A little bit more Gdansk & a Warsaw Weekend

The Gdansk shipyards

Me looking like a red marshmallow in my Antarctica jacket - oh, in front of the Gdansk skyline

On Wednesday after school this week, one of the teachers, with her husband, took me to a few places of historical interest around Gdansk. First was to a fortress or something that you could see across the river, then to a hill up behind the train station in Gdansk. There are some old bunkers in (on??) the hill, well as a sculpture of a wavy red cross erected in 2000 to bless Gdansk throughout the new millennium. 

My favourite part of the Gdansk skyline are the cranes you can see in the shipyards. To me, they're synonymous with Gdansk, and when I see them, they not only embody all that Gdansk is, with it's economic growth, it's ties to the sea, and it's function as Poland's trade gateway to the world, but it also symbolises a bit of Gdansk's past.

Auchwitz & Krakow Weekend

After taking about an eight hour overnight bus ride (commitment) down to Krakow on Thursday, three of my friends and I got up nice and early on Friday to go on a tour to the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. It truly was an eye-opening and sickening experience.

 We started in Auschwitz we we got systematically shown through the major parts of the museum. It took a little while for it to hit me, the gravity of what had happened here, and it took even longer for me to comprehend that this had happened to actual, once living, human beings. I still struggle to comprehend that it was caused by human beings. It was a little bit harder to go into each building as the tour progressed, knowing that some other horrible reality was inside. But at the same time, I felt obliged to. If I can pay respect to the countless victims of this terrible event by hearing their stories told and seeing the remains of what happened to them, then, in this small way, I will do it.