For this blog we will be heading over to Poland as we were invited to a friend of
mine's wedding and we were not going to miss it for the world!
Keeping in theme with the trip so far this was also a very fast paced (at least it was suppose to be) in-and-out trip to Poland this was the plan:
Friday Night: Arrive, get hire car, drive to accommodation near Auschwitz
Saturday Morning: Auschwitz
Saturday Afternoon: Wedding
Sunday: Recover from Polish wedding (polish drinking) and see what we can see of Krakow (maybe the salt mines) before heading home Sunday night at 10pm ish.
This is not what happened!! but I'm not telling you anything till we get to it, so keep reading and don't be a cheater!
Before we headed to the Airport to Poland we had a little half day so Mahina set off to Hampton Court Palace while I took the opportunity to relax after so many days of excitement.
So I am going to turn it over to Mahina so that she can tell us all about Hampton Court.
Hampton Court Palace
Because I had watched a few documentary's about this place I did not want to leave the UK without visiting it! Missy (Mercedes) however had a few chores she had to do before we flew out and due to me STILL waking up at odd hours, I had heaps of time to kill which she was happy to drop me off at Hampton Court then pick me up on the way to go to the airport.
Because Missy and I have different pacing and how we go about things I didn't mind being dropped off and had a good solid 4 hours at Hampton Court.
It was my first time entering a Palace and touring anything like it. I was so excited and after picking up my audio tour guide I was off!
First up the place was huge and very grand! I felt so grateful at the opportunity I had to be able to walk down the same hallways as prior Kings and Queens. No wonder why King Henry VIII wanted this Palace for himself and spent most of his times here! I had a look of awe and wonder the entire day and was happy that Missy wasn't there to see how kiddish I was about it heheh.
Shock number 1 - How many bedrooms did one person need? Like when I was exploring King Henry's quarters he had (if I can recall) like 3 bedrooms? A main one, another smaller one and another one for 'private' sleeping lol. Even the Queen... everyone had more than one bedroom.
Shock number 2 - I will always now look up at my bedroom ceiling as plain, dull and boring compared to what they were looking at! Majestic art pieces everywhere!
Shock number 3 - I had high expectations of the bathroom... and to me personally compared to the bedrooms (or maybe by this point i've looked at so much grandeur things it was like eh by this time) it was a bit lacklustre for me. But compared to my bathroom i'm not complaining.
Shock number 4 - I wasn't allowed to take photos in the chapel (and I didn't want to risk it) but wow the chapel was amazing! I sat down and just imagined the Royal Court in full swing here with baby christenings, weddings ect... take my word for it, it was stunning.
Alright thanks for that Mahina!
For those of you that want to see the palace in a little more detail you will have to come and see it for yourself! Or... The second best way to see it is by reading our blog from our last visit there!
findlatertravels.blogspot.com/2018/01/hampton-court-palace.html
Well on with it then shall we?
After I picked Mahina up from the palace we had to catch the plane from Stanstead Airport so we had to get all the way up there first(1-2 hour drive depending on traffic).
We got to the airport, parked the car in the short term parking and then we waited for the bus to take us to the terminal.
Once at the terminal it was straight through security and to try to relax a bit before the running and stumbling started again.
The terminal was packed all the restaurants were so full that we ended up getting some food in one place and sitting in the corner of another.
After some food and a drink things were better but then it was time to get on the plane.
Below photos of two naive Ryanair passengers and then on a plane who's company colours half remind you of a rubber duck or a porter potty.
Touch down!! we made it to Poland!
We landed in Krakow where we had to hire a car and drive an hour to a hotel that we had pre-booked ready for the next days adventures.
By the way do you see how they counted floors on this elevator in Poland? In halves!
"What floor are you going to?", "oh 9 and 3/4" ????
***
Car "Check!"
Hotel "Check!"
Sleep "YES please"
Above: Our hotel room that was cheap and quite nice!
In the morning the plan was to go and see Auschwitz which is one of the major Nazi concentration camp in World War 2 and then we had the wedding in a town 2 hours drive from there in the afternoon. So we knew we were in for a roller coaster of emotions that day!
Auschwitz:
WOW is my first comment! the feelings were mixed from the very beginning when we arrived.
If you did not know where you were, it straight away struck me as a very beautiful place! The buildings were in neat rows the trees bearing their autumn colours stood tall and in straight rows as the warm sunlight filtered through the fluttering leaves in the cool morning air.
