Trip to Poland 6-11-10.2006

Seems to be that I’m only writing about the trips I make from Berlin… This time I make no exception. So my German course ended in the end of September. After that I had two weeks of holiday before the lectures would start on 15.10. I figured out that I would have time to stay in Berlin during the semester but there wouldn’t be too many longer holidays during which I could travel. So I decided to go to Poland because it was so close and it was also supposed to be quite cheap. I had also heard many good things about Poland.

I was traveling in Poland with two French persons. In the picture you can see Anne-Sophie and Maxim. They were both from the same language course group as me. I think we had quite a nice group. Maybe sometimes it was a bit of problem that we couldn’t really communicate so well with each other as we didn’t had a language that would be strong for all of us. In the end our German wasn’t that good yet:)

Our group (Anne-Sophie, Maxim and me)

We started our travel early on Friday 6.10.2006 morning by taking the regional train from Berlin to the border of Poland. That took an hour and cost around 8 euros. From the border we took a train to Wroclaw which was about to be our first place to see in Poland. We arrived to Wroclaw on afternoon. The train ride from the border to Wroclaw took four hours but cost only a couple of euros more as the one hour-ride in Germany. It’s just a good example of the huge prize differences and how expensive the German train is:)

For a Finnish person all the middle-European cities are just amazing (when talking about the buildings…). So was also Wroclaw. The city has a very long history which could be seen in the city. There were a lot of old beautiful buildings - which for my astonishment – were especially in the central area very well renovated. We were mostly in the old part of the city, where all the tourist attractions were. That’s why I also think that most of the buildings looked so good. I’m sure that when we would have went a bit out of the city central; we would have seen a lot of soviet-style buildings in not that good condition.

The central of Wroclaw by night

Yeap, Poland is cheap. Some prices in Poland in euros:
- a shot of vodka in bar 1-1,5e
- a glass of beer in bar 1,5e
- a döner (kebab) 2e
- a good meal in restaurant 3-4e
- entrance to nightclub free – 2e

In Wroclaw we decided in the end just to stay one night. Biggest reason for that was that there were too many other places we wanted to see and totally too little time… On Saturday we met Agnieszka Szpatowicz (I just love the polish names:) ) from our language group. She is coming originally from a city close by Wroclaw so she and her friend were showing us a bit of Wroclaw. I think it so much more interesting to travel when you know someone from the place you travel. All the places get a different dimension when some local person is explaining them. The thing I really love about traveling is when I can a bit adjust to the local society, the local way of living.

From Wroclaw we traveled onwards to Krakow on Saturday. Our train ride took a train which cost around 15e and took 4-6 hours (if I remember correctly).

Sunday:

Krakow was a very beautiful city. I think it was a lot more beautiful than Wroclaw and definitely worth of visiting. In Krakow we did some sightseeing during the day and partying during the night:) Krakow seems to have quite a good night life too:)


From the central of Krakow

Monday:

From Krakow we did also a one-day-trip to the mountains in Zakopane. That was some 1,5 hours bus ride and cost maybe 5-10euros. But definitely worth of visiting! There we saw just totally amazing views! I just love mountains. Funny thing was that we met on the mountains a mexican guy (whose name I can't remember now) who we had already met before in our hostel in Krakow. He joined our group... The views can't really describe how nice it looked:

On the way to the Mountains

Some views from the mountains



And going back again

Tuesday:

We visited also the salt-mines near Krakow. The salt mines were really advertised by all the tourist guides but we thought that in the end it wasn’t so special. Or maybe it was special but we just didn’t like it. We took accidentally a guided tour in Polish so we didn’t really understand so much either:) But we had a lot of fun there in the mines:) I wouldn’t recommend those mines to anyone…

The boys in the mines:)

On Wednesday

On Wednesday we thought to visit Auschwitz concentration camp. From there I don’t want to post any pictures. I think that is not very suitable. Auschwitz was something very shocking. It was strange contrast: the weather on Wednesday was very nice so Auschwitz looked almost nice. It was very difficult to understand what had been going on there just 60 years ago. Some people think that the idea of visiting concentration camps is totally crazy: they shouldn’t be made touristy attractions. Personally I think that it was a “good” experience to go there. It really makes you think that I want to do everything that those things wouldn’t happened any more. Then when you start thinking that, you might remember/realize that those things are happening all the time around the World. That makes you very sad. Sometimes life feels so helpless. There are so many things in the World that should be different. But what can one person do?

Auschwitz ended mine and Maxims trip in Poland as we needed to be back in Berlin. We traveled back to Berlin with a night train. Anne-Sophie thought to continue traveling onwards to Prague with the mexican guy…