Tuesday, May 17
It’s hard to write anything about Auschwitz that hasn’t already been written. The two things that probably got to me the most were the piles of children’s shoes in the first camp and the unimaginable vastness of the second camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
We traveled today by “Regular” or non-express train from Krakow to Ostrava in the Czech Republic. Regular trains stop in almost every village and I believe on a couple of occasions we paused briefly in someone’s backyard. Our first stop was in Oswiecim, the site of Auschwitz and then on to Ostrava, just across the border from Poland.
Ostrava, the third largest city in the republic, is probably not on anyone’s top ten travel destinations, but logistically it worked well for getting us to Prague on Wednesday. I haven’t stayed in a Mercure hotel in years, but this one is very new and quite lovely.
Getting used to Czech money will be interesting. A US greenback will get you a bit over two and a half Polish Zloty; that same buck yields some 17 Czech Koruna so were carrying around some pretty big bills. About a block from the hotel at a very local pizza place, 350 Koruna got us a couple bowls of tasty pasta and a ration of beer.