both had a nice local feel. One way I could tell tourists, at least foreign ones, did not go to these bars often is that the one bartender kept forgetting I did not speak German. After enjoying these two bars, I headed off back to the hostel to have a sleep.

First Full Day
  To start my trek on the first day, I took the subway back to Alexanderplatz. This is where I began to walk towards the infamous Berlin Wall. This is also the first time I got a good look at the 'Television Asparagus'. Throughout the rest of the trip, it was always easy to find and sort of guided me wherever I was in Berlin. The first big stop on my way to the wall was the Berlin Cathedral.

photo of St. Mary's church with Television Asparagus in background

St. Mary's Church

Television Asparagous

The Berlin Cathedral

Interior of the Berlin Cathedral

A few paintings in the Berlin Cathedral

Interior of Berlin Cathedral

View from Berlin Cathedral

  The Cathedral itself is beautiful, but its history is even more exciting. The Cathedral started out as Catholic but then became protestant. It was also bombed during WWII, and one of the bombs lit the roof on fire. The roof eventually collapsed because of this. The preacher of the Cathedral kept doing services after this in the crypt. After the war, it mainly went unrestored since it was in East Berlin and they did not believe in religion. It was never entirely destroyed by authorities because it meant a lot to the local residents. The preacher of the Cathedral during the war was Bruno Doehring.

  Eventually, I made my way to the infamous Berlin Wall. The part I saw was, of course, the Brandenburg Gate. The gate was actually built before the wall, which I did not know about. When the wall itself went up, the Gate was closed to both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The west side of the gate was the location of a few famous events during the cold was such as protests by the people of West Berlin and the speech where Ronald Regan said: "tear down this wall".

  While hanging around the wall, I noticed that the American flag and a little further away the Canadian flag. Assuming these were the embassies I decided to go check them out, but first I grabbed a Gluhwein for the trip. The contrast between the two embassies was hilarious. The American embassy is what you would expect from an embassy, a large walled in building with a security guard in front. The Canadian embassy, on the other hand, had a sign saying "Open to the public!" and then an exhibit with information about Canada. The was also a guard outside who explained to me that just the first part of the embassy is open to the public and to go further inside you need a passport. It also wasn't a walled building either it looked more of like a shared office building.

  I then went out to look at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. When I first saw it I actually accidentally stumbled on it and initially did not know what it is. It was an impressive memorial, almost like a maze. There have been many interpretations of the memorial. It was built where around the main parts of the Hitler organization.

The memorial

  Next stop was the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism. This memorial was built in the Tiergarten park near the Memorial to the Murdered Jews. This park was historically used as a hunting area for the rulers of the region. Now it is just a public park. I walked around it for a while looking at some sculptures and the beautiful scenery before going for lunch.

A couple of statues in Tiergarten

  After lunch, I went to Humbolt University and toured around some. Oddly enough the student cafe had a Canadian flag by the till. The most interesting site is a memorial to the book burning done by the NAZIs which was accompanied by a speech by Joseph Goebbels. This memorial is a bunch of empty bookshelves in a room underground. The bookshelves can contain 20,000 books which are roughly the amount that was burnt during that particular book burning. The room can be seen from a window in the sidewalk.

The empty bookshelves

  I also stopped by the Russian Embassy. It is a massive building that was left over as a relic from the cold war. It was built to show off the power of the Soviets. I asked the guard in front if I could take some photos of it and he said yes. To me, personally, it just looked like a huge old brick building.

Russian Embassy

By Jörg Zägel - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14770814

  The next stop was a museum about the Berlin wall which really opened my eyes to how weird the situation was surrounding it. I forget exactly what this museum was called, but it could be this one https://thewallmuseum.com/. The oddest part was that when the wall went up no one was notified until it started, and some people still worked on the other side of the wall. For those people who lived on one side and worked on the other, they were S.O.L. Such an odd situation.

  After this long day, I went back to the hostel and slept.

Day 2
  At the start of the second day, I went back to Alexanderplatz and got a coffee from Starbucks. Then I opened https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Berlin to look for a cool place to go. The first place I decided to go to was the Red City Hall.
  It is called the Red City Hall because of the red brick not because of the Soviets. It is the current city hall of Berlin and was the city hall of East Berlin. It apparently has some excellent sites inside but for some stupid reason, it is closed on the weekends 😕 so I could not go inside 😒.

The Red Ciry Hall

  I then made my to the Olympic Stadium. It was built during Hitler's time for the 1936 Olympics. It has been used continuously after that for various sporting events and is still a world-class facility. When I was there, they were getting ready for a football match (or soccer whichever you prefer), so it was cool to see the build up.

Olympic Stadium

  I also went to the DDR museum which described life in East Germany. The life for those people was so weird the technology they had was antiquated because of their limited trade partners. Transit tickets were given out by pulling a lever and people were supposed to pay because of social pressure, but the result was no one paid for the tickets. The weirdest part was that daycare children had collective potty breaks to 'instill a feeling of community'. It is fair to say I would not have survived in East Germany.
  I toured WinterfledPlatz looking around and drinking gluhwein. It had a lot of cool stuff. After that, I walked around Akazien-Goltzstrabe and toured around. It was a part of the city that was not entirely destroyed by bombs, so it was refreshing to walk around.

This was the end of the tour since I headed to the hostel then got on the train back to Ghent.

The Reichstag building