Poland

Im going to make today's blog short and sweet. One reason being its 12:30am and I need to get to bed as our trains leaves at 7am! Secondly, there isn't much to say about today.

I'm definitely NOT a women of few words, but after doing a 6 hour tour of Auschwitz Nazi Concentration camp, I have become one, for today at least! I only posted a few pictures to give you an idea of what we saw. Many most of you wouldn't want to see the rest because it would probably make you feel sick to your stomach. A few times on our tour when the guide said something or showed us artifacts, Candice and I just gave each other a 'oh my god look' and said nothing. There isn't much to say really. We saw what most people couldn't even imagine. Movies and pictures are definitely are not the same thing. As horrific as it was standing on the original floor in Auschwitz where you know thousands were lying in that exact spot half dead, I am very glad we did the tour. If you ever come to Poland, you must go to Auschwitz, you must.

There was one thing Candice and I learned that we found very interesting. Our guide said that the Jews that were workers at the camp, would refer to working in the warehouse as 'Canada', because it is the land of the plenty. If you worked in the warehouse, you could steal clothing and food. We both have never heard this before. Makes you sad that what we have was referred to as a dream for these poor people.

Anyways....it was a good day. We got some polish food for dinner. Now I've tried traditional perogies, potato pancakes and cabbage rolls. I think I've also gained 5lbs from being here. The food is soooo fried! What I'd do for a ice big spinach salad right now.

Off to Berlin in the morning. We won't arrive until early evening. I can't say I'm excited about being on a train for 9 hrs, though we did book 1st class, so hopefully it's quite the ride!

Love Lindsay

Well today has been an interesting day. We started off with breakfast in our hotel, it's included like it was in Scotland. I have to say we both agree that it's awesome when you have a hotel with breakfast. When your in a strange place with no car and you don't know about the food, it can take forever to find and figure out what to eat. That was a huge problem in Paris. I put up a pic on my fb of our breakfast this morning. Polish breakfast, is different that's for sure. Kebasa sausages, weird watery scrambled eggs, cold cuts and cheese, this mushy looking cheese with something in it (it literally looked like clumps of coloured poo), dried up muffins/loafs, bad looking apples, weird cold cereal, toast and jam and yogurt. Well I ate exactly what Candice ate, and I'm the one who was lucky enough to get sick. In retrospect, we have been Europe for 8 days, eating out for every meal, eating food that is foreign to us, cooked/prepared differently and not part of both of our normal everyday healthy diet (yes, we both normally eat extremely healthy). So I guess it's only normal that eventually we get sick from eating foreign food, I'm surprised it took this long. So, I broke out the Imodium today, my old best friend. Spend half the day feeling yucky, with tummy cramps and literally afraid to eat again. I like Poland, but I'm scared of the food now. Especially since we don't know what made me sick. On a happy note, the morning coffee is EXCELLENT! They have the best coffee machines in Europe!

After breakfast, We walked through the Old Town, saw a bunch of church's and walked up to the castle. We were in search of a post office, which was apparently on the top of the hill where the castle and cathedral were. After asking 5 people and a good 30 minutes later we found it and stamps were bought! YAY!!

Then we walked to the Jewish Old Town. There was such a difference between where we are staying in Old Town and the Jewish area. We went through the Synagogue Temple and walked on in search of the Old Synagogue. We eventually found it, after walking directly by it because the side of the building looked like a ghetto with spray painting everywhere. The road it was off of was so sketchy looking. It was crazy to see that 70 yrs after the war how war torn areas still looked, especially in the Jewish area.

After the Old Synagogue, we had a late lunch at a polish restaurant. I was so worried about eating after the morning, but I survived. We tried our first real perogies. We got a mixed plate with cheese, mushroom and meat perogies. The meat was 'mystery meat', who knows what was in it! One of my meat perogies tasted so bad, I couldn't stomach it but the rest where okay.

It's really hot here today, we were dying. So we walked back to the hotel to relax and cool off. Our hotel room is awesome but omg is it ever cold! We have tried to adjust the thermostat many times but it isn't changing. We are in hoodies, socks, barried under blankets and we are still cold!!!! I so cold my nose is running! Lol

We left our ice box of a hotel room for dinner. We had an awesome dinner at a fancy polish restaurant down the road. The food was amazing!!! My fingers are too cold to upload the pictures tonight, I'll do it tomorrow.

We booked a tour tomorrow for Aushwitz. Should be an interesting day.

We are really enjoying Poland!!!
Until tomorrow.
Love Lindsay

We made it!! We are in Poland!!!! Today was kind of a write off day. We woke up late, packed, checked out of the hotel and hung out in Starbucks wasting time for 2 hrs before heading to the airport. It takes a good hour to get to th airport, we need to take the metro a good 5 stops, switch to the train which is a good 30 minutes long. Keep in mind this is all with a heavy backpack on your back, and a small back pack on our front plus carrying a purse! My bag has somehow grown, and is now 17.2 kg! A good 2 kg more then Candice's. So it's a good workout!

The flight here was good, and we were able to get our bags quickly. It is very strange being in a country where you don't know, speak or understand the language. I literally don't know a lick of polish! My bubbie didnt speak polish, she spoke yiddish so I only know a few Yiddish words. I was face timing Darina tonight and she was trying to teach us how to pronounce a few words but it's not working so well for me! At least in Paris. We would pick up words, or understand things a bit by piecing them together. Here we are screwed, and keep on laughing about it. Take our 9pm dinner for instance. We got in at 8pm, checked in and walked to the huge awesome mall that's attached to the train station. We went up to the food court to get dinner cause we were starving. Well, we had no idea what the food was, any of the food. We don't recognize any words and I wasn't really feeling eating mystery meat. So it was McDonald's, subway or KFC! We had subway in Glasgow, and since we had mcd's for lunch today we went for KFC. These were our only options cause we could kind of make out the pictures and the words were kind of in broken English. Of course, I had no idea what I ordered, but it turned out okay. My body isn't going to like me, I never eat fast food and today I had it twice!

Our hotel room is amazing! We are in the jazz room! It's fancy, has flashing lights around the ceiling and the back of the bed. It's crazy. Definitely the nicest hotel we've stayed in yet.

So we've only been here for 4 hours but so far i love krakow. It's much more modern then I expected. I think if my bubbie were alive she'd be happy that I came here, to see where her family lived before the war. I wish she was around so I could tell her about it. I'm proud to be a half Jew learning about my family's history here. Should be very sad, depressing and educational.

Tomorrow we are going to follow our frommers book and do a bunch of walking tours on our own (plus some cheap shopping!!!) then Saturday we are going to book a tour for Auschwitz concentration camp.

Soooo excited to be here!!!

Love Lindsay