Krakow, Poland

Well we will try not to end our whole semester and expeience abroad on a sour note. It seems like a sorrowful trip to take especially the last week we are in Europe but it is worth the experience and time to honor those that suffered and died. However, to ignore and disregard the tradgedy of the Holocaust and the effect WWII had on the whole of Europe would be far worse.
We started off the day with a short... one hour bus ride out to Auschwitz KL 1. The Auschwitz camp is actually divided into three camps. Auschwtiz 1, Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau), and Auschwitz 3. We only visited 1 and 2. There isn't much left of Auschwitz 2, Auschwitz has been turned into a museum and most of the buildings are still standing. The reason we chose to see Auschwitz I suppose over a camp that was still standing or complete today is the fact that this is where close to 2 million people lost their lives and stands as a remembrance to the evil and extent of mass murder that was the Holocaust. This is were the Germans executed the Final Extermination.
We had a two hour tour of Auschwitz 1 and then a short break and drive to Birkenau and a 20 minute tour there. Auschwitz 2 is the more recognizable of the two because of its size and entrance. At Auschwitz 1, an old Polish Army barracks, their is one crematory and many brick buildings and storehouses used for the prisoners. As I said there wasn't much at Birkenau so you were just looing at the bunks and barracks and the buildings that were left trying to piece the picture back together of 100,000 prisoners being held there. It was a humbling experience going through all of them and trying to imagine what it would have been like there 55 years ago. It is hard to think of what living through all of that would have been like, or even today what people are going through. It puts a lot of things in perspective as you are actually at the place where these things took place. However there wasn't much of Europe that wasn't touched during the war either so you could literally be about anywhere. We had a good night just hanging out and we watched a movie, The Pianist. I had already seen it so the rest were surprised by its intensity however considering we were in Poland it was somewhat fitting I suppose.
We are flying out tomorrow at 10 am and should be back in Bangor at around 9 pm so it will be a day full of traveling however it will be relaxing. We have a straight trip back to Bangor from London with no changes. Then we have two days in Bangor before we will head to Manchester to fly out. It is getting late the sun rises early. Later.