Sam & Georgia's Travels : Slovakia/Auschwitz

What was supposed to be a 5 and a half hour drive, turned out to be around 8 hours. We drive through Slovakia, which was crazy and not at all what we were expecting. The scenery through the country was gorgeous and the hills and mountains were amazing. Definately not what we had imangined Slovakia to look like.
We were cruising along pretty well, but things started to go downhill after Sam got pulled over. Another on the spot fine, this time for speeding. The police wanted Sam to pay 60 Euro, however they only took cash and we only had 30. Eventually they agreed to take just the 30, and after slipping it into his wallet the policeman let us go.

After that a few wrong turns set us back almost an hour and a half. By 6 we finally made it to Krakow!

We had a very relaxing night in Krakow, after a Polish dinner, just trying to keep cool.
In the morning we got up and drove to Auschwitz, which was about an hour away. We joined a guided tour and spent almost four hours between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau.

Auschwitz I is the smaller of the camps and is partially now a museum. Here we got to walk through the different blocks, which now house different exhibits. In one block there is 2 tonnes of human hair, along with huge piles of the possessions stripped from the prisoners when they arrived at the camp. Things like glasses, brushes, combs, even shoes and children’s toys.

We were able to see what the living conditions were like for the prisoners, and the ways that they were punished. The wall of Death, where thousands of prisoners were shot, the gallows where hundreds were hung, and even they gallows where, after the war, they hung the man in charge of the camp.
It was horrible to walk through a place where so many innocent people had died. It was even worse going inside the gas chamber and furnace rooms.

Auschwitz II - Birkenau, is much bigger then the first camp, but it is now mostly ruins, as it was destroyed by the SS in the days leading up to the Soviets arrival. Here we saw the horrible conditions people were forced to live in, it’s hard to believe that anyone survived that place at all. The barracks in which they lived were horrendous, unsanitary and incredibly over crowded.
When people arrived at the camp, they were examined and if they were fit to work they stayed, if not, they were sent straight to the death chambers. We walked the same path that all those people walked.
It was chilling to be in a place where 1.5 million innocent people were killed. It was incredibly sad and quite confronting, but it was an incredible experience that we would recommend to anyone.