by Kyle James
My first reaction was this must be hell. Dark, hot, and for people that made a really horrible decision in life. We sat down in seats 25 and 26, next to a band of misfits. Sprawled across the backseat, snoring, was a man with a blanket on, whimpering like a dog having a bad dream. In front of us was a sweaty man with sunglasses on; he had greasy hair and a very smelly neck brace. I only knew this because his seat was so far back. We were far from comfortable, but I figured I could use the nine-hour drive to get some work done. I searched the seat for the outlet the website had promised. I couldn’t find anything but trash and flies and went to ask the only one of the three Polish guys who spoke a lick of English where the outlets were.
“No outlet, sorry,” he said harshly, with no explanation, and turned back to the other two Polish men who came with the bus. I think they were a family; they were talking pretty harshly to one another and all looked rather mean. The back two rows, we noticed, were made into beds with sheets and pillows. I though this must be a glorified RV. I was assuming they just made their living driving people around on this piece of shit. No big deal. I have a few hours until the computer dies, I thought, and headed back to our row, where Ash was trying to get comfortable enough to sleep. I knew this situation was bad when Ash didn’t fall asleep immediately. She could sleep in a Dumpster.
I needed the code for the Wi-Fi to access Google docs and do some work, so I headed back to the Polish circle and asked them what the Wi-Fi code was. When the English-speaking one told the others what I had asked, they started laughing. I am unfamiliar with Polish customs, but I am going to go out on a limb and suspect they weren’t laughing with me.
I hadn’t slept last night, so I figured I would try to work on that instead. Before I went to sleep, I went to relieve my overfull bladder. I had drunk a ton of water, trying to hydrate before the ride. I stumbled up the moving vehicle and opened the semi-broken door to the bathroom and found what looked like a bedroom closet. Clothes on hangers lined the small space, and the toilet had been removed altogether. The last thing I heard before falling asleep while holding my bladder shut was someone with broken English from the front of the bus, yelling, “Next shtop, Brno, tree howers.”
Ash sat across from me on an empty row of seats so we could sprawl out. I dozed in and out of awful sleep. At one point, I dreamed of someone tickling my face. I woke up to find that two flies had landed on my forehead. How do flies get on a moving vehicle like this? I realized I was also sweating profusely. There was clearly no AC on this rolling hellhole, and the seats were made out of that fuzzy material that trapped heat and was often found in old vans. This was a nightmare.
We sputtered to a halt at a city bus stop. There were people waiting there, but they were clearly waiting for a different type of bus, probably a bus that didn’t reek and that had a bathroom. One of the family members got off and started to talk to the people. I watched as the others peered through the curtain at the representative outside. The brother (I’d assumed by this point the men were brothers) outside was negotiating with the people, and after a minute or two, a couple of them boarded the bus and handed him some cash. In anticipation of these additions to our crew, Ash came back to her seat next to me. Sure enough, a woman sat down in the seat across from us and began eating.
Suddenly I smelled smoke. I knew this thing was going to break down; I knew it without a doubt. I hadn’t expected it to light on fire, though. To my surprise, we didn’t slow down to pull over. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed that our bus was clearly on fire. The woman across from us kept eating, the man in the back kept sleeping, and the neck brace guy … kept neck bracing. Finally I stood up to see what the deal was and saw the smoke; it was coming from the driver’s cigarette. His window unopened. We continued to Brno.
When we finally pulled into Kraków, we hit a bump at the station, and the door of the bathroom/closet fell completely off the hinges and hit the ground. This bus is literally falling apart. We quickly exited to gasp fresh air. Welcome to Kraków.
I had not done a ton of research on Kraków. We really didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly didn’t expect this massive, immaculate Kraków Główny station that dually served as a mall. This was easily the cleanest and richest-looking station we had been in yet, and we walked, dumbfounded, through the massive domed area. We passed a nice grocery store, luxury boutiques, and even an H&M that I made sure Ash missed by pointing at a cute baby in the other direction. We had imagined Kraków to be a cold, desolate Polish farmland.
