The Road to Katowice

I have too much to explain about this weekend to worry about conventions, so would you mind a bulleted list?

• There wasn't room for Aydan on the trip to Slovakia, so she ended up coming to Krakow as well. Since there were two of us, we decided to hitchhike. We consulted our friend Antonio, who has hithchiked all over Europe, and Friday morning we caught a city bus to the edge of town.
• We stood next to a gas station and held up our little sign and stuck out our little thumbs and in less than 10 minutes, a guy picked us up. He didn't speak English and took us only about 60 kilometers before he had to turn off the highway. So again, we stood by the on-ramp and smiled and another guy picked us up. He lived in the suburbs of Krakow but drove us right to the city center.
• We had no idea where we would sleep or what we would do in Krakow, but we did know that there was a CouchSurfing meetup on Friday night. We arrived at 6:30 and all we knew was that we had to met a girl in a red skirt next to a statue of a dragon.
  
• While waiting for the girl in the red skirt, I got a phone call from a one Benjamin Stoler who reminded me that he was also in Krakow. He offered his hotel room for the night, but first, Aydan and I wanted to go to the CouchSurfing party.
• We met Kasia, the girl in the red skirt, and she took us to this campfire party where we met Carlos from Chile, Christian from France, and lots of Polish kids. Including Ania who owned a hostel and offered us a free place to stay on Saturday night.
• Around 11 we ran to meet Ben in the Jewish old-town. We cabbed back to his hotel, picking up some wine on the way. At his hotel, we had to find somebody to uncork the wine. We stumbled upon a Croatian high-school field trip and made friends.
• Free breakfast at the hotel the next morning before Ben's group left.
• Aydan and I went to explore the main market square before heading to Ania's hostel.
• Ania appologized that she didn't have any free beds, only a "chill out" room that didn't have electricity. So we had a free night's stay in an awesome bedoin-style room that was way better than any of the hostel's dorm rooms.
• After dropping our stuff at the hostel, Aydan and I went to the bus station to get a 7 zloty shuttle to Auchwitz (as opposed to the 80 zl tours they offered from the main square). Aydan and I seperated at Auchwitz, I think it was better for me to see it alone. I don't know what I can write here about it, I think it deserves more than a point on a bulleted list. Maybe later.
  
• After we returned to Krakow, we rested at the hostel before going back to Kasmiersz, the Jewish old-town. Apparantly Krakow was in the middle of a a Jewish music festival and we stumbled upon a raging Klezmer concert. Yes, raging. We danced with some old women and Jewish youth groups.
• On Sunday morning, Aydan wanted to see this hill that had a good view of the city. I wasn't totally enthused and we ended up walking about 3km uphill to get to the top. We were exhausted afterwards and went back to the hostel to get our stuff and leave.
• It took us about two hours to get out of Krakow because we got on the wrong bus. It was completely my fault. We were lost and frusterated and tired and hungry, but we finally got to the highway around seven. Three cars and three hours later, our last ride dropped us off right in front of our dorm. As soon as he drove away, we high-fived like nobody's business.

I am still completely high from this trip. There are a million things I could write about now, like Auchwitz, or how I only spent about $30 on the whole trip, or about the gendered implications of two girls hitchhiking, or about the cosmic alignment that helped us at every juncture of this endeavor, or about Polish hospitality. Mostly, though, I just want to say that after this weekend, I feel like I can do anything. I'm still completely amazed that we survived, and not only survived, but had an awesome time.

When we were asking Ania, the girl who owns the hostel, about the best way to get to Auchwitz, she told us that the 80-zloty tours we saw advertised were the tourist price, not the traveler's price. So there's a difference between tourist and traveler. I'm not ready to completely abandon my middle-class life, but it's nice to know that I have what it takes to be a traveler, if only for a weekend.