Poland

First off, my apologies that i haven't written in such a long time...we have been soo incredible busy and internet access has not come easily.

Prague seems like such a long time ago...right now i'm in Berlin, Germany. Last week we were in Krakow and Warsaw, Poland. For this portion of the trip we have a tour guide, Garbriel. He is British and currently lives in Berlin. He is wonderful. He could be one of the funniest tour guides I've ever had. And he makes things interesting. I have not been bored on his walking tours of Warsaw and Berlin. And he has spoiled us with food. Our breakfasts have been extensive and our group meals have been incredible (we are talking 3 and 4 course meals-with a choice of a drink which is huge because we normally just get water).

I had no expectations for Krakow and it pleasantly surprised me. It has a very eastern european feel to it. there is a huge town square with open air markets and street performers. There are cobble streets everywhere. my love of cobble streets is fading quickly since this trip-draging luggage on them for over 5 minutes is soo hard! I found a new suitcase yeah! There is a huge mall in Krakow and I was able to find one pretty easily. We stayed in a hostle. It wasnt too bad. I was in a room with 6 girls and had to share a bathroom with 10 people. There were no mirrors anywhere except the bathroom which made getting ready for the day interesting. It was impossible to be quiet in the whole hostle so no one really got much sleep. We did luck out on its location thought. It was right on the corner of the main square...perfect. Our time in Krakow was relatively short. We went on a tour of the city and on a tour of communism. It was the craziest tour ever. We drove around in a huge red communist bus...i dont think i've ever noticed getting stared at so much. The tour leaders were insane/nutty. i dont really know how to explain it but pretty much none of us knew what was going on. it was so random and funny.

one day in Krakow we drove out to Auschwitz. There we saw the death camp and the labor camp. It was an extremely emotionally draining day. I'm still tring to process through everything I saw...I think it will take a while. It was a somber and hard day. I was extremely moved by what I saw...I was unable to hold back the tears. There is something different about actually seeing a place like that with my own eyes. I've read about the Holocause and have seen movies but seeing where it happened makes it so much more real to it. There is a tangible aspect to it. The massive numbers of peopled killed makes sense to me. The history and suffering became real. It was heartbreaking but real.

We arrived in Warsaw on the 10th. It is a strikingly different city. It is huge and has a urban city feel to it. It reminded me a lot of downtown l.a. or new york (but not as pretty). The presence of communism years ago can definitely be felt. Most of the building look identical-like slabs of concrete. Not exactly picturesque like some other cities we have been to. We stayed at a hostel again. this one was much bigger and nicer than the one in Krakow. i was in a 10 person room with 6 girls. The beds were more comfortable and so much warmer. This hostel also had someone who did our laundry for free. it was a little chaotic though. Imagine 47 people with tons of laundry all piled into one room. i had to lable everything. not all of my stuff got washed since there wasn' enought time but i'll take what I got. I have not down laundry since back in Cambridge...it is soooo nice to have clean clothes that don't smell like smoke.

We only had 2 days in Warsaw. One day we had a city tour from 9:30-5...and then next day we went to a few war memorials. One striking thing about Warsaw is that there are almost no orinigal buildings in the city from before world war II. THe whole city was destroyed. Everything was rebuilt during the communist era. one of our nights we went bowling. It was soo much fun. It felt like we were at home. The bowling place had Kareoke too...a few people got up there to sing including Rick and Barb Pointer (known to us as mom and dad) they sang my heart will go on from titanic....it was incredible...barb was soo embarassed but rick was way into it...he looked like a pro.

we left poland 2 nights ago. We had to take an overnight train to berlin. The train experienced was awful. it was stressful and tiring. We had about 4 minutes to get all our luggage onto the train-that is way easier said than done. The cart were sooo small. The aisle was a wide as a suitcase. we had 6 people in a room (3 bunks on each side on top of one another). The room was small...incredible small...only 3 people could stand in it at a time...we barely got any sleep...the german border control woke us up at 6...i got about 3 hours of sleep...not solid sleep but sleep....it was such a long ordeal and not a pleasant one...we made it to berlin safely thought...i ran out of time on the internet so more to come later.