On the 28th of March, some chosen ones went to, just to say something remarkable, the city which has the biggest medieval square, Krakow. Those guys were Pau, Dastis, Marcos, Jose, and a server. In the flight were more spanish people, but we five were in a different (and I am sorry) better hostel. I cannot say to much about the other guys, because from my point of view, I met them in this trip; even though I have to admit that after this trip a really loyal friendship was forged ;).
When we landed at the airport, we were received with 2 beautiful hostess and with a mini orchestra that was playing this amazing song:
After many problems with the money, we managed to get into the bus and our trip started. The hostel, though small, was very welcoming, and later on, we found out that the owner, was such a strange guy with some kind of magic powers that allowed him to be awake the 3 nights we spent over there without resting that all...
As soon as we left the lugages and got ready, we left the place in order to take a free tour. The tour started in the main square (the one that I talked about above) and it covered mainly the whole city center. This enterprise has these kind of tours all over Europe. You are not obliged to pay them even though you can give them some tips in the end. That basically how it works.
In the main square there was a tower, and at the top of this tower, there is a trumpeter. He plays the same song every day during the whole year.
This city, apart from the Nazi's invasion, has a lot of story. They preserve a lot of old buildings from the Medieval Age. We moved to a big park beside the city center and from there, going under an arch, we return to the city center again.
The walk continued until we arrived to another park, which had a building where the Pope "Juan Pablo 2nd" usually stopped by when he went to Krakow. Unfortunatelly, some people gave up with the tour because "they were tired"...
The tour finished in a huge castle over a hill. There was a wall and in a corner the wall turned in a darker colour. This was due to the amount of times that it was touched by people, and it was touched by people because the wall was supposed to give to the one who touched it, some kind of "chakra" (Long live to Naruto). We came down from the hill and we said goodbye to the tour guide in front of the last "cultural" theme from this day, the dragon's statue. P.S: It threw fire every 5 minutes.
Once the tour was done we looked for a place to eat, and we found a really good typical Polish one. We got back to the hostel in order to get the strength back with a nap and after buying some drinks we let the night start. Of course, even we were in Krakow or wherever, we could not miss the Barça's game. We went to a really awesome place. It was lively in the Medieval Era. You could ask for a dish called "the knight's feast" or something like that, and it was basically a really long table where you were eating and the where offering like Medieval food in its own style. Of course, we did not ask for this dish because it was supposed to be for 15 people. But, we went to a really wide place, where they set up a projector screem and if it wasn't because Barça didn't win, it would have been the best game in my life. Here you have some pics of the food, it was not the kinght's feast, but it was really tasty and it was worthy as well.
We played some really awesome games to get warm such as "Fish and Bottle", "Looking fixedly to the wall while you drink" and so on...
This night the city center was not too much crowded, even though we got a really good time.
Due to some complaints from the members of the crew I am not allowed to write another post just to describe the night. I will just say that someone got an unforgettable present for the rest of (here you have a clue) HIS life, someone lost his jacket with his camera and his flight ticket and after (like in The Hangover I) checking his pockets and finding out where was the place where we were this night, could get everything back, and also, we got some problems cleaning up the room...
On the second day it was a hard challenge to wake up, and even more after the problems that we found as I said above. Anyhow even I am still trying to realize how could we found the jacket, camera and so on, we finally got ready to start with our second day in Krakow. We plan to find out the timetables of Auswitch in the central station, and at the same time, get something for our breakfast/lunch. After that, we were supossed to go to another free tour, this time it will show us the Jewish neighborhood and the ghettos. As I am writing, that was the plan, but some of my visionary friends decided that it was a matter of life or death to go to buy the alcohol for the night once we finish our lunch, go back to the hostel, and go to the meeting point. As you can imagine, they were still drunk, so the group (I don't count myself on it), decided to do that, and, the result was that we arrived late to the meeting point, and, of course, no one was there waiting for us...
We tried to reach the Jewish neighborhood by ourselves, and we achieved that, but once we were there, we didn't know, what exactly we should have a look at, and where exactly we should we go. After walking around without any sense we found one of these tour guides around the city (in this case around the Jewish neighborhood) by car. After negotiating with the guy we got a really good price and we took this tour. The translation to spanish was not the best, the car was not a Mercedes, but we manage to have a good time and more or less understand everything. We covered the whole Jewish neighborhood and finally, we stopped by the Guetto.
