Oświęcim (Auschwitz) - Dreadfully Inexplicable

I have known about, read about, and seen pictures of Auschwitz, but I never thought I would have a chance to visit there until I moved to the Czech Republic. Auschwitz became so near to us all of a sudden. And, this trip was a perfect chance for us to visit. We planned the visit so that we would have to worry about gG staying alone in the car, but the idea of making it a quick half-day visit was wrong.

I never thought that I could actually walk through the camp area and go into each individual building including one of the gas chambers.  I thought somehow there would be a museum exhibiting the evidence of horrible disaster and that the actual camp would be only to be seen from outside.  So, if you ever plan to go there, plan a whole day visit.  And, you are not allowed to walk by yourselves without a guide, so you may want to also check the tour schedule in advance as well.  We managed to take a tour of Auschwitz I, but I had to give up on the tour for Auschwitz II-Birkenau unfortunately.

We arrived at the site a little bit before 10 o'clock. The place was full of tourists from all over the world including young students. The earliest English tour was starting at 10:30, so we got ourselves a set of headsets and waited.  The guide showed up. There were about 40 or so people waiting for the English tour.  We got divided into two groups, and we went along with a female guide.  The headsets were very useful.  You can select the channel so that you only hear your guide's voice.  She doesn't have to speak loudly and bother other tour groups either.

The weather was rainy and very gloomy, which made everything in Auschwitz look as grey, sad, and cold as it is.  However, I was looking foward to the tour to learn and see the reality with my eyes.  We passed through the iron gate with a sign of Arbeit macht frei ("work makes you free") with the "B" looking upside down, which some says it was a hidden protest by one of the prisoners who was making the sign.

There are rows of squarish and plain brick buildings neatly aligned in the camp; almost infinitely. I was surprised by the size of the camp.  It looked too big to me until I learned that more than 1 million people were said to be killed there and in the neaby camps.  We went into several buildings with the guide. Each building had a theme for its exhibition, and by the time I was out of the third building, I noticed myself sighing a lot. My feet were heavy. I was no longer looking forward to learning more. I felt something heavy around my throat which was dry but I couldn't even swallow my own saliva.



Execution wall

  But the tour continued. And, I needed to see and learn despite the heaviness that I felt in myself. I saw hundreds of pictures of prisoners (males on the right hand side and females on the left) filling both sides of the corridor walls. Almost all the women had their heads shaved. Everyone on the wall had such a helpless look on their faces. It was just plain painful to walk along the pictures...

Gas chamber

The tour ended with a visit to one of the gas chambers. I went in and out very quickly, as I felt rather saffocated inside. Some were directly sent to this chamber after arriving to the camp. They thought they were just taking a shower. What went through the mind of soldiers who were pouring the poison gas through the ceiling holes?  Is it the war or fear of bloody insane authority that even made men capable of such acts?  I know Japanese soldiers did a lot of terribly wrong and equally unbelievable brutal things in the neighboring Asian countries, too. What went through the soldier's mind? Just so wrong, and... utterly inconceivable.

We could not stop remembering and talking about our experience in Auschwitz throughout our trip. At the end of the day, my question still remained the same..."WHY??"

Chateau Myšliwski Promnice - Kobiór, Poland

Instead of going all the way to Krakow on the first day, we decided to stay at a cheateau hotel in a town called Kobiór, Poland, called Hotel Noma Residence Zameczek Myśliwski Promnice.  We chose the place for two reasons. It was near Auschwitz (35 mins away), and we thought we could leave gG at the hotel in the morning and visit Auschwitz (well, this turned out to be rather too hectic).  Also, it was a nice looking chateau by the lake.

The challenge was to find it :( The hotel didn't have a street address, and our car navigation system was totally stupid to even figure out where we were. We called the hotel but still couldn't figure out (basically lost in a translation). It was my hubby's smart phone which found our way to the hotel finally. Whew.

The hotel was in the middle of the forest near the lake called Paprocański Lake. The narrow road that led to the hotel made me feel the full autumn.  It was just quiet and pretty. I heard the chateau was originally built in 1868 and was once the property of the Pszczyna Princes. The noble family stayed there while they enjoyed the hunting game. And, in fact, there were lots of head of dead animals on the wall... which I have to say were too many.  But, the tall and gorgeous wooden ceilings as well as the beautiful wall papers were just breathtaking.

The chateau was renovated to be a hotel in 1995. We were situated in a hunting cottage which was about 100 meters away from the main building, as the wedding party was going on in there. The cottage was huge and nice as well, so I would not complain about it. And, the good thing was we did not hear any blusting music from the main building. Plus all the dead animals in the main building probably would have scared gG (and me), so we were totally cool with the hunting cottage.

There was a wonderful restaurant in the main building as well. So, you don't have to drive out of the property to go eat dinner. The food was just great, although it was a bit salty to my taste.

Příbor, Czech Republic

You may know Sigmund Freud, but you may not know that he was born in a small town called Příbor in the Czech Republic. Since we didn't sepend that much time in Kroměříž, we decided to take a quick stop at Příbor.

Actually Příbor is right next to Hukvaldy, the birthplace of Janacek, which I will be writing about later. And oddly enough, both of them lived there around the same timeframe (Janaeck was born in 1854, Freud in 1856), although Janacek left Hukvaldy when he was 11 and Freud left Příbor when he was 3.

The birthplace of Freud is now turned into a small museum. It is called the family house of Sigmund Freud and was opened in 2006. Of course the house has been renovated, and so little of original anything remains, but you get to walk through with a set of earphones that guide you through the house. There is more to see and learn in the Freud Museum in Vienna, but it was good to see the town the small Freud played around in.

And, I just loved the sight of the winding pavement you can peek at through the small upstairs windows.