We went outside and started walking through nice quiet roads with lush green parks and cool boutiques. We entered the Old Town by passing a protective castle barrier. I could feel the history of this city with every structure we passed.
After entering the city center, we found our Airbnb for the next few days. It was located in the very center of Kraków and on a classic European street with an ice cream shop, jewelry store, coffee shop, café, and boutique. Kraków looked like it had all the good qualities from the other cities without the negative ones. There were just enough people to make it busy.
Our apartment on the fourth and top floor of the building was amazing. There was a washer and a massive king-sized bed. The bedroom window had a view down onto our street. I took two showers, because the first one just didn’t feel adequate enough after that bus ride. I felt like I had cigarette smoke infused into my hair and beard at this point.
We found the best Italian place in Kraków and ventured in that direction. It was only 0.4 miles away, and the walk led us right into the main square. The large open space was as vibrant as anywhere we had been. It is actually one of the largest open squares in all of Europe. There were street performers, shoppers, diners, locals, and tourists crowding the square in an orderly chaos. We had that feeling we had in Prague, where all of a sudden we felt a jolt of energy from all the people enjoying their evenings.
The two towers of St. Mary’s Basilica and the Town Hall Tower overlooked the square like proud parents. We promised to spend more time here, but our stomachs would not permit it at the moment. We arrived at Ti Amo Ti.
An Italian family owned the highly rated restaurant, and we were intent on checking it out. We sat down, a little unsure of what to expect, and ordered two big Polish beers called Zywiec. We started the meal with a platter of meats and cheeses that came with pizza crust bread on a giant slab of wood. When it arrived, I looked to Ash and saw her whisper, “Shut the fuck up,” under her breath. I was proud of her discretion.
We happily ravaged the food, but there was simply too much to finish. Our young Polish waiter brought out diavola pizza with homemade tomato sauce. After consuming all we could, I decided if I were ever on death row, this would be my last meal.
Kraków had been the biggest surprise of the trip thus far. We were staying right downtown for fifty dollars a night, and had just witnessed a gorgeous city square and eaten a meal sent from heaven for twenty-five dollars. Speaking of heaven, it may have been the hell we went through to get here that made it all so good.
7/1/15
Kraków, Poland
I woke up to turn off my alarm and noticed the word July pop up on my phone. This time a month ago, Ash and I were moving out of our apartment and taking all our belongings to a storage unit. Today, Ash and I were resting in a penthouse apartment in Kraków, Poland…. A lot can change in thirty days.
To start off the day, we decided to first get lost in the city square. There wasn’t very much Kraków, it turned out, to get lost in. As the St. Mary’s Basilica clock struck noon, a trumpet popped out of the tower and started playing the “Hejnal Mariacki,” a five-note Polish anthem. As the tune played, hundreds of crows flew around the clock tower, only intensifying the medieval aesthetic that haunted this city.
Halfway through the song, Ash had spotted a Zara across the square and darted off. I knew I’d have some time on my hands, so I set up camp at a bar across the square and ordered a half-liter of Polish beer called Okocim.
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br /> When Ash returned, again without purchasing anything (I was so proud of her restraint), we set off to explore more of the Old Town. The other main attraction in Kraków was the Wawel Castle. It was amazing that the Gothic walls still stood on the Wawel Hill overlooking Kraków seven hundred years after being built. We circled the large castle and drank espressos every few hundred feet. We couldn’t help but indulge in the casual caffeine kicks at a dollar apiece.
