Day Seventy-six, in Which Kraków Abides

This past weekend, I embarked on a journey both dense and expansive enough that it would be a criminal omission to not render it here. It could be passably described as 44 interlocking hours of ecstasies and miseries.

Thursday, 8 a.m. -- Wake blearily. Attend Czech.

Thursday, noon -- Better-than-expected lunch of tuna salad and milk. Study theories of totalitarianism.

Thursday, 5 p.m. -- The battle of the totalitarianism midterm is joined. Rivulets of ink spilled instead of blood.

Thursday, shortly before midnight -- Across Prague. Board a bus bound for Kraków.

Friday, 12 to 6 a.m. -- Bus ride:


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Friday, 8 a.m. -- Auschwitz, camp I. Imbued with a dense sort of terror. Buttoned-up horror.



Friday, 10 a.m. -- Auschwitz-Birkenau, camp II. A sprawling, fathomless abomination.




Friday, 2 p.m. -- A tour of Kraków's undersized but teeming city center. Saw Oskar Schindler's factory. Took forgettable pictures.


Friday, 8 p.m. -- Dinner and nightlife commence. 170,000 of Kraków's 750,000 inhabitants are students. Revelry here glistens with a youthful sheen and is well above average for Eastern Europe. The language, when spoken, is similar to Czech. Though far from intelligible, it occasionally lent itself to comprehension.


Saturday, early morning -- My 44-hour day ends as it began: blearily.

Sorry this is a touch terse, but I'm moderately compressed by time (orlackthereof).

I am also without the descriptive power to do Auschwitz justice, or even cast the faintest shadow of a meaningful description here.