“The city looks as if it’s sewn together from pieces that don’t really fit together. In the centre, pre-war houses stand next to modern skyscrapers, and the beautiful buildings in Warsaw’s Old Town appear in stark contrast to the apartment blocks. Tourists might describe the city as grey and ugly, but it’s always pulsing with energy.”
The abstract from BBC news perfectly describes how I felt when I was in Poland. On May 5th, 2019, I took a plane from Oslo to Krakow, Poland. It was my first time to travel to inland Europe where everything was so different from that in Norway, public security, in particular. While travelling in Norway or other Scandinavian countries, I did not have to walk on eggshells to fear for the theft or robberies. Since Scandinavian countries have high standard of living with high levels of human development, it is pretty safe there. However, things are not the same in Eastern Europe. I do not want to give you a bad image or stereotype of Eastern Europe, but indeed, I had heard a lot about people from Asia being robbed and stolen by the locals in Eastern and Western Europe. With so much concern in mind, I still went to Krakow and explored the land on my own.
Fortunately, I knew two girls, Dennis and Simay, in Krakow. I contacted them to ask them if they had time to show me around the city. And they said yes. It was more exciting than she-said-yes proposing moment.
Back to the hostel, I was invited to a dinner with other travelers from other countries, such as Israel, Brazil, and Australia. During the dinner, everyone shared their own traveling stories. The cute Israel couple said that they just finished serving the army. It was my first time to know that there is a country in the world with a mandatory military service requirement for women. They kept on saying, “The life in the military was so excruciating and boring. So, many people will go on a long vacation after leaving the military.” Though I have never been to Israel and served in the military, I read a lot of news about the civil unrest, riots and protests there. I can image how hard it is to survive in the military there. Then, two Brazilian girls cut in the conversation. They said they were robbed at the metro in Paris. “It is so ridiculous!”, they cried out loud. “I thought I knew well how to protect myself.” Since they were from Brazil, a country being list as one of the least safe places in the world, they were alert to the surroundings. It made no sense they got robbed. So, when I told them I was going to Paris, they imparted me some techniques to protect myself. That is why I was so anxious in Paris. (I will tell the story about in the following chapter.)
Time to say good night to this city! Sweet dreams!
The second day, I visited Auschwitz. As you know, it is the largest and arguably the most notorious of all Nazi concentration and death camps. The night before I went there, my roommate told me, “it is a must-visit place to know about history, but you do not want to go there for the second time. It is so cruel and sad.”
I got up very early to the bus station. The sky was still very dark and it was drizzling outside. The temperature was around 15 celsius degree. The wind really chilled me to the bone, and I almost froze to death. What's worse, I was heading to the saddest place ALONE with this kind of lousy weather.
The moment I arrived at Auschwitz, I felt a sense of doom hung over the entire camps with the dark sky, the rain, and the cold air. I was already in the camps, there was no chance to go back covering myself in a thick warm sheet. I joined a guided tour. There were several camps with different buildings. The guide took us to these different camps and introduced the history behind it to us.
We were first guided to a room with many shoes, clothes, combs and hair in separated glass cabinets. Those are the things that belonged to the “prisoners”. I would call them “victims”. Some were even belonged to children. It is really hard for me to accept that Nazi killed so many innocent people, even children. “How cruel and cold-blooded can human beings be?” Every second I was in the camps, this question was continuously hanging in my head.
Next, we went to the gas chambers. I have seen lots of movies about Nazi-Jewish history, such as Life is Beautiful, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and The Pianist. Gas chambers are always executed as one of the cruel ways to kill people. It was so horrifying to stand there and know that the gas chambers really existed. I almost threw up while realizing that I was standing at the place where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered.
The tour guide then guided us to the infamous “Gate of death” in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. There were train tracks there. Those “victims” were told by Nazi that if they hopped on the trains, they could leave the camps and went home. However, the trains stopped at the middle of the camp, another hell on earth.
At the end, the tour guide took us to the buildings, in which we could see the life conditions there. The sanitary arrangements were atrocious, with few latrines and a lack of clean water. People were accommodated together in small rooms. It was so sad. Standing on such aa sad ground with the rain dropped from the sky and the cold wind cut right through me, I could not help but cry soundlessly. I could not stand one more minute to be in that place. I escaped that place as soon as the guided tour was over.
To me, Poland is a sad country.
Here is the link for you to know more about Auschwitz:http://auschwitz.org/en/
