Thorsten and Suzi 12/04/06

Greetings from Krakow!

We've had a great time and really enjoyed just wandering the streets and soaking up the atmosphere here. The Old Town is really beautiful and, strange as it may sound, even more so at night, as most buildings are lit and, with 58 churches in the Old Town alone, there are beautiful shadows cast across the roads and lots of dark corners to explore. Today we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Its a very poignant place to visit and difficult to put in to words how it feels walking round somewhere as a tourist attraction where hundreds of thousands lost their lives. You visit most parts of the concentration camp and its an eerie place, particularly the gas chamber, where you truly leave with a funny feeling in your stomach. We could only guess how awful life must have been for those inside but the museum and all displays also contained a positive message that we have learnt from our mistakes to ensure something so awful could never happen again. Was an experience we won't forget.

We're off to Kaunas in Lithuania overnight tonight. We're currently in an Internet cafe in Krakow killing some time until the train goes. Normally we'd have a beer but the budget won't stretch as we treated ourselves to a city tour but, as always, it was expensive and we are annoyed with ourselves for the lack of self-control! Its hard still, coming up to four weeks in, to not treat our trip as one long city break and so we do need to be more disciplined with the finances! Will move on to Vilnius once we're in Kaunas (transport links are getting slightly worse the further "east" we go so it was easier to get to Kaunus for one night first!) and will send our next blog soon.

Happy Birthday for Friday Dkins, hope you have a great day!