AUSCHWITZ-KRAKOW. 16th-17th September

(Still at Auschwitz) - On both sides of the railway track, seemingly stretching to the skyline, were the remains of the wooden huts that weren't preserved, just scores and scores of brick stoves and chimneys marking where they had been. Beyond the end of the railway track were the remains of gas chambers/crematoria 1 and 2. I imagine that these may have still been in use until late in the piece, because apparently they were dynamited just ahead of the advancing Russians. As the base of these structures was 3 or 4 metres below ground level the whole thing just collapsed into a large hole. The re-inforced concrete roofs were about 18 inches thick, and it all looked as if it hadn't been touched since 1945.

Further along were the sites of gas chambers/crematoria 3, 4 and 5, more or less just the outlines of where they had been. Apparently numbers 3 and 5 were dismantled in the second half of 1944, to destroy the evidence, once it seemed obvious that the war was going to be lost. Number 4 was destroyed by about 250 sondercommando (prisoners who worked clearing the gas chambers and cremating the bodies), in the only ever armed revolt in the camp, which ended in execution for the survivors. A surprisingly large area of the camp was known as 'Çanada', where a large number of prisoners worked sorting through the belongings taken from murdered prisoners, and packing them up for transit to Germany. Completely intact were the buildings where the working prisoners were periodically taken to be de-loused, (the SS didn't want the prisoners to catch infectious diseases that could spread to them). There was this extremely large room with a smooth concrete floor, and I noticed a framed photo on the wall of the room, empty except for three SS sitting at a table, and looking behind me I could see that the fault lines in the cement floor were mirrored in the photograph, and that I was standing right in front of where that table had been. That caused a dog to walk over my grave, I assure you.

Although in one sense, the camp, after all those newsreels, seemed smaller than I imagined it would be, it came across as large when I walked to one of its furthest corners, hard up against a wooded slope. Once there, I suddenly remembered that the last bus went at six, and I indulged in some power walking for the next half an hour, as I didn't really want to spend the night there.
Got not only the last shuttle bus, but also the last bus back to Krakow. I was cold and ravenous when I arrived at the bus station, and soon found a nice warm cafe where I indulged in soup and kebab and fries and lots of tea. An unusual feature of the cafe was that as each item that you had ordered became ready, the girls behind the counter smartly called you up to come and collect it.
And there was a little servery at the side of the kitchen where everybody had to go and leave their plates etc before leaving.

Back at the hostel, I meet Kylie and Mark, (from Cranbourne) who will be my dorm-mates tonight. They were on a bus trip of 17 countries in 27 days, and came back after the trip to have a closer look at Krakow. While Kylie is busy surfing the net for accommodation in Berlin,
Mark is making a hole in the local supply of vino, and we swap traveller's tales for an hour or so,
and I suddenly realise that, with the exception of Norman at the Namur hostel, Kylie and Mark are the first native English speakers that I've spoken with since before Paris (and in Norman's case it was a rather one-sided conversation). Mark has a rather bad cough, and says that everybody on their bus trip caught the same bug. Later, when we're all abed, he gets an unstoppable coughing fit, and decides to sleep on a couch in the hostel lounge. But I can hear that the coughing is going on and on, and finally I get up and give him some 'Tiger Balm' to rub on his chest, and explain about a pressure point at the top of the breastbone which, when depressed, makes it impossible to cough, and helps to settle you down. Anyway it seems to work, and don't hear him the rest of the night. They have to get up about six for the train, and I decide on a long lay-in.

Unfortunately, at 8am Eva is at the door, in a panic - two sisters from northern Poland, who have this room booked for tonight, have arrived already, because one of them is having surgery today, and goes under the knife at 10am. Apparently they are none too pleased, as they were expecting a hotel. Still half asleep, I crash about, collecting all my belongings together, and Eva takes me to the 5-bed dorm, which is up the street, in another building, and on the 4th floor.

Talk about either a famine or a feast - on going back to the main building, I find that my fellow-breakfasters are a couple from Surry Hills, an American couple from Chicago, and 2 young sisters from the Gold Coast. The 2 young sisters talk entirely through their noses, the very embodiment of Strine. The American is a big guy, a lawyer, very well-informed and amusing, and in manner very like Philip Seymour Hoffman, but without the obnoxiousness, and breakfast is a long affair.

I walk to the town centre, where there are incredible buildings, and I walk around some of the very old streets around there. The night I arrived Eva told me the weather forecast for the next two days was rain - and it hasn't let up. Which makes the subject of the pit-stop all-important.
I'll swear that Krakow has a policy that all who want to pass water must pay a fee. I look in vain for a public loo (Alright, I'll pay!) and even in a park that I discover, every tree is strategically planted so that you can only take a leak by committing indecent exposure. (Berlin was the place - you're never very far away from the Tiergarten, where you can race off into the bushes just about anywhere). Finally, just as I am thinking that I'm going to sustain permanent injury, I come upon a public loo, at 50 whatevers, half a zloty anyway. Later I find a snug hostlery, full of smoke and fug, but with a completely empty non-smoking area, and I have a nice blow-out for about 20 zlotys (less than 7 euro). A notice in the bar says that the toilets (for which you need a key) are for customers only, but that others can use them on payment of a fee of 2 zlotys. There are lots and lots of passable cafes etc in Krakow, but unlike Paris or Berlin say, where they are full of locals, here they are more or less empty, as if waiting for tourists. One thing I've noticed on the street here is that most of the tourists sound English.

I walk through the very old streets of the Jewish quarter. I haven't seen the movie 'Schindler's List', but understand that it was shot around Krakow, and I see into a courtyard that my tourist map says was where a pivotal scene in the movie was filmed. Incredibly, the map shows 8 synagogues (of varying levels of the faith) in an area that I calculate as about 400 metres by 300 metres. Maybe one or two of them are no longer used, but that's a lot of synagogues. There was a good museum there, very modern, with records and photographs of Jewish communities throughout Poland. Very chilling was the fact that a lot of these communities, which were often of 10,000 or 20,000 or perhaps 40,000 Jewish inhabitants, have vanished without trace. Not only not one survivor, but not a synagogue or even a gravestone in a cemetery to indicate that all or any of these people ever existed there.

On the night that I arrived at the hostel, Eva explained that Poland won't be on the euro until 2012, and that I'll need to change money into zlotys to pay. I did this, but forgot to pay her the first day I was there, and realise now that I will need more zlotys. Have to hoof it to the railway station to find a money changer still open, as it's now 7pm. On the way back to the hostel I realise that I've caught Mark's 'flu or whatever.
I have the 5-bed dorm to myself for tonight, and go down to the other building to make a couple of cups of tea to take with some aspirin and antibiotic. Everybody else seems to have left, except the 2 girls from the Gold Coast, who are taking the night-train to Vienna tonight, and desperately want to get into the hostel internet to book accommodation there. Unfortunately, the modem, apparently hidden away in the now-locked office, is switched off. The old sweat attempts to mollify them with tales of all the places he has landed in this trip without pre-booked accommodation, but they're not having any (they arrive at 6am).

Bit of a drama when I leave in the morning around 6.30, as it's too early for Eva to be there, and I want to leave the money under the office door. But the keys to the main part of the hostel
(kept in the other building), won't fit the lock. Have to race up the 4 floors again to leave the money under a clock in the dorm, then go back and alter the note that I'd originally meant for Eva to explain that I'd ring her and let her know where the money is. Do manage to get her on the phone from the railway station and explain.