This Krakow weekend has been a long time coming and for the first time ever, our trip was already fully planned way before we left the UK. We knew it was going to be full on as we had only 3 days to fit everything in; this meant making decisions up front about what was manageable both physically and emotionally. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the main purpose of our visit and felt giving it a full day was necessary to both visit, and process the horror, but we hadn’t thought much beyond that until our youngest daughter (who visited Krakow a couple of years ago) suggested we booked Schindler’s Factory beforehand just to ensure we got in. So, we decided to skip Wieliczka Salt Mine and just concentrate on the Jewish history of Krakow instead – we have learnt that sometimes trying to do everything takes away some of the joy from it, so decisions had to be made without regrets.
Our flight to Krakow, on BA0872, was late afternoon on Thursday, leaving Gatwick bang on time and carrying only a single rucksack between us, we were able to quickly grab an UBER to our hotel, The Hotel Maksymillion with ease. We had pre-booked an Auschwitz Tour for the Friday and the tour company had confirmed our pick up time on our drive up to Heathrow; as they advised, and we were being picked up at 6:28am as Auschwitz was sold out for the day and we would be taking the 8:00am tour. This early start confirmed our decision to skip using public transport so we could clean up and get some sleep.
For the first time, we had booked our Auschwitz Tour through Tripadvisor and to be honest, we were a little nervous about it. However, communication from them was faultless, and pick-up turned up a little early, so we were on our way out of a misty Krakow by 6:20am. Our tour group was only 8 people, but on arrival at Auschwitz we joined other visitors for our English speaking tour. The car park was already rammed when we arrived at 7:45 and the irony of the silent queues and ID processing was not lost on us. Without being asked the site seemed to instil a sense of reverence throughout.
It feels disrespectful to write in detail about Auschwitz-Birkenau and our experience, so we will only include logistics and suggestions that we hope might be helpful.
- Do not wait until you arrive in Krakow to get your tour tickets as it is usually sold out way in advance most days.
- A tour may seem more expensive but they do guarantee getting you there with ease – dropping you off at the gate and ensuring you get inside. For an additional cost they will pick you up from your hotel and drop you back again. We used KrakowTrip.
- Make sure you are booked on an English speaking tour.
- Try to arrange a tour starting as close to opening time as possible, as there is only room for one group at a time in each area so you will end up getting backed-up longer as the museum gets more full.
- Wear good walking shoes – the tour is not long, but the ground is worn and uneven due to the huge number of people who were imprisoned there.
- Take a bottle of water as there is nothing available once you get inside and it is the only thing you can take in.
- There is no food/drink available other than a couple of vending machines in the car park outside the entrance, so plan ahead. No food/drink is allowed inside the museum.
- Use the carpark toilets before the entrance as there was only one other available in Auschwitz 1 and none at all beyond the entrance to Auschwitz 2. There are not many toilets available outside, so it is better to queue here than be stuck with no option inside.
- If you are on an early morning tour the chances are you will leave your hotel before you can get your breakfast. Our tour company provided a great vegetarian lunch bag for about £12 and gave us time between Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2 to eat it. Your hotel may provide one free of charge if breakfast is included in your package, but we arrived too late to book one and we didn’t even realise it was available (maybe contact your hotel for options).
- Make sure you have warm clothes as we visited on a clear and mild October morning but most of the buildings are incredibly cold and the site itself is shaded by the surrounding walls.
- You exit Auschwitz 1 through a book store – this is not a souvenir shop but a multi language site specific non-fiction book shop. If you just walk through it, getting back in again to buy anything is very difficult, so make sure to stop on the way through. As it is at the end of the tour you do feel slightly overwhelmed by your trip and don’t realise that you have missed the opportunity to stop and browse. There is also a book store at the entrance to Auschwitz 2 that you can access on your way out.
- Be prepared for a long day – our day was nearly 8 hours long from pick-up to drop-off with absolutely no hold-ups.
- Be respectful when photographing – we had somebody (Norwegian) photographing everything in detail and to us it felt unnecessary and invasive.
- You may think you know everything about what happened in Auschwitz, but nothing can prepare you for the emotional trauma and your own unexpected physical responses when you are standing where they stood. Give yourself time to absorb what you have seen, as our ride back to Krakow was taken in total silence – what was there to be said?
After waiting so long, we were not disappointed by our visit and left with a strengthened belief that everybody should visit to see just how cruel humans can be if left unaccountable and unchecked.
Fortunately, our hotel was next door to a vegan restaurant (https://veganic.restaurant/en/menu/) after taking a short break we decided to try it out as we were still hungry from missing breakfast. The food was great and it certainly lived up to expectations, so much so that we booked a table for the next day!
After dinner we took a short stroll to the end of the road to Rynek Glowny that was buzzing with people all doing the same thing. We wandered through the Cloth Hall, lined with souvenir shops and checked the tram routes ready for the rest of our stay.