It was beautiful!!
As I walked into the compound though, I started to see the watch towers and barb wire.
I turned left down a row of building and I saw a platform in the distance that looked like a hanging platform but without the noose.
As I was drawn to this platform I notice I passed through two rows of barb wire fencing with watch houses guarding either side.
The area between the two barb wire fences is a sort of no mans land!
As I was drawn nearer still to the platform, from behind the last building down the row I started to see a mound protruding from the earth with pipes coming out of the top.
Out of curiosity I was drawn to find out what it is.
There must be an entrance!
"What horrible things could they have done with a mound?".
"Could it have been a burial pit? a mass grave?"
But then I saw it, an unassuming door, an entrance! What it is?
It was darker inside, it was a small door at the entrance that drew me to another larger room to the right.
The room was lit. The electric lights flicker from time to time.
An information board informed me that I was standing in a gas chamber!
The very place that so many people took their last breath, lost their lives.
I started to imagine thin, starving children clinging to parents - not daring to ask what is happening.
I imagined the doors shutting and the room becoming dark. As the sound of weak breathing in the silence is broken by the hiss of gas as it pours in and fills the air!
Sends shivers down your spine!!
It is hard to imagine such a horrid thing, let alone fathom how this was allowed to happen!
Below: The Furnaces to burn the bodies after they had been gassed
It is a weird feeling to stand with perfect freedom to be able to turn away and walk into the outside world.
With no war around you and you know that not that long ago others stood on the very same place as you are standing right now with no hope of ever leaving and no guarantee of seeing tomorrow.
Even writing this blog evokes a whole other wave of emotions I guess it has had time to sink in to really hit you!
***
Further on in another part of the complex it hits you, as you are faced with a room that comprises wall after wall of writing and as you approach the walls to see what they say you need to stand no more then a meter away to be able to read the words.
Names printed so small so that they could list every name, every person that lost there life. The room is covered in writing, there are glass dividers in the room that are also covered in names.
To say that they lost their life feels like and understatement.
It sounds as if it is something that you would be mildly inconvenienced by.
If you lose something it feels as though you were careless with it... No these people lost nothing....
These people had their lives stolen! Removed of their dignity!
I had a friend at university who said that her grand mother had been in the Holocaust and she told me of how her grand mother would stab her finger to draw blood. She would rub it on her cheeks to make her look flushed! alive! useful to work!
All this so that her captors would not see her as frail and weak, as she really was and would allow her to continue to work rather then be gassed.
***
It is hard to imagine that many people at all, let alone to think that this was a non-stop slaughter house, how many people were they killing a day, an hour, per minute in order to kill this many people?
***
Breath!
When you visit Auschwitz they try to encourage that you book a tour, but you do have to book weeks and months in advance and they are quite pricey, or you can come on your own and pay the small entry fee on the day and take the time to walk around. As we had to get on (to the wedding) and there were no tours short enough for the time that we had, we did the "take yourself in" thing.
But Mahina and I experience things differently and Mahina likes to read every information plaque and I am sure could spend days and days reading everything.
I think I am more use to this drive-by-tourism thing so I tend to get the general layout and gist of the situation and then if there is any time after that then I can start reading plaques.
I tell you this because here is where Mahina and I went our separate ways, she stayed to read things to really immerse herself in the stories. I took a walk around the complex and went into a deep philosophical internal conversation with myself.
To try to understand how something like this even happens, how do you have so much hatred for one race of people that you treat them less than yourself? less than animals...
I started to realise that this is the human condition.
This is not new! This is what we do as humans.
Who knows who was the first race to say "those guys are bad, we must wipe them out" the first thing that came to mind was the Christian God with the Israelites in the desert as they went though from town to town they were instructed by their God to kill every man, woman, child and even the animals. "wipe out that entire population!" and when the Israelites kept some of the women or animals, rather then kill them, that was forbidden and they had to be killed or exiled as well. There was no room for mercy, or love, or compassion... It was pure vengeful and robotic, commanded murder!
This is not new, the only difference is that in Auschwitz we have a record, we have a location, we have stories, names, photos, graves, ages of people, and information about children that immortalises this atrocity over all the others.
