Krakow... the beginning few days

So far, Krakow has been good fun. I spent a couple days with my friend Romek, who drove us to different sites around Krakow, including a famous salt mine, and beautiful forest areas (will post pictures with the names of the places later... can't really pronounce them to try to spell them, so best to wait and get it right...).

Now that Romek's gone off to his home town for work (about 2 hours away from Krakow), I'm exploring around by myself.

I met two really nice girls (Cindy and Sarah) the day Romek and I arrived at the hostel and the four of us went and had a drink together and shared some laughs. Today (Monday), Cindy and I went to Auschwitz (a concentration camp in Poland) and Birkenau (an extermination camp). It was quite sad to see the museums there, and also to walk through the areas where millions of innocent people walked through at one point. Lots of thoughts went through my mind while walking around... I'd only ever seen reinactments of concentration camps in movies, but being in the camp for real was...well, there's not really words for it... but realizing how real it was and that it really did happen on the ground I walked on, was eye-opening...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

On a lighter note, the hostel is great, and is in the center of the main plaza (it also includes breakfast!) Although, last night was a bit annoying. There's a crowd of people from Spain, and last night, they were extremely loud. The room I'm staying in happens to be right next to the common room / kitchen, and the Spanish people decided to drink last night. Not that I have a problem with people who make some noise and all, but they were doing so until 5:30 in the morning, turning on the lights in the bedroom, talking at the top of their lungs, banging around, etc! On top of that, at 2:45, I heard a girl moaning in the bunkbed nearby...a guy and a girl decided to have sex right there in the dormitory! Sigh... Needless to say, I didn't have such a great sleep last night, and I really hope that I will tonight...