When I think of my trip to Krakow and Lesser Poland, the main emotion I retain from that short time is being freezing.
I remember taking an overnight bus from Prague with my class/dorm mates, being woken up by the border patrol authorities, and then getting there at some ungodly hour in the morning, driving around half awake and less than half conscious, circling through some never-ending plains with distant dark vines scattered around, all caked up and encrusted in snow, with white, indistinguishable clouds on top, all while white flurries were occasionally coming down from the sky to really rub this in.
To make things even darker in this midst of cold weather, the first destination on our trip was Auschwitz, the old concentration camp.
Our male tourguide spoke very slowly with a thick accent, and told us of treacherous death facts and statistics while showing us off to these awful cellar areas where humans were crammed in like mistreated cattle. He also showed us a room completely full of cut-off human hair displayed behind glass. As we were shivering in our thick coats and lined boots and knit hats and mittens and Turkish scarves, we were shown to the clothes of these prisoners, which consisted of flat wooden clogs and shoddy pajamas full of holes. A lot can be said about this, but I will just describe it as creepy, and even though I was amongst some of my closet friends, no one talked or made eye contact with one another. We all just stared at the ground and observed the footsteps making grey patterns in the white snow.
Out of this strange universe, we were driven to Krakow. A female guide showed us to the old Jewish neighborhood, which was somewhat sad that there were no Jews living there any more, but not quite as sad as our previous spot. The buildings were all toned in shades of grey, whether a bit brown or green, and the old menorahs and stars of David were now blanketed in snow that would gradually drop off and be replaced with more snow.
We were shown to the Royal Castle on Wawel Hill, where we got to look down upon the rest of the city and see the precipitation being residually placed on all of the rooftops.
Further down the walk, we bundled up more and more, buttoned the topmost buttons on our inner and outer layers, and were led to Jag University, one of the oldest schools in Europe, and then to many many sites of churches, seeing pictures and statues of the pope and Jesus all over the place, standing strong in a static state against the elements.
I was the most excited to head to the shopping square in Old Town, where I was finally able to buy some thick, itchy wool socks that could hike up to my knees, as my feet were frozen solid. I would also think about some of my imagined ancestors in this land I actually liked in a weird way.