***
By the time that I had walked the compound philosophising these ideas, this suddenly didn't seem so extreme. Not because it wasn't bad, but it became more 'normal'. This is what people do! This is not a 'one off' anomaly that happened in history by one person against one group of people.
The is humans! This is who we are! We try to be more civilised we act as if we are above it but even in the world today there are mass genocides happening WE STILL DO THIS!
***
I turned the corner to the last building on the last row of in the far corner of the compound to see a courtyard set up.
The killing courtyard at the far end a firing wall protected by a straw barrier to catch the bullets that missed or went through. 
The windows facing onto the courtyard guarded by wooden shields that are angled away from the firing range so that any bullets that ricocheted would not enter the building.
Closer to you are two holes in the stone ground were hanging poles were inserted into the ground.
***
As you see these things and realise how normal all these activities had become here. The staff that worked in the buildings with the wooden shields would have become accustomed to to the firing of bullets on a daily biases. The wails and noises of people about to be hanged.
The hospital staff that were happy to dismember another living person - a child! Performing test that you would never want performed on you - or any one that you love.
These people that were not willing participants of this testing and cruelty, given any other choice they would have taken anything!
But today are we really that different? I would argue we are the same.
Animals in labs get needles shoved in their eyes, limbs dismembered, infected with disease. Other animals that are put to work to produce milk and eggs and are raped to keep producing milk and when they can work anymore they are killed. Animals that are killed solely because we want to consume their flesh.
Are we really that different?
Given any other choice do you think these animals would rather be any other place ?
We, like the doctors and staff at Auschwitz, are desensitised.
So it is important to see places like Auschwitz, they stand as reminders of the same behaviour, the same mentality.
We need to examine ourselves as a human race while we think that we are better then, or above any thing else will we no continue the mistreat those below?
Pythagoras (570-490 BC) – For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
Food for thought...
Mahina
In hindsight going to Auschwitz prior to a wedding was a not a good idea but we couldn't prevent it due to limited time.
Missy (Mercedes) and I are both two very different people who learn and experience things differently. For me still to this day, as i'm sitting here at work typing this, I can still feel my heart breaking and tears well up in my eyes.
My family and friends have been asking me about this experience and I still have not and can not talk about it much.
Walking around instantly I wanted to get out, the whole place was very eerie to me. Missy was on the phone to her family so we ended up going our separate ways, which I think if she was walking alongside me it would've helped to ground me a bit. But I thought to myself, i'm a million miles away from home, it is an experience I get to teach my family and future generations about and I don't think I will ever come back, so I completely immersed myself into it. I vlogged the entire time as well however for some reason the sound wasn't working which I am now happy about because I would not want to edit and re-live the experience.
I'm a very emotional, feeling person. So to read the stories and see it in front of my eyes, my heart cried out for them. I read a story about a young boy by the age of 10 who had an older brother and a newborn sister. He wrote in his diary his experiences, he writes that soldiers came into his home unannounced one night, questioned the parents then beat them up severely. They grabbed the newborn infant out of the mums arms and literally threw it like trash into the corner of the room. The brother writing this story said the screams coming from his parents and the baby is one he would never forget and as he tried to go to his baby sister, the solders then beat him up. That is just one of the heart breaking stories that I read but one I will never forget.
I'm very blessed and lucky to have the experience what I did. By the time I re-united with Missy I was in a very dark, depressed and sad mood that she didn't know how to deal with. Definitely needed a moment to just re-gather what I had just experienced and thank God or whatever entity you believe in that I was born in a different time and that none of my loved ones have had to go through what they did. My heart is with all the families that were affected.
That's as much as I can say about my experience about it. As most of it was felt with the heart, I remember after that moment all I wanted was to be around my family to tell them I appreciate them and love them very much and to never ever take anything for granted. I'm so appreciative of my friend Missy for taking me here and dealing with the aftermath version of me after it.
Thank you Mahina, Yes it is a multi level emotional roller coaster and I imagine that the longer we stayed in that place the deeper and darker it would have become to us.
A side note that I mean to mention as I publish this blog today:
Yesterday the 27th of January marked the 70 years since Auschwitz was liberated!
It is estimated that 1.5 million people were killed at this camp in particular and about 200,000 managed to survive!
At this point we were going to go on an tell you about the other half of the day as we had to then run off to a wedding, but I think that this blog should stand alone as it is what it is.
Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for the next blog that I promise will be much happier! A Polish Wedding!
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