I arrived in Munich around 11pm last night. Nathan, who had been traveling on his own for the past week or so, had arrived a bit earlier and was waiting for me at the Hauptbahnhof. It was storming like crazy, so I was pretty happy we had booked a hostel just a block away from the train station. We're staying at Jaegers, which is a fairly neat and clean hostel, but definitely my first "party hostel" that has a bar. I haven't been getting much sleep l...

Breakfast at the hotel was just as amazing today as it was our first day here. Actually, it might have tasted even better just by comparison! =] During our tour this morning we walked through the main sites of the Krakow Old Town. We met Maciek in the City Square, and from there we walked to Collegium Maius, the oldest part of the university in Krakow (which is where Maciek went to school). Then we walked to the Wawel Royal Castle, which was quite impressive....

I was so thrilled to be back in Krakow! But also bummed that this was our last full day in Poland. We began our day in Krakow with a tour of Kazimierz, a historical district of Krakow that was home to the Jewish community from the 14th century until World War II. This is where Steven Spielberg shot the film Schindler's List, although the actual Jewish Ghetto in Krakow was located in a different place. Maciek also took us to a courtyard where one of the better-...

We were discussing the difficulty of rolling a German "r" when the gates to Auschwitz II-Birkenau came into view. I couldn't tell you if my heart skipped a beat or if it started racing, but everyone in the van went silent upon seeing the railroad tracks leading to the gates. Even though "Arbeit Macht Frei" is the infamous sign for Auschwitz, Auschwitz II-Birkenau is what most people think of when they think of Auschwitz. It was here that se...

This is going to be a tough blog to write.I woke up this morning around 6 in order to have time for a run, shower, and breakfast before we departed for the town of Oświęcim and Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Don't worry—I had learned from my mistake running without a map in Jena, and brought a map with me this morning. The map actually turned out to be a really great idea because the route I had kind of planned out in my head didn't really work out the way I...