Following our daughters advice we had booked Schindlers Factory online (again, do not leave this until you arrive in Krakow as it was sold out for the entire weekend and there was a queue outside for last minute availability that was approx. 2 hours long). In the process, we found the Memory Trail that pointed us to other important sites. We started our day with the long walk across town to Kaziemierz (historic Jewish Quarter). Our first stop was an almost deserted Ghetto Heroes Square (Plac Bohaterow Getta) with it’s empty chairs memorial – there are 70 chairs scattered across the space representing the scattered furniture that was left after the deportations/selections were completed in this square (history of empty-chairs-ghetto-heroes-square). It was a simple memorial with a stark message.
Our next stop was Eagle Pharmacy (eagle-pharmacy-krakow-ghetto-history), a small museum on the corner of the square that looked out over the horrors that occurred in the ghetto from it’s beginning in 1941 until it’s liquidation in 1943. The owner was not Jewish but did not consider relocating his business despite the horrors around him. Instead he stayed, quietly witnessing history and supporting the community. The museum was tiny and there was only a handful of visitors but it reflected the quiet bravery of this man and his female staff.
Our final stop was Schindler’s Factory, just a 10 minute walk from the square (walking-through-history-oskar-schindler-and-his-factory-krakow). We had booked for 1:10PM so we could leave it to the end of the day. There was no signage explaining the ticket/entry system, so we joined the end of a long queue, however, the people behind us told us they didn’t have tickets! We walked to the front of the queue and into the building where a security guard checked we had tickets and pointed us to the waiting area. At the exact ticket time, our passport was checked and we were free to enter. The building is huge and the trail is well constructed so you can move freely despite all time slots being full; the film being shown in the cinema was great and put real faces to the stories. There was a tour option here too, but the displays are so well labelled that it is not necessary, although if you get stuck behind one of them it is almost impossible to move past due to the narrow walkways. We certainly learnt a lot during our visit although uncertain about Mr Schindler as a person!
It had been a long day so we jumped on a tram back to the centre. Whilst we had been investigating our walking route the previous day, we discovered a tiny church in the main square that was for prayer only (St Adalbert’s) although it did have a magnificent decorative ceiling to admire too. This was not a tourist site and there were signs asking for ‘no photos’ and to please be quiet, but this was ignored by a large family who wandered through, talking, taking pictures of everything and disturbing everybody’s peace.
After our dinner reservation at Veganic we wandered back to the town centre, allowing ourselves to get lost in the streets surrounding the main square. Again it was really busy and our mission to find a good chimney cake was being overwhelmed by overpriced tourist shops. We decided that it was unreasonable to pay zl30 for a single cake but picked up some fancy pies to take back with us.
Our flight was booked for late on Sunday evening so we could make the most of the city. We had left the final part of the Memory Trail as it was only a 10 minute walk from the hotel. Checking out of our hotel at the official time we left our bag with the hotel and headed off towards Pomorska Street (pomorska-street-krakow). Having some knowledge of the history of Krakow up until the end of WW2, we realised that we believed that everything improved on their liberation from the Nazis. How wrong we were, the arrival of the Russians and communism just continued the terror but in different ways. This museum was a former Gestapo headquarters before being taken over by the communist security service and, although the museum is small, it is the first person accounts of victims and informers as well as the untouched torture cells with personal messages etched in the walls that make this so horrific.
If you are visiting Krakow, the Memory Trail (memory-trail-krakow) is a great way to make sure you see the most important parts of the city as well as linking to tickets. We did find the pricing strange, at the Schindler Factory it was clearly marked that both Eagle Pharmacy and Pomorska Street were included in the factory ticket as long as you visit within 7 days. However, this is not clear on the website and we paid for each site individually despite showing our Schindler ticket at the entrance to Pomorska Street. I would suggest booking Schindler’s factory before arriving, to guarantee entrance, and then just pay on the day (show your ticket) at the other sites as they were not so busy.
After leaving the museum, we sat for a while in the park opposite chatting about our visit before grabbing our bag from the hotel and making our way slowly across town. We had allowed plenty time to explore on the way so followed the path through the park that surrounds the main square. The park was full of people enjoying the good weather, sitting watching the world go by. On our way, having decided not to pursue a chimney cake, we bumped in to the Chimney Cake Bakery kiosk in the park! With plenty of time we grabbed two cinnamon chimney cakes and wandered back in to the park finding a free bench. The steaming chimney cakes were as good as expected and sitting in the shadow of the beautiful Barbican (krakow-barbican-what-round-building-was) we were sad that our weekend in Krakow was drawing to a close. Wandering slowly to the railway station, we picked up the train to the airport, which was efficient and took us straight into the terminal.
And that was Krakow! The city itself is charming and not totally overshadowed by its history.The sights we saw we truly memorable and we felt didn’t warrant capturing images of, but the memories and sights of Auschwitz etc, will stay with us forever.