On the second day it was a hard challenge to wake up, and even more after the problems that we found as I said above. Anyhow even I am still trying to realize how could we found the jacket, camera and so on, we finally got ready to start with our second day in Krakow. We plan to find out the timetables of Auswitch in the central station, and at the same time, get something for our breakfast/lunch. After that, we were supossed to go to another free tour, this time it will show us the Jewish neighborhood and the ghettos. As I am writing, that was the plan, but some of my visionary friends decided that it was a matter of life or death to go to buy the alcohol for the night once we finish our lunch, go back to the hostel, and go to the meeting point. As you can imagine, they were still drunk, so the group (I don't count myself on it), decided to do that, and, the result was that we arrived late to the meeting point, and, of course, no one was there waiting for us...
We tried to reach the Jewish neighborhood by ourselves, and we achieved that, but once we were there, we didn't know, what exactly we should have a look at, and where exactly we should we go. After walking around without any sense we found one of these tour guides around the city (in this case around the Jewish neighborhood) by car. After negotiating with the guy we got a really good price and we took this tour. The translation to spanish was not the best, the car was not a Mercedes, but we manage to have a good time and more or less understand everything. We covered the whole Jewish neighborhood and finally, we stopped by the Guetto.
Thanks to the guy and his instructions, we had a walk around the Guetto and we could arrive as well at the Schindler's factory. Unfortunatelly, we couldn't get inside because they were closing, so we just took some pictures at the entrance, but at least, we can say that we were there ;). In our way back the fate wanted to show us that during the whole-by-ourselves-tour we were really closed to the real tour. After a few minutes walking, we found the people lead by the free tour girl. We took advantage of this fortuitous meet and we heard the girl talking about the piece of wall that still remained showing where the Guetto was.
With the tour done, and with the legs tired we needed a beer. We came back to the city center and we were moving from different bars in order to try to find the best one. There was a really cool one but it was completely full, so we couldn't stay. In the end, we found some place which was like a cave. We tried to get a 5 litters tub of beer, but after many discussions, we didn't get it. Jose and Dastis came back to the hostel and Pau, Marcos and I went to a different place. This one appeared on the list that the guy of our first free tour gave us. I don't remember the name, but it was like a mix between the 60s and 90s of the URSS. The place was really good set and lively. In the basement they were playing music and the place of the musician was a van. There was a van inside the bar, yes. Unfortunatelly I don't have pictures to show you from this place, but if you have the chance to go to Krakow, you should stop by.
After grabing some beers and chill in different places, it was time to get dinner. We found a really good pizzeria. It could be something like "Il Gondoliere" in Granada. Really good lively, good treatment and, the half of the price compared with the place in Granada, but it didn't mean that the size of the pizza was the half than the one that you can get in Granada...
After being completely full, we returned to the hostel, took a shower and got ready to start another Krakowian night. We stayed in the room drinking and playing some amazing games like the ones that I described above. It was a rainy night, but it didn't stop us. The whole spanish group was splitted and I finished with Pau and Marcos in the club that more times we visited there, "Carpe Diem 2". It was not too much crowded, and that's why Pau and I decided to leave and as we couldn't find Marcos, we left without him. We were working around the main square, trying to find a better place to stay over. After the search, the fate wanted us to meet the rest of the spanish group, and we finished all together in the same club (whose name I don't remember).
Next morning, with more or less troubles, we woke up relatively early in the morning in order to visit the concentration camps "Auswitch" and "Birkenau". The camps were far away from Krakow city, but they were even further by train. It seemed it was going at the same speed than a pedestrian...After the tedious trip, we arrived to our destination on time. From the central station we asked for a taxi and we arrived to our first stop, Auswitch. It was impressive before getting inside the amount of people who were waiting over there. People from every corner around the world. As we wanted to understand everything properly without any doubt, we took the guided tour in Spanish. Once we started with the tour, the first thing that we saw was the entrance to the concentration camp, with the next expression "Arbeit match frei", which comes from the German and means something like "Work makes free"...
