Terezine, Kromeriz, Ostrava, Krakow, and Auschwitz

Greetings! From the capital city of the great Kingdom of Moravia! This post is going to be a little lengthy, So I hope that you don't mind.  We have been quite busy since our return from spring break (which by the way I will eventually post, but our school trips take priority over our personal trips for our blogs).  After riding in a train for almost three days coming back from Rome, I was wiped out.  It was nice to get back "home" and have a normal week after spring break.  However that next Saturday we took a day trip to Terezine Concentration Camp.  This trip was interesting.  It is a small town North of Prague that literally would not exist without the camp.  Upon arrival, you see the entrance into Terezine.

 On one side of the walkway there is a large area with graves, a large Cross and a large Star of David.  So right away you can see that this place is a place with a grim past.  As you walk in and look to the left, there was a long walkway with rooms on either side and at the end of the way there was the famous sign that reads, "Arbeit macht frei."

 This as you may already know is German for "Work will set you free".  Beyond this sign was the cells for the inmates.  These cells were only meant to hold around 30 - 40 people, but the Nazis were cramming in 150-200 prisoners at a time.  So one can only imagine the horrible conditions that these people had to go through.

Terezine is a unique place.  It was originally built as a fort, and was later use to accommodate military and political prisoners.  Then during WWII it was used as a concentration camp for forced laborers.  This was also the place that the Nazis tried to use as their ideal concentration camp to show the Red Cross.  They made it seem like all the people that lived here were happy and had no problems when in fact it was not true.  But at the time the Red Cross believed it and did nothing, meanwhile even worse camps existed like Auschwitz.

The next week we took another short day trip.  This time we traveled to the town of Kromeriz.  This was a cool little town not too far from Olomouc.  The town's main landmark is the Baroque Kromeriz Bishop's Palace, where some famous films including Amadeus were filmed.  Around the palace, there are also some beautiful gardens.  

It was a very peaceful place to be.  It was also very large and I was unable to even see it all.  After some good food, we took a tour of the wine cellars under the palace.  Here we were able to see a place that had over 730 years of experience.  

 A special form of mold grows on the walls of the cellars and it is very sticky.  There are coins all over the walls because it is said that if you leave a coin it will bring you good luck in the future.

And then at the end of our tour we did a little wine tasting.  It was some good stuff, I think they know what they are doing in Kromeriz. 

Our next destination was Krakow, Poland.  This was going to be a four day weekend because we could not get into Auschwitz until Monday.  I was completely okay with a longer stay.  On our way to Krakow we made a little side trip to Ostrava, Czech Republic.  Ostrava is mainly an industrial city, so we stopped to see an old iron factory that they have turned into a museum and a place for music festivals.  It was intriguing to see how these people have taken an old (not very beautiful) part of their past and are now turning it into something modern that future generations will be able to admire and enjoy.

A lift that leads into the furnace originally used for coal, but now it has been modified to an elevator for the visitors.

 Inside of one of the blast furnaces.  They said it took four months to cool down.  #HAWT

This was were the molten iron came out of the furnace.

We then continued our journey to Krakow.  Upon arrival, it was cold and rainy which was not a great start to the weekend.  However things started to look up when we took a tour of the massive salt mine Wieliczka.  At first I did not know what to think about a tour of a salt mine, I mean how cool can a salt mine be?  In fact it was very cool!  Your first impression of the huge mine is the stairway down.  

 If you are able to see the tiny little black dot in the middle of the picture, that still was not the end.  That was just were they stopped lighting the area.  I thought we were never going to reach the end of those stairs.

When you finally reach the "first level" of the mine, this is the sign you see.  Again, and I do not quite understand why mines and caves will not let you take pictures, but I had to pay to take photos of the inside.  These photos are just some of the few that I was able to get that are not blurry.  

This mine was amazing!  On our tour, we were only able to see about 1% of the entire thing.  It was full of huge rooms that once they had mined all of the salt, they would turn into very unique churches with beautiful carvings and sculptures.  There was one room that was so tall that the first ever underground bungee jump took place.  About 100 years ago, the caves saw around 100 visitors a week.  Today, during their summer busy months, the mines see about 7,000 people a day.

Photo from:  http://www.olympicwanderings.com

This was the famous "Underground Cathedral of Wieliczka" but there were also many others.  Its fascinating to see what people can do with salt mines.  

After a day of walking through industrial complexes and massive salt mines, we were all very tired and hungry.  So when we arrived at our hostel, we dropped our belongings off and hit the town.  We were staying in the old Jewish part of town and right next to us was a nice little square full of bars, restaurants, and street food (my kind of place!).  I decided to order a Polish specialty, Perogies.  

These perogies were stuffed with meat, but you can get them filled with numerous things such as spinach, mushrooms, even fruit jams and jellies.  These were by far one of my favorite things about Poland.  

Over the next few days we were quite busy.  We saw Oskar Schindler's factory, the Wawel Castle, and much of downtown Krakow.  

 Downtown Krakow

  Downtown Krakow

  Downtown Krakow

 Wawel Castle 

  Wawel Castle 

  Wawel Castle 

 At our hostel, we were able to re-watch Schindler's List.  This was a good refresher because the next day we actually were able to visit Schindler's factory were he saved so many lives.  It was a little different than I thought it would be.  The factory part of the building was no longer there.  It was just the front of the factory were Oskar's office was.  They have turned the rest of the front into a WWII museum.

 Some of the pots that were produced in the factory.

Oskar Schindler's office.

This was the last thing that we saw in Krakow, and our next trip was Auschwitz.  It was not a very long bus ride from Krakow, but it was not an easy one.  The whole time on the bus, everyone was quiet.  We have been studying the Holocaust for the past few months and we were all a little conceded for what we were about to experience.  I could not stop thinking about the same journey many Jewish families took on their way to this horrible place.  When I stepped off the bus, I did not know if I was ready or not, but this was something that I knew I needed to see.  We were at Auschwitz I, the torture center.  

We also toured Auschwitz Birkenau.