Form History & Cultural Trip to Poland March 2011

The main square in Krakow

We arrived at Dublin airport on the Saturday morning at 4 a.m. tired but excited for the impending trip. We got to see the new Terminal 2 which was quite nice before boarding our flight to Krakow. The flight was uneventful and everyone was tired when we arrived into Krakow airport at around 10:00 a.m. local time. We got our bus to the hotel where we had to leave our suitcases in a room off reception because our rooms weren’t ready yet. We then went into the city of Krakow to get lunch. We went down into the main square and we split up for an hour. The main street isn’t as long as say Grafton Street but it’s pretty nonetheless and has some really interesting shops along it. After an hour we went back to the hotel where our rooms were still not ready. We then split up into two groups and went on a 4 hour walking tour of the city. Our guide was lovely but when you have been up since 3:00 AM, a 4 hour walking tour is probably not the best idea. We walked all over Krakow and took in sites such as the main square which is the biggest in Europe, the Jewish Quarter and many, many, Catholic churches. We learnt that 95% of the population of Krakow were Catholic. I’d say be us being there, we increased the Protestant population by at least 2%. After the long tour, we went back to the hotel and had dinner which was nice enough. We then got the chance to hang out in groups and go and buy snacks from the shop outside. Everyone went to bed around 10 pm.

The next day we woke up pretty early because we had to get an early bus to go to Auschwitz. We had breakfast where we were surprised at the amount of cold meats that people had for breakfast here. We got on the bus and spent the next hour trying to catch up on sleep. When we arrived we were split up again into two groups and were taken around Auschwitz 1. We were taken to original barracks which were made out of brick houses as the place used to be a town before it was taken over by the Nazis. We saw the famous Auschwitz sign ‘Arbeit macht frei’ and we were shown collections of people’s shoes, luggage and clothes that were taken from them on arrival. We saw the only remaining gas chamber and crematorium as the others were destroyed by the Nazis. We had lunch before taking a bus to Auschwitz 2/ Birkenau. This is the part of Auschwitz that you would always see on the documentaries about it. It was huge. We saw the barracks that the prisoners were kept in. They looked more like stables than a place fit for human habitation. They showed us where they prisoners had to wash and use the bathrooms. They were 9 of these sanitation huts compared to the huge amount of people who were imprisoned in the camp. We were taken along the traintrack where the trainloads of prisoners were brought in and we were shown the platform where the prisoners were sorted as soon as they came in. We then went to the remains of crematoria four and five and were shown the admissions office where anyone who was fit to work, was recorded. At the end of the tour we were taken to the memorial where a message is written in the languages of all the prisoners who died or were imprisoned in Auschwitz. There is also one in English which reads

‘For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazi’s murdered about one and a half million men, women and children, mainly Jews from various countries of Europe. Auschwitz – Birkenau 1940 – 1945’.

It is a chilling and deeply disturbing place because it shows the worst side of humanity and what one human being can do to another. You don’t see any birds flying over the place. It’s as if they know that mass murder of innocent people took place there.

After we left Auschwitz, we got the chance to go off on our own to the main street and square of Krakow for an hour or so to shop for presents or just in general. Then we returned back to the hotel for dinner before getting on the bus to go to the water park. The water park was amazing. The slides were really fast and the adrenaline you got going down them was just incredible. We had great craic racing each other and challenging each other to try and run across the stepping stones without using the ropes. At one point there were about fifty of us in the lazy river singing ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah’ so loudly that Mr Ua Brudair had to be called over. I think he was impressed and proud even though the lifeguard thought we were a nuisance.

The third day, we went to visit the salt mines. We took a 3 hour tour and walked over 3 km underground which turned out to be less than 1% of the actual mine. It was long and interesting up to a point. The huge chapel in the middle of the mine was pretty cool. They are very religious down there because we passed through about 4 chapels on our tour. The jokes were pretty terrible but Mr Huggard seemed to be inspired by them though. The lift was the worst bit because there were eight of us piled into this tiny lift that shot up about 169m in about a minute. It was safe to say that Ms Malcolm did not enjoy that at all. After the salt mines we went to the huge shopping centre just down from our hotel. It had some good shops in it and I got some nice clothes there. We then went around Krakow again for a while and bought more clothes and returned back to the hotel for dinner. Then we went bowling which was really good fun. Bowling is very entertaining when you’re competing against each other and trying to put each other off as much as possible. When we got back to the hotel we hung out for a while before going to bed.

A moving image at Auschwitz

We left the following morning and in the airport, tried to spend the last of our Zlotti’s before getting on the plane to fly home. Overall I really enjoyed the trip and I’m really glad we went. As a year it brought us closer together and we had some good laughs while there. Everyone was really sound and nobody made any sly comments or complained that much. It also wasn’t as cold as predicted which helped a lot. I found Auschwitz really interesting and eye-opening as to what the human race is capable of. I hope that future 4th years will also get the chance to travel abroad as it really is a great chance to see stuff you mightn’t necessarily see normally.