Adventures from my Eurotrip: Krakow and a Brief Stint in Vienna

So far during this Eurotrip adventure, my best friends and I have climbed the Eiffel Tower, failed to find space cakes in Amsterdam, watched an all-German rendition of the tale of the Pied Piper, witnessed a police raid, featured on German TV and visited a bone church, to name but a few of our little adventures. This blog post is about what happened after we waved goodbye to Prague and it stars somewhere near Krakow.

We were taking an overnight train, sharing a carriage that was already stuffed full with our suitcases with a pair of women who didn't understand the concept of personal space. I can count that as one of the worst nights of my life. After a grand total of about 20 minutes of sleep, I woke up to find we were in Poland. Our hostel had a free pick up service, which apparently ran for everyone but us so we had to walk from the station. It was an unearthly hour when only crazy people are roaming the streets (and, as it turns out, nuns).

The only information we had about our hostel's whereabouts was a street name and a note that it had a brown door. There were approximately 52,000 brown doors on that street.

We had arrived too early to collapse into bed and too late to book a tour of the salt mine, which is how we ended up on a bus to Auschwitz at 9am that morning with bags under our eyes and yesterday's clothes on. I won't try to describe the concentration camps to you. Someone much more eloquent and with more time couldn't do it so I won't even attempt to. All I will say is that if you ever have a chance then you should go and experience it for yourself.

However, if you do go, make sure you don't end up with our tour guide. It's one thing to treat the tour in a somewhat dethatched way (if not, working there every day might drive you mad), but this guide seemed to be openly bored by what she was saying. "And this is where the prisoners would be taken to be shot" (long sigh and roll of the eyes). It was so blatantly disrespectful and uncomfortable to witness. She didn't take any questions, refused to repeat herself if people missed what she said and rushed from room to room as if she had somewhere more important to be.

We had earphones to listen to this tour guide sigh and list out the atrocities carried out by the Nazis as if she were reading out her weekly shopping list. At one point, the signal started to go on my listening device. So did Hayleigh's. The tour guide (can we even call her that?) had wandered so far out of range while we were looking at the various displays set out in the building we were in, that we could no longer see or hear her. It was me, Hayleigh, and a group of English lads...lost in the concentration camp. We ended up wandering into some kind of dark basement that I'm pretty sure is meant to be off-limits to visitors. When we eventually found the rest of the group the guide didn't apologise for abandoning us, but looked at us as if to say "about time too."

The next day we went to the Wileczka Salt Mine. Thankfully drama was kept to a minimum there and we were able to look around at the huge salt sculptures at our leisure. And there was lots of sitting down, which, at this point in the trip, I really appreciated.

The salt mine was really incredible and something you should definitely go and experience if you're ever in Krakow. The mine is spread over nine levels, the deepest of which is 327m underground. Everything, from the winding tunnels to detailed statues and even an enormous chapel, has been carved from salt. It really must be seen to be believed.

Krakow seemed to pass by without me really realising. I never got much of a feel for the place like I did Prague or Amsterdam. I was probably too sleep deprived to take any real notice of my surroundings by that point. But, we were off again before we knew it, this time heading to Vienna.

We took another night train, but this one had beds. Well, some form of horizontal board to sleep on, but it was a luxury for us compared to some of our sleeping arrangements during the trip. I'll skip over Vienna quickly because that's exactly what we did in real life. I fell asleep in the Freud Museum (which is in fact just a collection of photographs displayed in someone's front room), we played cards in the middle of a shopping centre, and ate a McDonalds, which had become some kind of weird tradition in each new city.

I always hear people talk about how wonderful Vienna is and how much there is to do there. Maybe the map we had was no good or maybe we were so physically and mentally drained by this point in the trip that we missed everything. Either way, our day in Vienna was a disappointment and we were ready to climb on board another night train that evening and head to our final destination - Venice.

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