Another Day In Poznan

Well I think we have exhausted what we can do in Poznan.  Today we were going to visit one of the museums.  We thought that we could probably spend a few hours walking through and reading the displays.  We went through the first one which was for the time period of 1918-1919.  That took us about 15 minutes and I am being generous.  Absolutely nothing in English except for a 1 pager the person we meet at the reception gave us. She could only speak German besides Polish.

There was another one near by so we thought we would try that one.  We walk in and the lady motioned to us that there were two floors.  Excellent this should be good.  Well two floors of guns and military uniforms is not my idea of a good museum.  Needless to say that took us 20 minutes.  A total waste of time.

I am not sure where there National Museum of the History of Poland is, but neither of those museums fit the bill.  Poznan is the total opposite to Krakaw.  Krakaw was completely set up to handle tourists with tours and enough people that speak English well enough to get information.  We probably should have stayed in Krakaw a few more days.  Of course I had not internet there.  Sometimes you just can't win.

So tomorrow we might try one other museum that we found while walking around.  I was not up for another museum disappointment today so we thought we would wait until tomorrow.  We might also walk to a lake that is near by.  It seems to be an tourist attraction.

We ended up at the mall again.  I took a picture, but I am too lazy to post it today.  Something to look forward to tomorrow.

I ended up taking a nap this afternoon and then we walked to Subway for dinner.  A few more hours and we will be hitting the hay.

Back in Poznan

This morning we returned the rental car.  What should have taken only about 20 minutes to get to the airport ended taking a little over an hour.  I thought I could easily navigate from the hotel onto the street that leads to the airport and ended up and a strange neighborhood.  I made a few corrective moves and ended up on a freeway.  We sat in traffic there for quite a while so I was pretty sure I made another wrong turn.  It actually turned out to be the correct street to get to the airport.

Once we were on the correct street our next concern was finding a gas station to fill up the vehicle.  Well we drove to the airport and no gas station so we had to drive back to find one.  Finally found a gas station, filled up the vehicle and made the trek back to the airport to drop off the vehicle.

With the vehicle dropped off we took a taxi back to the hotel.  It was around 10:00 when we got back so we killed some time because it was too early to head to Market Square to watch the goats.  I worked on the blog and mom read her book.  About 11:15 we started the walk over to Market Square.  I managed to get the video of the goats at noon.

I attempted to post a video of the goats butting heads at noon at the Market Square, but it does not seem to work.  I suspect it is because it is too big.  Oh well you will all have to wait to see the video.

We walked to the mall and it is quite amazing.  We having nothing like it back home.  The mall is build in a converted brewery.  It was too much to take in on the first trip and try and shop so I will have to go back and shop later.

Not much else to report for today.  It isn't very warm outside.  It is sunny, but gets quite chilly when you are not in the sunny.

Travel Day to Poznan

Today was a driving day back to Poznan.  We left the hotel at 9:30 and we expected to be on the main highway and heading to Poznan by 10:00.  Wishful thinking.  What I thought would be an easy way out ended up being blocked due to construction.  I think we drove for about an hour before we finally got our of Krakow.  It was insane.  You just go in circles in downtown Krakow.  Cars parked all over the place, people walking in front of you and then there are trains going down the street you are driving on.  I am still not sure how I got out.

Of course once we were out of Krakow the next issue was getting onto the freeway.  If we had gotten onto the free way it was pretty smooth sailing all the way to Wroclaw. As you can tell we did not make it onto the freeway.  As a result we ended up driving through one very small town after very small town on a road with a speed limit between 50 to 70 kms/hr.  I have no pictures of any of this drive.  I must admit that I am pretty much seen my limit of rural Poland.  It is very pretty, but I have seen enough.  At least for this trip.

