A traveller's report from the trip to Poland

We left at 9.00 p.m from our homes full of expectations. It was cloudy and dark, but it looked like it was going to be a moonlit night. On the bus to Oslo we slept the whole night. The next morning we left Oslo and drove to Tangenåsen school to pick up the rest of the group. Late in the evening we arrived Karlskrona, where the ferrytrip started. The bus was very little, almost no space for our feet, and very bad air condition.Our ordinary school bus is actually better than the bus we went by.

Next day we went by bus for many hours, we just made some short stops for eating dinner etc. We spent the night at a hotel just outside Cracow. The day after we went to Auschwitz and Birkenau. There we saw a lot of things e.g. all the suitcases, lots of hair and glasses that the Germans had taken away from the Jews before they were killed. We also visited some gas chambers, or ruins of the gaschambers, because most of them were bombed and destroyed towards the end of the war. In fact the visit in the camp didn`t make any impression on me while I was there, but I know that very many horrible things happened there. And I know that lots of people have been tortured there.

The third day on the trip we were in Cracow. In the old city centre there was a very big marketplace and lots of small stores. The first thing I noticed when we came to Poland and to Cracow was that you almost never saw any garbage. And the grass was always cut. The food wasn't that good, it tasted different, but we ate at Mc Donald's many times. .

We (Andreas, Daniel and Håkon) found a very good shop with lots of PC games/software and other stuff. I bought a pc magazine. We also found an Internet café where we stayed for half an hour. But at 8 o'clock we went to eat at a restaurant. After the dinner we were entertained by a group of Polish folk dancers. Luckily I didn't have to dance. The dance performance lasted for 45 minutes. I thought it would last longer.

Next day we went to the Salt Mines. At first we had to walk 377 steps down. That went fast. The Salt Mines had some real big chambers. I had never thought the chambers would be so big and high. It was an incredible sight. The total numbers of steps that we walked down was about 1000, but we used an elevator to reach the surface again.

The fifth day on the trip we were in Berlin, there we first ate at Hard Rock Café. After we had eaten, we could go on our own for a while, in other words in groups of three persons.We were at Ka De We almost the whole time. Ka De We is a big shopping center. It was so big that I and Daniel almost got lost in there. Anyway, we saw lots of pc magazines and pc equipment. In one department we discovered an extremely big stereo set. It cost around 1 million NOK. I regretted that I didn't take a picture of the stereo. It looked real cool ,too. Back in the bus again, we drove to Checkpoint Charlie. There we learnt about lots of escape tricks that they used trying to flee over the Berlin Wall.

The next day we began to drive northwards again, but first we visited Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrûck. Sachsenhausen was used as a labour camp under the war. At first, I thought it was a torture camp. In the camp they had lots of torture methods. Ravensbrück was a camp especially made for women. The female prisoners came from 23 different nations.During the war, 102 women from Norway were sent to the camp. I thought it was horrible to hear that babies, born in the camp, were sent to the gas chambers, too.

Later in the afternoon we stopped at a market, it was better spending some hours there instead of waiting at the ferry terminal. At 9 o'clock we could enter the boat.

The day after we drove to Oslo, we stopped at Tangenåsen school. There we said good bye to our new friends. When we came to Oslo we had to wait 3 to 4 hours., so most of us went to Peppes Pizza. At 10:15 we left Oslo. The next morning we were home.

The concentration camp Birkenau was huge.

St. Mary's Church.

East Side Gallary. The Berlin Wall.