We had already decided that although there may have been a better meal somewhere else, we wanted to head back to Ti Amo Ti. There was a fifteen-minute wait before we could be seated, but our Polish waiter from last night spotted us and rushed over. “Hey, I remember you two!” he said. When we were seated, we saved him any sort of speech about specials and ordered the exact same meal as the night before.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is a model many live by. That model should also be taken into consideration in its reverse form, “If it is broke, fix it.” A wise man once told me: “If what you are doing is not actively filling you up and giving you as much energy as you are putting into it, stop doing it immediately.” Ash and I loved our time in Denver, but after two years, our lives were no longer filling us up. I was very reluctant to drop it all and leave, but we were now three weeks into our journey, and I was starting to see that what we had been doing back home was simply not worth the time we were investing. “Life is short” is a cliché, but have you ever heard a wise elderly person tell you about how long life is and not to worry about exploring the world because you can always do it later?
7/2/15
Kraków, Poland → Auschwitz, Poland
We left our Airbnb at 7:30 a.m. and paid a total of seven dollars at the Główny station for two tickets on the next bus out of town. Next stop: Auschwitz.
I left Ash in line for the bus to grab lunch, and when I came back with subs and bottles of water, there was a swarm of people surrounding her. Nobody looked inclined to follow the first-come, first-serve rule of thumb. When the bus finally pulled up, a group of obnoxious Spanish girls standing at the back of the line rudely rushed up to the front of the bus as it pulled in. They skipped the whole line and boarded the bus first.
Normally this would drive me crazy, but because of where we were going today, it forced me to let go of this obsession to be first in line. When the prisoners were transported to Auschwitz, their captors crammed 150 people into cattle cars that had a capacity of 50 people. Many traveled for four days with no food or water and had one single latrine bucket. Scores died in transit to the camp.
We boarded the bus and took seats near the front for the hour-and-a-half ride to the infamous Nazi death camp. As a kid, I wasn’t allowed to watch South Park, and I had to cover my eyes when Itchy and Scratchy came on The Simpsons. Yet my parents urged me to read about the Holocaust from a very young age. As soon as I could conquer chapter books, I was invested in the atrocities of the 1940s, reading Night by Elie Wiesel and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank in middle school. Going to Auschwitz had been a lifelong goal of mine because of how much time I had spent reading about it. Some kids dreamed of going to Disney World; I dreamed of visiting Poland and couldn’t have been more eager to experience Auschwitz today.
We exited the bus and got in line to enter the camp; thankfully and luckily for us, entering Auschwitz was a choice. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to finally step off a boxcar that had been rotting with the stench of feces and death for four days. If only for a millisecond, I thought, these poor people would have found relief in stretching their legs and emerging into fresh air. Unfortunately, this relief quickly disappeared when the selection process began.
While waiting in line, we learned that after 10:30 a.m. we had to be accompanied by a guide through the camp for crowd-control purposes. This was probably a blessing in disguise, as we would learn more about the camp and its history from a guide than by simply reading signs. I was surprised at how well organized this place was, but then again … organizing herds of people was what this camp had done.
The prisoners of Auschwitz who were brought in on the boxcars had a much different experience than we did. Upon arrival, they were immediately lined up for the infamous selection process with the SS doctors (Nazi doctors famous for performing heinous experiments on prisoners as if they were animals, not humans). If one was deemed “fit” for labor and was over the age of fourteen, they were branded with prisoner identification and stripped of their hair, clothes, belongings, and the life they once knew. Those under the age of fourteen, the elderly, or women with children, were immediately sentenced to death. They were told they were simply showering, or delousing, but once the chambers were filled with prisoners, the SS locked the doors and executed them by way of asphyxiation with the poison Zyklon B.
We followed the guide under the main gate that the workers had returned through after a long day of slave labor. We listened to our headphones as the guide retold all the stories I had read about as a kid. It was obviously much more powerful to walk through the camp while learning about these atrocities. We were breathing the same air, smelling the same smells, walking on the same ground—and in my case, having an allergy attack from the same dust as those prisoners. I thought Spreepark in Berlin felt creepy and full of spirits; this was downright rotten. My stomach churned as we moved through the barracks where the prisoners slept six people to a wooden bed that I could barely fit in myself. When we arrived in the disciplinary building, I was nauseous.
