Belgium och Krakow

Quick summary of Belgium: went to visit a coworker from a few summers back, Mira, who lives in a little town St-Katelijne-Waver near Mechelen, which is basically between Antwerp and Brussels. She took me sightseeing around her favourite places, including an outlet mall ( yess ), had me try some Kriek 'beer',  took a wrong turn and took me to the Netherlands (for about two minutes), went to a museum on genever (basically gin), through Brussels (we even saw a famous Belgian minister of something or other), and to Gent, where my downstairs neighbour in Uppsala is from. She showed us both around and took us out for some real flemish pancaks (picture De Dutch, but actually Dutch). The best part of Ghent was seeing the castle. I saw it in the distance and freaked, because it looked EXACTLY like every toy castle I have seen, just how I always thought a castle should look. Gravesteen. Turrets and towers and slits for archers... right on the water, flags and everything.

Next day, I met Michela in Krakow. I had spent a few minutes on Google Translate trying to figure out basics like "thank you" in Polish... but considering it's spelled "dziękuję" and pronounced something in the neighbourhood of "deen koo yong" I gave up very quickly. I am convinced we picked the best hostel out there... I arrived to a big pot of (free&delicious) kielbasa and egg soup. The next night they had a 'Polish vodka tasting' (tried cherry vodka and something oddly white...) and the last night was movie and popcorn night. The whole stay only cost about $30 too. We discovered you could get a nice restaurant meal (pierogies... REAL ONES!) for about $3.50... the same thing in Sweden would likely cost you around $13.50... even the entry and a four hour long guided tour to the country's most famous museum, Auschwitz-Birkenau, only cost $8.75. I'm sure you can tell, one of the most exciting things about Poland was how cheap everything was.


Auschwitz-Birkenau was an experience. I heard many people say it wasn't as emotionally overwhelming as they expected it to be. I think because our guide was quite matter of fact, these are the barracks, this was a gas chamber, these roads are made of the cremated remains of the victims and the rest were shipped to local factories... She told us the victims were told they were going to the showers for 'sanitary reasons'. They hung up their clothes in the 'dressing room', were given towels and soap, and were locked in a freshly painted white room complete with fake faucets. Then a container of Cyclon B was dropped through a hole in the ceiling. 
The prisoners living in the work camps didn't get soap or towels...
It was quite surreal, almost to the point of emotional detachment. Until we saw to the pile of empty Cyclon B canisters, the enormous stack of shoes, the piles of women's braids chopped off after death and shipped to factories making felt, and finally the hallway full of mugshots, each featuring name, date of arrival, and date of death. I will never ever forget that hallway. The single most overwhelming thing I have seen in my entire life. And it probably only contained a thousand or so photos.

I've captioned the rest of the photos, but we didn't do much else other than check out old castles and churches, and go shopping.

Well, now most of my exchange student friends have gone back to their respective countries. Time to make some new friends and figure out my new classes... and figure out who taught Swedes to say  "quite much" !! I heard that phrase six or seven times today....
Anyway, here are the photos from my recent trips.
Belgium
Krakow

Yep, I'm still alive!

Just a quick update so you know I'm alive! Had a really great time in Belgium with Mira and her (non-english-speaking) dad, and even got to see one of my classmates' hometown, Gent. Saw Hasselt, Massmechelen, Mechelen, Brussels, Liers... crazy stormy weather at night but it was always sunny in the afternoons :)
Now I'm in Krakow, had an excellent tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau today, really freaky... tomorrow I'll go do some extra cheap shopping (Krakow is so cheap!!!) and check out the university where Copernicus worked... and the oldest shopping mall in the world (1555!) Very excited. I won't put up photos til I get home because I'm using the hostel's computer.
Hope everyone is well at home! I will be back in Uppsala on Jan 11 then madly writing up my final project.
Tata~!