Poland - Krakow and Surrounds

So arrived into Krakow main train station at like 5.30am with kind of reasonable sleep, but my check in at the hostel wasn't until like 12pm. Luckily it wasn't too far a walk with my bag, and I could dump all my stuff and have some breakfast there before heading out to walk around old Krakow town at like 7am.

Was actually really nice as there were not that many people out and it was nice and peaceful, later in the day when all the tourists emerged, the place was packed to the brim, so not the nicest, and as all old town centres are now, pretty much packed with cafes and restaurants.

But I walked around a lot if the inner city, through the Jewish quarter, around and over the river, down to the castle, which is more a wall with other buildings inside, doesn't seem like a castle castle, they do have a cave as an escape point though which was cool.

Also wandered through some churches and climbed more spiral stairs, always plenty of spiral stairs to be found.

The next day I was heading out of the city to visit Auschwitz and the Wieliczka Salt mine.

Auschwitz was very strange, compared to the other concentration camp I have been to in Austria, which was very interesting, actually you could gather the meaning behind it being left for rememberance, Auschwitz was like a strange theme park, there were just so so many people, tour buses, tour guides with specified audio channels for your language, made it strange.

I understand why they need to let in all people who want to see it and so the message of its huge cruelty and mistreatment of people should not be repeated, but it almost made it lose its point.

Birkenau was a big better to get this sense, possibly the bigger more empty space of what once was gave more room to think, but I think it spread the people out also