I am not one who sees ghosts or necessarily believes in them, but the energy that engulfed the disciplinary hall and medical buildings was disturbing, and I felt like I was wearing a heavy blanket of cold, damp hatred. And despite it being eighty degrees outside, exploring the disciplinary hall where prisoners had been punished gave me the chills. This was a building where 1.1 million people were mercilessly murdered.
Our last stop was the gas chamber.
I don’t know if there is any room on earth that more people have died in. The gas chamber still emanated evil energy that blanketed the concrete. Imagine being in a building where, in the exact place you were standing, over a million people had been killed. People with families and jobs, pets and mortgages; people who had hobbies and dreams; people who made others laugh; people who made mistakes; people who had accomplished goals and set new ones; people who had plans for their future. People like you and me.
Their lives had been stolen from them, and they were murdered for their religion, skin color, or sexual orientation, among other things. I walked through the camp, and as the guide mentioned words like homosexuality and religion as the reasons for execution, it made me furious. Furious because people today are still fighting the battle to live their lives the way they choose. It’s crazy to imagine that a place like this truly existed, but it’s even crazier to think it can’t happen again. Philosopher George Santayana once said, famously, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I think it is a good time to start remembering.
We took a much-needed mental break and shuttled to Birkenau, the camp adjacent to Auschwitz. Birkenau was where the selection process actually took place. We walked along the rails and through the iconic entrance to the camp and listened as our guide gave us details of the train arrivals. It was extremely hot and arid; there was no shade. I was having a massive allergy attack from the dust of the old barracks that had been sitting here for seventy-five years. Not the best conditions, but who was I to complain?
Our tour was finished. We walked, dejected, back to the bus. It felt both amazing and awful to have finally seen the place I had read about and imagined my whole life. I’d needed to see it in person; it gave me a sense of closure and helped allay my childhood obsession with World War II and the Holocaust.
We boarded the bus back to Kraków. Herds of people were trying to leave the camp and catch the bus, which only came once an hour. The last two seats were taken, and the bus doors closed on the remaining people in line. Y
ou will never guess who the first people to miss the bus were: none other than the obnoxious Spanish girls who’d skipped in front of everyone in line. Not even I was in the mood to laugh at how big of a bitch Karma could be.
7/3/15
Kraków, Poland → Vienna, Austria
We had heard so many great things about Paris and Amsterdam that we’d had an idea of what to expect before we arrived. Kraków, on the other hand, was a surprise for us. The price of happiness here was cheap. We ate amazing food, spent ample time in a vibrant city square, splurged on espresso and desserts, and witnessed a piece of history that lives in infamy at Auschwitz. We would miss this hidden gem of Eastern Europe, but we considered ourselves equal-opportunity travelers, as it was Vienna’s turn to impress us next.
We had planned to meet our next BlaBlaCar driver, Michael, at a McDonald’s in the Glówny station mall. We arrived at the McDonald’s with ample time to kill. We grabbed some cheap sandwiches from a market in the mall and sat in a Starbucks, eating the sandwiches and drinking large Americanos. These were Kobe Bryant–style Americanos. We took three shots in a matter of seconds. Then we met Michael and set off for Vienna.
Four hours later, Michael pulled into the Austrian capital. We took the metro to the Volkstheater station, and felt the familiar rush of excitement that accompanied each emergence into a new city. My first impression of Vienna was that it felt like we were in Washington, DC. This city was encompassed by a picture-perfect architectural grid; there was a museum, palace, theater, or stunning government building in every direction. (My sister Emily would love this place. She is a sucker for big, beautiful government buildings, which is why she lives in Washington, DC.)
Our host, Valentia, buzzed us into our building. We walked through a construction zone to get to our home base for the next few days. It looked like the inside of the building had just been demolished. But despite the hard-hat debacle outside, it was a nice one-bedroom flat, and we were in the heart of the city.
