Sunday, November 25, 2012

Krakow. Auschwitz. Birkenau.

I've made the very important decision that Krakow is my favorite city of all we visited. There is something heavenly about that Polish air, I tell ya.
(Just as a sidenote, when I typed Krakow it tried to autocorrect it to 'mealworms'. Not quite, but thanks tablet.)
I was perfectly happy being there a second time.







I love these cute ladies.




So we went to Auschwitz & Birkenau on Thanksgiving.
If you want to feel more grateful than you ever have in your entire life, visit a concentration camp. Or two. On Thanksgiving.

All I can say was, it was...haunting, mortifying, still, empty in every sense of the word. My views on humans and humanity and life and living were warped. I felt disbelief and horror and completely hollow and all I could do was stare stare stare.
I'm sure everyone feels stricken and sick hearing/reading about what happened during the Holocaust, but actually being there is an entirely different thing.
I feel like I can't adequately put into words how I felt when I was there.
It was an incredible experience nonetheless and I am happy to have learned so much that day, even if it was really sad.
It almost feels like sacrilege posting pictures of it. But here's a few.

Auschwitz




Birkenau



If you ever can, get yourselves over to Poland and see it. 

We did really fun stuff that night too make ourselves feel better. And ate loads of chocolate. Cause J K Rowling wasn't messing around when she made chocolate the remedy for dementors. Just sayin.

One more cheesey belated Thanksgiving sidenote. This whole being in Ukraine experience has made me really thankful for a whole ton of things. Mainly though, my family, my friends, great people, new experiences, change, and America. A big thank you to everyone that makes my life so truly awesome. Yes, I mean you. That is all.


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