OUR STAY IN POLAND 17th - 30th October 2009

14 Days
I would not know where to start ... These 14 days were beautiful and I saw many new things, I saw some new places that alone probably I would not have gone to see. From this beautiful vacation the first 2 days we were in Wien, a truly beautiful city, which has almost all the colorful buildings.

The day after our arrival we went to visit the famous castle of Princess Sisi. Before that we saw the primary residence in central Wien and later in the afternoon we went to the summer residence of the Princess ... The house inside was really beautiful and so was the large garden ...

The next day we left for Poland where we stopped for 10 days. I was hosted in the home of a boy and I must say that I felt very uncomfortable about this fact. But all in all for me it was a good experience. Every day we went to visit several places in Poland. The first place we saw was Krakow. We have taken photos, we visited the city.

The only experience that I gave me a lot of sadness was the concentration camp in Auschwitz. But before we went to visit this place so cruel we saw the Polish film "The Pianist". A visit that we can not forget. Too much sadness and cruelty to thousands of people of different types: Poles, Jews, Gypsies, but also Italians. And here is the famous door of death with the phrase "WORK MAKES FREE".

All were taken by guile in the sense that they lied to get them to work ... every day for 5 years workers were sent to the so-called work with the orchestra that played next to the kitchen and the same orchestra accompanied them in the evening.

The camp was surrounded by double wires. The places where the prisoners slept were divided into 24 blocks.

Then we saw the block 11 that was called the prison within the prison. This block was separate from others, but there was a wall that joined it with block number 10. Inside it people were treated badly. The ground floor was the place for torture, that they were in dark cells, the cells to stand. In place among numbers 10 and 11 there was another door that would close that horrible place, where the wall of death was built, a wall full of blood from all those shots.

In this picture you can also see the windows closed so that the other prisoners could not look at what was happening outside.
We also visited some of the blocks, where we saw the photos taken secretly, we saw the shoes, clothing, combs, toothbrushes, the suitcases and the most horrible thing (at least for me) real hair, a lot of hair that the Nazis used to make fabric. Unfortunately, these things could not be photographed, but the image of what we see is not lost, the story we have heard no one forgets. After this vision we went to the most cruel Aushvitz 2, where people were treated like animals ... Even after all those years, you can imagine the train coming loaded with people.


This part as I said before was more cruel because the places where the prisoners were sleeping were shacks made of wood with wood beds.

When all the prisoners were freed the 2 large gas chambers were destroyed and the only thing that we can now see are the remains.


But we also had our days of fun, also in the evenings ...

The nice thing was that the Polish girls were very well organized, that is always trying to make us go out and have fun. For instance Saturday we went to a huge shopping mall with 200 shops. The 10 days that I spent in Poland were beautiful and funny. I became very friendly with a Polish girl named Ania. When I left we exchanged e-mail to keep in touch.
And then finally we left for Prague. A beautiful city. The first day we walked a lot in the centre and we went to see the famous Astromical Clock.

We also saw other very famous things ....

In the end I can only say that these 14 days on one hand I liked a lot, I enjoyed the experience. I saw some new things, new places. I also learned a new tradition, that of Poland. But all in all I was also sad. In the end I could not wait to go home. I do not know what else I might add ....





Petkova Hristina