I reached Krakow around noon on Monday, May 4th. The flight from Frankfurt was short and the view from above wasn’t anything special.
Krakow has a small airport, maybe slightly larger than Omaha’s. I couldn’t check-in to the hotel until 3pm as they had a conference and all the hotels rooms were booked the previous night and were still being turned over for the next day but they were happy enough to hold my bags until 3pm. I had lunch on the hotel’s restaurant. Tried a polish potato soup and an asparagus risotto. The risotto was decent but the soup, not so much.
After lunch, I walked over to a cafe to meet Shahid and Wai. We had coffee and spoke in detail about work. After a couple of hours, we split ways and I checked-in to the hotel and caught up on some work.
I was busy for the next three days with the Snowflake workshop. I couldn’t peel myself off of work even after coming back from the workshop and kept working late into the night. This didn’t help as I was already short on sleep. I did get to walk back from team dinner on Tuesday from Old town to the hotel by the river. The weather was pleasant, but maybe because it was a Wednesday there weren’t a lot of people out on the streets and Krakow felt a bit lifeless compared to the other European cities I’ve been to.
One the last day of the workshop, we went for a team dinner at Folga close to the jewish quarter and it is one of the best meals I’ve had. The beetroot salad in buttermilk was so rich and just the right amount of tart. There was some excellent cabbage too. We walked back that night again from the restaurant to the hotel. Chad and I walked on Grotzky street before going to the restaurtant for dinner. Krakow was as I feared. It was a much smaller city. It wasn’t as charming as Brussels, Bruge or Amsterdam or even Lisbon.
I booked a tour of Auschwitz and the salt mines for the next day and had to be ready outside the hotel for pickup by 6am. The ride to Auschwitz took about 90 minutes, but by the time we reached, there was a really long line at the Auschwitz museum. The tour guide decided to take us to Birkenau first as there wasn’t a wait there and the hope was there wouldn’t be as long a wait when we circle back to the museum itself.
Birkenau was (surreal/insane). To imagine what happened there 80 years ago. The scale of cruelty man had for their fellow human beings was astounding. As we retraced the steps millions of people took to the gas chambers, I was overcome with grief and anger. I still am unable to fully comprehend how such a dastradly acts could happen there. About 1.3 million passed through the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau and 1.1million of them were sent to the gas chambers. The planning, deception, secrecy and the evil on display are unimaginable.
We went to Auschwitz after that and, to see the places where the first gas experiments were done, to see the shoes, luggage, the hair is heartbreaking. To think each of those were people with full lives, dreams, hopes. All of them just vanished. I do not think a more grim place could exist.
There were a lot of jewish kids with Israeli flags. If I was feeling so strongly in such a place, for them to visit, to confront the horrors their ancestors endured, many that did not survive was something else. Things like this should never ever happen. Never again. How would a populace that endured so much react? More than 90% of jews in Poland were killed during the Holocause. They numbered 3.2 million before the war.
To think of what is happening in Palestine at the same time. For a people that suffered so much to turn around and subject another populace to cruelty and brutality is heartbreaking. One could see where their angst for their own place comes from. The resolve and the determination to never let this happen again. The fear, anger, grief all of it has now festered maybe and turned them blind to the pain they are inflicting on Palestinians. I think they have to turn a blind eye to their cruelty under the guise of look what happened to us and we deserve to live too, or they woldn’t be able to look themselves in a mirror.
Going from Auschwitz to the salt mines felt inappropriate. After the mines, I walked around old town, walked by the market square, facetimed Bharu to show her a little bit of Krakow before walking back to the hotel to catch some sleep. I had to wake up at 3:30 to catch my flight back. There was a bit of misadventure at the airport. The card reader in the cab did not work and I did not have any cash to give. The driver started panicking and it took us a while to figure out what to do. Eventually, I found an ATM and was able to withdraw some local currency for a fee and paid the driver. I should remember to carry some cash, particularly in foreign countries and not rely purely on cards.
The flight back was uneventful. Came back to SF instead of Seattle on Saturday, 10th of May and flew back with Bharu to Seattle Sunday night.