Day 40 – Auschwitz

For some reason, we found it hard to pick up a wifi signal in our room and as the hostel was still teeming with all the boys, we thought it would be better to eat out for a change and have brunch. Of course the goal was to get wifi and everywhere we went, that was the first thing my girlfriend said – talk about being forward.

We eventually found somewhere and I had an omlette, one of the best pieces of food I’ve had on this trip, and one that I would crave for the remainder of it. Following brunch, we returned back to the hostel to get my girlfriend a jumper as it was cold today. It meant asking the staff to open the bag store again and they didn’t seem too happy. Our minibus arrived at the tour office and we were well informed that we had to leave our knives, guns and bombs in our bags on the bus. Everyone was so annoyed they couldn’t bring their bombs in with them… It was a small minibus with 12 people in it. I was happy thinking it was a small intimate group like this but when we arrived, bus after bus after bus arrived as well and they all had the same badges as we did. There were at least 100 now!

As usual, we can’t go a day without a bit of drama and the first bit today was that it was 3.40pm and we needed to be back for our train at 10pm. I know it is far away but we had only arrived and still had a 4hr tour left! I couldn’t settle all day. There have been so many Irish people in Krakow and on the bus, there was a boy from Ballymena. They all went to the same University and we didn’t want to ask but we guessed Newcastle. Probably right though.

When we were given our headsets, I was working out who the tour guides were. One of them, who I can only describe as those old and tanned Spanish women, who has smoked too many cigarettes and has that really dark, smoky voice. Imagine getting her I said.

Well of course we got her. She was dreadful – she was chewing chewing-gum as well and wasn’t really telling us any stories, just pointing to what was what. I had tuned in my headset to another group and as I could actually understand the other guide, we worked out where they were and slipped out of our group. We left downstairs and merged into the back of the other group, who were 3 rooms behind.

Suddenly the headset went quiet and that was because the new tour guide saw us and came over to ask us why we had changed. Not trying to be rude or anything, but we had basically said the other girl was a bit shit and we couldn’t understand her. She laughed and knew who we meant so let us join her group – what a decision it was, we learnt 5 times as much as we did with the other guide.

Many people say they are emotional when they visited here but I was more in awe at what actually happened, or how they came up with some of their ideas and methods. My girlfriend was surprisingly the same and didn’t cry once before lunch, where she also enjoyed her one twix and one apple she brought for food. Let me mention that she didn’t cry the whole day – not just before lunch.

Birkenau was up next and it was bigger than I had imagined with rows upon rows of buildings. The tour was really good and well worth it. My girlfriend had wanted to do this since we set off and now she was happy we had. We got back earlier than I expected thankfully and we went back to our hostel to collect our bags.

There was a young boy who gave out subway leaflets below our hostel and everytime we passed he would try and give us one. Today he tried again and I said “Seriously, can you not remember we have walked passed you 10 times already!” We all kind of laughed and on the way out of the hostel again, he went to give me one as a joke. Funny guy.

We had a small amount of Polish money left and could only get 2 small burgers from Burger King. I had a nugget burger where they just put nuggets inside 2 baps. Who on earth thought that was a good idea? We were still hungry but didn’t have enough so ended up just getting a cheap KFC meal deal and paid by card – better than being hungry. We ate outside the train because it was delayed by 10 minutes and I would rather eat here than on our beds.

When we walked towards the train, the whistle blew and we had to sprint because our carriage was at the very end. We made it and got to our room that already had two girls on the top two bunks. We took the bottom ones and went to bed in a pleasent temperature this time! The girls were going to Vienna and Croatia so we told them our tips and stories and vice versa. Hopefully our train doesn’t get delayed 4 hours overnight tonight!