The past two days we have been in the city of Krakow. Personally, Krakow is a lot more interesting, mainly because of the architecture and the atmosphere. Yesterday, we spent a few hours walking around the Jewish Quarter of Krakow and looking at how the Jews lived before the war. Most of the buildings are older, unlike in Warsaw where most of the city had to be rebuilt after it was destroyed during the war. The contrast between the two cities is interesting because Krakow was mostly not destroyed and therefore looks very different from Warsaw.
For me, never having been to Europe before, Krakow was interesting because I actually felt like I was in another country, where as in Warsaw, it felt like it could have been another American city--besides everything being written in Polish.

We had a few hours to walk around on our own in a section of Krakow yesterday. There was a market there and a lot of little shops. It was a beautiful day, and there were tons of pigeons walking/flying around in the square! It was interesting to walk around and look at the different shops and actually use the Polish currency we converted. The zloty is worth only about 33 cents in America, so all the prices were a lot higher than we are used to seeing in America, so we had to keep in mind that it was different, and we were constantly figuring out how much American money it actually cost.

We went to an Orthodox synagogue for Friday night services which was interesting because I have only ever been in one Orthodox temple before. This synagogue was architecturally inspired by a lot of Christian churches and was very big with a lot of details in the woodworks. After that we went to dinner and then back to the hotel for the night.

Today we got to walk around the part of Krakow that was the ghetto during the war. We then had free time before going for a walk along the river. We had a chance to talk to two Polish girls. One of them had lived in Israel for 9 years, and they are both living in Amsterdam now, but were in Poland for the summer. They had stories to share with us about their parents and grandparents who come from mixed families and the kinds of things they have experienced and what it is like to live in Krakow and go to school here. It is always interesting to hear things from multiple perspectives and not assume that something is one way just because you hear it from one person, because there are always more sides of the story.

We have had a couple of lighter days, but we are preparing to go the Auschwitz tomorrow. It is impossible to explain everything that goes on in a single day at one time because we are constantly seeing new things, but we are all doing our best to take in everything, take tons of pictures and remember as much as we can in order to get the most out of our experience and share what we have learned from others.

(Nahoma Presberg)