POLAND
Everything you need to know before visiting Auschwitz
t feels weird to say a destination like this is in your bucket list, because we often associate our bucket list with cheerful, happy places. Let’s say, then, that visiting Auschwitz was always in my goals. The site of the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp is something everyone must visit at least once.
No matter how much you think you’re prepared, mentally and emotionally, you are not
We joined a guided tour to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau (with transportation from Krakow for €32 per person) but you can also reach it by train and bus. Trains depart from Krakow Glowny (Krakow Main Station) to Oswiecim, the nearest town to Auschwitz and the journey takes around 1 hour and 30 minutes. From there on, it’s a short taxi ride to reach the camps. Alternatively, buses run from Krakow’s main bus station, MDA, to Oswiecim and, again, you will need a taxi from there. You can enter without a guide, but I strongly suggest you have one.
Even if you haven’t pre-booked a guided tour, you can pre-book a guide by visiting visit.auschwitz.org.
Now, let me honest with you. No matter how much you think you’re prepared, mentally and emotionally, you are not. In reality, nothing can prepare you for the gut-wrenching experience you’re about to live. The camps are enormous, especially Birkenau and walking on those grounds, seeing everything they saw, their belongings, the chambers and their pictures on the walls, it’s something that cannot be described properly with words. And it all starts at those gates, where more than 1 million people walked through, not knowing that 85% of them would soon vanish.
