Weekend in Kraków
My study abroad program planned several day trips throughout the semester to towns in the Czech Republic, but the biggest trip was an entire weekend in Kraków, Poland. After our Thursday classes ended, we all boarded a bus and set out on an eight-hour trip to the east. Since the trip was organized by the program, we were put up in a fancy hotel with a complimentary breakfast. After sleeping exclusively in cheap hostels while traveling, we were living in style.
On our first full day, we had a guided tour of the city center. We saw the main square, the Bernatek footbridge, and the city center. And, of course, we had to stop for donuts on the way.
After the city tour, we all boarded the bus to go to Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was a very serious and intense experience that was difficult to process. I will never forget the strange juxtaposition of standing in that massive field surrounded by wildflowers and partially destroyed gas chambers.
After the tour, one of the professors who teaches the “Comprehending the Holocaust” class hosted a discussion to help us understand what we had seen. As he explained, there were countless concentration camps across Europe, but Auschwitz and Birkenau are the ones we always talk about. It’s not because they were the biggest or killed the most people. It’s because they are the ones with the most survivors. Their history lives on in the people who pass down their stories.
The next morning we had a tour of the Jewish neighborhood, the Wavel Castle grounds, and the incredible Wavel Cathedral. The rest of the day we had free time, so my friends and I went out for lunch and explored the city center. Krakow has a surprising array of vegan restaurants and cafes. We had an amazing lunch at a veggie restaurant and even found vegan baklava at a cute little coffee shop for dessert.
That night my friends and I all piled into one hotel room to check out the local Polish pop culture. After scanning the channels on our hotel TV, we stumbled across the Polish equivalent of the Great British Baking Show called Bake Off - Ale Ciacho! The title roughly translated to Bake Off - What a Cookie! We were amused and kept watching, and could get the gist of the conversations from context clues and the generic format of baking shows.
In the final round of the competition, the bakers faced the challenge of constructing a famous building out of shortbread. One contestant made Tower Bridge, one crafted a beautiful church, and one took the easy road and made the Pentagon. Unfortunately, the simple structure of a five-sided shape was still a struggle, and her cookie building fell apart in the final minutes. What happened next will live on in study abroad history.
When the baker revealed her creation to the judges, at first all they saw was a crumbling mess of shortbread. But upon further examination, in a last-ditch attempt to save herself, the contestant placed several toy soldiers in the rubble. My friend Matthew nearly choked on his drink when he realized that she made a post-9/11 Pentagon. We were all in shock and then fell to the floor in uncontrollable laughter. It was a wild final night in Poland.
After recovering from Polish baking antics, the next morning we all boarded the bus back to Prague. It was an incredible weekend we'll never forget.