Rob and I woke up at 7:30 to get ready to meet Drew, Nick, and Sam for breakfast at 8:30. I felt so much better today; it’s hard to put into words. I was chipper to say the least. Breakfast was unusually good with its assortments of meat, cheese, and yogurt. I had to eat quickly though because we needed to leave at 9am promptly to get to the bus station. We made it there pretty quickly thanks to a chance encounter with Americans who recognized we were looking for the bus station. We paid on the bus and took our seats next to some older English people.
The bus ride was an event. Our bus must have had problems with stalling or starting or something because we did not stop once. We couldn’t. The driver shooed people away with his hands ahead of stops or else they had to literally run onto the bus. It was the same getting off for some people. One man started running while still in the bus and he just transferred himself out of it. A woman who could hardly hold the door open sidestepped out and face planted into the sidewalk. She got up, but the driver couldn’t stop. We went around a roundabout so fast, an Asian woman in front of me sleeping just fell flat on her back on the floor. It was crazy, but the bus did stop once we made it to Oswiecim, the home of the Auschwitz concentration camps. We made it there in about two hours.
We headed straight for the museum and signed up for the three hour English tour they had available. The museum and the grounds are free to see, but the tours were considerably more. Its hard to say how the experience made me feel. I don’t want to describe everything that I saw because they were just too sad. I saw everything that I could see, chambers, Gestapo offices, barracks, killing blocks, and everything else. The most gripping and saddening part by far were the several tons of hair they had piled in a room. It was maddening, the whole experience. I felt so angry at people. I kept asking, “How could anyone be okay with this? Why did anyone deserve this? Why did God let this happen?” I took many pictures, but I don't like having them. The place felt like death. I felt gross being there. I left my sadness at the gate and did not talk about the experience once we got on the bus to come back. One man on our tour group summed up the feeling. He said, “This is the worst day of my life.” I know why he felt that way.
The bus back was air-conditioned and a tour bus, so I slept the whole time. We made it back in about two hours. We headed for the square near our hotel and ate in a random restaurant. The place ended up being really affordable and very delicious. I had pork and cheese that was unreal. We took our friends there later on and they gave us a discount. During dinner we noticed that Poland, like the Netherlands, had a large number of beautiful women, and they weren’t all blonde. After the second dinner, we saw a show in the square. It was a drum circle with fire dancers throwing, breathing, and twirling fire wands, strips, and whole rods around for a fifteen-minute show. I headed back afterwards and went to bed glad to be feeling better and loving Poland.
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