After about 2 hours of curvy roads and round abouts we did manage to make it to the freeway.  The scenery is definitely not as nice, but it is much less stressful.  We arrived back at the hotel around 5:30 and I went in to make sure they had a room.  I had originally planned to be back for Tuesday night, but we decided to head back to Poznan a day earlier.  They had a hotel room, but it is not as nice as the one we had before.  Very much the same except we have a crappy TV and only 1 channel.  We thought it was bad before because we had quite a few channels, but only 1 English channel.  We were complaining about that English channel because it was just news and every broadcast was the same.  We now would kill for the one English channel.

We didn't go out at night and I worked on organizing the pictures I have taken and started working on updating the blog.

Salt Mine

St. Kinga's Chapel

Auschwitz - Taking me a while to write this one.

Saturday (April - 14, 2012)  Today was our trip to Auschwitz.  The bus picked us up at 10:15.  It takes about an hour and 15 minutes to get to Auschwitz from Krakaw.  During the drive they play a video that tells you about Auschwitz and what went on at the camp.  

Auschwitz before the Germans took over was an abandoned army base.  It was originally built by the Polish to assist in re-populating the area after the WWI.  The building are all built like apartments and there are formal streets between each building.  The Polish people eventually left and that is when the army took it over.  Eventually it was left empty.  

At the beginning of WWII the Germans occupied Poland and took over Auschwitz and began holding Polish citizens.  Generally individuals that were educated and influential people from the cities.  The Germans wanted them out of the way to prevent resistance.  At the entrance to the camp there is a sign which in English means "Work Will Make You Free".  Little did those that entered Auschwitz know that they would never leave and working would not bring them freedom.  

In the beginning, Auschwitz was not a dead camp, but just a Concentration Camp.  Prisoners there were made to work and were in fact worked to death.  Most prisoners lived only 2 months with few living up to a year.  

As the prisoners were marched into the camp an orchestra played.  The reason this was done was to keep them in step and it was easier to count them.

This is how the building looks today.

The prisoners were marched into the camps along the streets between the buildings and were processed.

Each prisoner was photographed and recorded like inventory.  In the beginning the Germans took three photos of each prison similar to police mugshots.  They found it to expensive and they switched to numbered tatoos on the forearm.  

The camp did have a hospital, but no one was ever cure once they entered.  If you became sick and had to enter the hospital you were subject to experiments and if the experiments didn't kill you a lethal injection of phenol would.   

Initially, phenol was injected into a victim's vein.  Before long, the technique was changed to injecting the phenol directly into the heart. It was thought that the change was made because the veins were sometimes hard to locate, but the real reason was that death was much fast and effective when administered directly into the heart. Patients injected by vein might linger for minutes or even an hour or more.  Concentrated phenol was inexpensive, easy to use, and absolutely effective when introduced into the heart so that an injection of ten to fifteen millilitres into the heart causing death within fifteen seconds.

Phenol injections were given in Block 20 and the prisoners were brought in by two Jewish prisoner assistants, sometimes two at a time and positioned on a footstool.  Usually the right arm covered the victim's eyes and the left arm was raised sideways in a horizontal position.  The idea was for the victim's chest to be thrust out so that the cardiac area was accessible for the lethal injection and to prevent the person  from being able to see what was happening.  The person giving the injection, most often was SDG Josef Klehr, filled his syringe from the bottle and then thrust the needle directly into the heart of the seated prisoner and emptied the contents of the syringe.

Krakow

Well we made it to Krakow.  I was not sure we would make it.  We missed our turn off to avoid going through Warsaw and ended up going right through the middle.  I thought how hard could it be to drive through Warsaw.  I am not exactly sure how long it took us.  Mom couldn't find any of the streets on the map.  I ended up just driving in one direction and thought that it would eventually lead use out of the city.  After we got through it was relatively smooth sailing until Krakow.  

Not a very good picture of the Krakow castle.  It was very nice when we arrive on Friday night and started off nice on Saturday morning, but ended up raining the rest of the day and then again

The next three pictures are of the Market Square.  I took these Friday night when it was actually very nice out.