Destination: Appreciation
Mandy here once more for updates. I am waiting for dinner from Seth right now, so I thought I'd write a blog. Once we left Lithuania we took an overnight bus to Warsaw Poland. We knew we'd only stay there a day or so since people tell us it's not such a great city...pretty much just skyscrapers and large businesses. But, by the time we got off the bus I was pretty sick (I'm sure I caught a bug form all the germ infested places we've been). We went to the hostel, but couldn't check in for five hours. So what does one do when they're tired, sick, and wasting time? Sleep in McDonald's. Yep, it was the only place open at that hour of the morning, so we slept for a few hours in the fast food conglomerate, then went to the hostel where I slept for a few more hours.
The next day I was feeling a bit better, so we took the train to Warsaw to Krakow. I was very excited about this trip because it was something I had been waiting for for a long time now. Once we got here we met up with our good old friends Derek and Fawnda (see Vilnius blog). Yesterday, we all took a day trip to Auschwitz. I knew when we were planning this trip that this was one place I really had to visit. I think it's important to visit the fun stuff as well as the somber stuff. So we went to Auschwitz and then Birkenau. Both were really amazing places to visit. Seth took some pictures, but we mostly just wanted to remember that experience in our head, so we could recall the feeling that we got when we were there. Birkenau is a truly gigantic place. This was the supplementary camp to Auschwitz because they needed to hold more prisoners. At the entrance gate, you can't even see the other side it's so big. Another thing that struck me as the worst part of these camps was the deceptions behind all of it. They made the people pack their bags as if they were really starting a new life. And the entrance gate at Auschwitz says "Arbeit Macht Frei" which means "work makes you free". The tour guide told us this statement was meant to trick the prisoners into thinking that they were actually going to a work camp, when it was actually just a death camp. We learned a lot, but I don't think I want to tell you everything; it's definitely a place everyone should visit in person.
So we were going to spend some more time in Krakow, but decided to take the overnight bus with Derek and Fawnda to Budapest, Hungary. We leave tonight at 8:00 pm and arrive at 6:00am. Wish us luck.
Pictures:
posted by Seth and Amanda | 9:03 AM
4 Comments:
dear brother and sister,
i'm going to leave incredibly potty-free comments now. not because uncle kerry chastised me. just because.
i bought a jacket today that said sniper on it...and i took the patch off...and i was thinking that in yesteryear seth would have wanted it, but probably not anymore, so i'm going to put it in the freepile.
remember that summer you had to read the trumpeter of krakow, seth?
love,
livi
Seth and Amanda rock all of Hungaria simultaneously.
Going to Transylvania for Halloween is a sure fire way to get eaten. Or atleast thats my understanding.
wait...are you going to transylvania? for halloween? i mean, all of eastern europe is filled with vampires and stuff (12 year old goth kid spelling: vampyre). oh god. speaking of 12 yr old goth kids...jeff cadien. good lord. the memories. so for halloween i'm probably going to be a heather...the winona ryder heather. we're going trick or treating.
did you ever read fast food nation? there's a mcdonald's next to one of the big concentration camps..i forget which one, maybe bergen-belsen? and they profit a lot from the tourists that go there. kind of sick. but some people just gotta have their big n nasties or their fruit and walnut salads. but the latter was beyond our time.
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