When you see this just in the very beginning, you can imagine what kind of things are waiting for you inside... We were walking around to the concentration camp, the leader was explaining to us the meaning of the different building that you could see over there as well as any kind of data that you could find when you got inside the buildings. I don't want to be an encyclopedia, and furthermore nowadays anyone can go to wikipedia and find some good things over there. I would attach some pictures instead, and I would say that when you are in these kind of places, you can realise what really matters and what does not in your life. Sometimes we are overwhelmed with problems that we think are the worst that could have happened to us, but when you see how the world has been suffering, or the ideas that some people have had as the time went by you can get a completely different idea of your world's perspective. Although it can be very impressive and some people finish this tour almost shocked I would really advise you to come here if you have the chance.
Next morning, with more or less troubles, we woke up relatively early in the morning in order to visit the concentration camps "Auswitch" and "Birkenau". The camps were far away from Krakow city, but they were even further by train. It seemed it was going at the same speed than a pedestrian...After the tedious trip, we arrived to our destination on time. From the central station we asked for a taxi and we arrived to our first stop, Auswitch. It was impressive before getting inside the amount of people who were waiting over there. People from every corner around the world. As we wanted to understand everything properly without any doubt, we took the guided tour in Spanish. Once we started with the tour, the first thing that we saw was the entrance to the concentration camp, with the next expression "Arbeit match frei", which comes from the German and means something like "Work makes free"...
When you see this just in the very beginning, you can imagine what kind of things are waiting for you inside... We were walking around to the concentration camp, the leader was explaining to us the meaning of the different building that you could see over there as well as any kind of data that you could find when you got inside the buildings. I don't want to be an encyclopedia, and furthermore nowadays anyone can go to wikipedia and find some good things over there. I would attach some pictures instead, and I would say that when you are in these kind of places, you can realise what really matters and what does not in your life. Sometimes we are overwhelmed with problems that we think are the worst that could have happened to us, but when you see how the world has been suffering, or the ideas that some people have had as the time went by you can get a completely different idea of your world's perspective. Although it can be very impressive and some people finish this tour almost shocked I would really advise you to come here if you have the chance.
The next and the last stop was the biggest concentration camp over there, Birkenau. Unlike Auswitch, where the main point was to keep people working, in this camp, the main point was the extermination. They had the railway stopping by the gas chambers. They didn't want to waste time transporting prisioners, so they decided to spend as minimum time as they can killing people. If the first camp was impresive, I would say that this one was even more. It was huge, and they had 2 or 3 gas chambers which were able to kill thousands of people per day. We got inside to the places were the prisioners slept. The had to slept 3 or 4 in the same "bed", if it can be called bed...It was a piece of wood, like a door...When it was raining, as they didn't have any floor, the ground became mud. It was impressive to me, but the most was the punishment that they had for them...There was one which was called "the room of being stand up". They enclose 4 people in a square of one square meter. After 12 hours of work, they had to "sleep" in this one square meter, all together. Try to imagine the situation...4 people in one square meter, the whole night stand up, after having been 12 hours working...
As I did before, I am going to attach some pictures, and I don't need to tell you again what you feel when you are in these kind of places.
Once again, as we did the last days, we came back to the hostel and we got ready to let the dogs out. I do not know if I am going to have any complaint or claim (as it happens in bars), but, as far as I am the guy who is writting this blog, I thing I have enough permissions to attach this video. This goes for you all, grandmotherfuckers.
P.S: I'm sorry for the quality of the video, but I couldn't find a better way to upload it. Anyway, what really matters here is the audio, not the image ;)
P.S: I'm sorry for the quality of the video, but I couldn't find a better way to upload it. Anyway, what really matters here is the audio, not the image ;)
Maybe it was just because it was our last night in Krakow and someone wanted to give us a present, but we arrived to a really awesome club. We were dancing, and breaking ourselves, as usual, and as usual, we had some problems, so we have to left the club sonner than expected, but in the end, everybody came back to Sweden alive.
I hope you had enjoyed with this post. Sorry for the delay, but I have been quite busy sharing my love with the great people that I have met in Sweden as far as we were leaving the country forever, or, who knows, maybe we will come back again ;).
Before leaving, I want to make a remark. After this trip, and amazing and unforgettable bond emerged between a server and two girls, whose names are Belén & Águeda. I am sorry for not having met before, but as a great guy says, "Palace's things go slow". It was as well a help to the creation of the Wolf Pack, this group that too many joys and good times gave us during our last 2 months in Sweden.
Thanks you all for everything, we will keep in touch for sure.
C u all in the next post, "Budapest".
Hugs and kisses for anyone who follows this blog ;)
