Poland!!

On April 13 the Rotary exchange students got together and we had a trip to Poland. The night before on Thursday I slept over at my best friend Fanni's house and it was so much fun :) She came on the trip with us, which was great and it is crazy cause she came with us on the Venice trip and that is how I got to know her. We spent all of Friday driving to Poland but it was so beautiful! We had to drive through Slovenia and it was beautiful. Where we drove through, used to be Hungary. Late at night we arrived to Krakow and we had about an hour or two to see the city. It was so beautiful and full of

parks, open space, and people who are having a great time! It was such a beautiful city and there were huge churches everywhere. There is also a river flowing through the city and there is a castle! The castle is huge and was very beautiful. Of course I did not get to see everything cause we just had a few hours. We woke up early on Saturday and started traveling to Auswits. We arrived actually went to the camp that is next to Auswits, Birkenau. This is the place where all the trains came and where most of the people died. Lots of it was just ruins because they destroyed everything, but there was still some things remaining. It was really amazing to be there and I do not thing amazing is the right word

but it gave me a real feeling of what it was like. You know that I read lost of books back home about the Holocaust but this was something completely different. It was so big you could not even see all of it and there were so many gas chambers and crematories it was insane. We had a guide who took us on a tour and we got to see the remains of the old buildings that were destroyed and the ones the remained we could go into. There was a very strange silence there, and everyone was very quite, it was very interesting. Then we went to Auswits and that was a complexity different story. This was a lot smaller place and was not really a working camp where

you need lots of space. It was more just a place where there were lots of buildings that were used for different things. Inside of all these buildings they have remodeled them and made it into a museum. To me this was horrible and I really did not like it. I do not know why they did not just build a new building next to this place if they really needed a museum. It did not feel real and like it was a long time ago, but from the out side it still looked similar. There was still a gas chamber that was there and we got to go inside. I cannot explain the feel that where I was, was here in every minute of years people were dyeing constantly. Also there was a courtyard where they

Tortured the people. On the wall, like in this picture, you can see that there is still a remaining blood splatter. After this we went to Wieliczka which was a salt mine. Once they finished mining all the salt from it, they made it into a museum or a place where people can go! Everywhere there are sculptures made of salt and there are beautiful designs and picture carved into the walls. It was so big and very interesting! We arrived again to Krakow in the night and had time to go around the city. It was so beautiful and I spent time with the other exchange students. For the first time I really felt a connection with them and loved speaking with the American students. We talked about all the little things that I had forgotten about at home like pop-tarts or just how we speak! It was super and for the first time I really enjoyed speaking english! On this trip it was really awesome because I got to meet with two kids from Hungary that are coming to Colorado next year! We had two districts in Colorado and Pal is coming to our district and to the Denver district is going the Hungarian girl. We took a

Colorado is awesome picture. The girl on the right with the blond hair is the other girl from Colorado who is in Hungary right now! The trip was really good and I would love to go back to Poland some time!