Today was a rather rainy day with some thunderstorms, so I got a really good start on my packing and I figured why not write another post. As I finished in the last post, after Berlin we drove to Krakow which is the second largest city in Poland! It took a full day of driving on June 28th, and when we finally arrived in Poland we checked into our hotel, and then went to a traditional Jewish dinner in the Jewish part of the city. To be quite honest I have no idea what they were feeding us, some type of meat stew or porridge? It was really strange and it wasn’t my favourite, but hey exchange is all about trying new things including food! Following the dinner, we were greeted to live Polish music, by an extreeeemely talented girl playing the clarinet, a man on the cello and a man playing the accordion. Seriously, hands down best live music I have ever heard.
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After the dinner some of my guy friends and I went and walked around Krakow for a bit and then met two Polish lawyers who spoke good English so they showed us around and then we just chilled in a park before taking a taxi back to the hotel. The next day it was super hot! I think the thermostat hit +35 before the humidity, it was rather disgusting. We started the day with a 2 hour walking/guided tour through Krakow, where we got to see most of the town as well as the famous castle. We were free for lunch so Sabrina, Emmy and I went and sat outside and ate in the heat. The best part about Poland, is since they are just kind of getting their feet back on the ground as well as several other Eastern European countries we visited, everything and I mean absolutely EVERYTHING there is really cheap! I ordered a huge lunch, and it cost less than $10 Canadian.
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After lunch we met the group again and drove 1.5 hours on the bus out to the former Auschwitz Concentration Camp. I hope that you all know what a concentration camp is so I am not going to go into much detail here, because honestly just thinking about this brings up a whole lot of emotions. Basically we had a guided tour of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and saw where millions of people were stripped of their identity, and were starved, or worked until their death, or were killed by lethal injections. It was horrifying to see, but I also think it is something everyone should see at least once in their life. To see the shoes, clothes, suitcases, toothbrushes, everything of people who went through this torture was extremely upsetting. I will leave it there. After being at Auschwitz we drove about twenty minutes to another part of the Auschwitz camp called Birkenau. We weren’t here for long because it was getting quite late, but here we were actually able to see the trains that brought the people here, it put it into much more of a real life perspective. Once we finished here it literally poured rain, like I have not seen a downpour so hard in my life, and we had to run a solid 1.5 km to the bus. There was no escaping the rain, you were going to be soaked either way. And then we had a lovely 1.5 hour bus ride back to our hotel with soaking wet, freezing exchange students.. can you imagine how lovely our bus smelt?
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We left Poland on the morning of June 30th headed towards Hungary! My final thoughts on Poland, was that it was a much better place to visit than I could have ever imagined. It’s historic, old and absolutely beautiful! And although they may be considered “poor” compared to other European countries, you can not really see it at all when walking the streets. I hope I can go back someday 🙂 We stopped in the mountainside of Slovakia for lunch, but we also headed back to Slovakia a few days after, you can read that some other time ;). We ate dinner at the hotel as soon as we arrived, and then we had the whole night to do as we wish. Like 30 of us exchange students tried to figure out the metro and then ended up going to the middle of Budapest which is the capital of Hungary! There was a fifa match that night, I don’t remember who was playing so a lot of people were out watching that, we just walked around the city and since the metro closed really early we all took taxi’s back to the hotel. Hungary is also a super cheap country, so a 20-25 minute cab ride cost about $3 Canadian. The next morning was CANADA DAY! This is the first time I have spent Canada Day outside of Canada, and let me tell you it is really exciting! We had a city tour in the morning, and saw so many things that I can’t even remember it all, we went to the highest point in the city, a castle, saw the parliament, and the heroe’s square. All of us Canadians were dressed up and being all patriotic, and it was so cool to have so many people come and wish us a happy Canada Day and to also meet other Canadians in the city! In the afternoon we had free time, so McKenzie, Bronte, Abigail, Hannah, Mai, Emmy and I began by having an outdoor lunch in the beautiful warm sunshine. After we went to a famous market in the city, I don’t even know how to explain it, it is two floors and is huuuge! Literally everything is sold there, but I think the most popular is Hungarian Salami which is really good! After this we went to the largest shopping mall in Budapest. Literally the coolest thing happened here. I will try my best to explain it to you without you getting super confused. Okay so there is a Brazilian exchange student who lived in Sweden named Gabriel, he was on our trip with us and he has an identical twin brother who also was an exchange student this year, but in Hungary. He didn’t live in Budapest but came into the city so that he could visit his twin brother while we were there (super adorable right?!) While in the shopping mall Bronte and I swore we saw Gabriel walk right past us but didn’t stop to say hi or anything which is really weird and not like Gabbe at all. So we chased after him since we knew he had a twin, and once we caught him we were like “GABBE!?” and he turned around and it was Gabriel’s twin brother killing some time in the mall before going to meet his brother! It was so weird, and cool at the same time. So Bronte and I were able to trick some of the other exchange students into believing it was Gabriel when really it was his twin brother Angelo. He followed us back to our hotel since he didn’t really know where to go, but not after us girls had a mandatory Starbucks stop! We ate dinner again at the hotel, and then we had a really cool boat cruise in the evening through the city with the setting sun. After this, a small group of us walked around the city and took some photos before sitting in front of a big screen in a park and catching part of a soccer match. Final thoughts, Budapest was probably one of my favourite, if my not my favourite stop of the whole trip, probably tied with Austria. It is such a beautiful city, and I had a fantastic time there!
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Up next I will tell you about Slovakia, Austria and Slovenia!
xo Jessie
Swedish Experiences 