My trip to Poland and Germany.

We started our trip on Friday, September 12. We went by bus from Ørsta to Oslo, at night.
At the bus station,Galleriet, in Oslo we had to wait for our " Travel for peace bus." When the bus finally came, I think everyone thought it was a joke or something, the bus was worse than our school bus .

From Oslo we drove to Nesodden, where the students and parents from Tangenåsen school were to joinb us. They were very nice, and fun to chat with. When we left Nesodden we drove through Sweden to a place called Karlskrona. There we were to take boat to Poland. The boat was really big, and me, Venke, Karoline and Monica shared a cabin. Outside our door stood a scary security guard who talked in walkie talkie.

When we came to Gdynia in Poland we stood in a queue, which seemed to never end, to show our passports. Then we sat in the bus for several hours. That wasn't too bad, we had lots of candy, discman and friends we could talk to.

After a while we stopped in a town called Torun, a really pretty town. We walked in the streets. Unfortunately, I had almost no money, so I couldn't buy anything. We ate at a restaurant called "Sphinx". The food there was really good, too bad it was some beef thing. Me and Karoline had fun walking in the streets pretending to be a couple, just to see peoples' reaction (we do this all the time just for fun).

After our short stay in Torun we drove to a hotel, called Trojak, on the outskirts of Cracow. We had a very nice room, tough the bathroom was so cold I almost froze to death in the shower next morning.

Next day we went to Auschwitz, the sun shone.It was unbelievably hot in the bus, and in the camp.My first impression was that Auschwitz was actually a really nice place, and well built. I had thought it was an ugly, dirty place, but in fact it looked like one of those blocks my aunt lives in in Oslo. But that was outdoors, indoors they have made a museum.There were many exhibition halls and in the basement some original cells.We had a guide, a woman, I can't remember her name, who guided us around in Auschwitz. We saw the gas-chambers,display cases with lots of hair and personal belongings to the Jews . We also saw the crematory and corridors full of pictures of the prisoners. In front of the Execution Wall Karoline and Torstein read a poem and we had one minute of silence as a mark of respect to the victims.

When we had seen all to be seen in Auschwitz, we went to a much bigger concentration camp, Birkenau/Auschwitz 2. It was gigantic. I couldn't see the end of it when I stood at the entry gate. We went around in there for a long time,there was a lot to see. We had the same guide as earlier.

The day after we went to Cracow. At first we walked to the Wawel Castle, (which rises in the centre of the city). It was a beautiful castle. Morten, our guide, told us the legend about the dragon, which ate people at the castle. That was cool, I love dragons, and I really liked that legend.

After we had admired the castle we walked in the streets. There were many cool shops, and it was really cheap. We were also in St Mary's Church, and that was amazing. It was the most beautiful church I' ve ever seen.Too bad we couldn't take pictures, but it was more beautiful seeing it in real, than seeing pictures or cards of it.In fact I liked the skull things and the ceiling best. The skull thing looked like a black and gold altar with white skulls on, it looked gothic in away. We left St Mary's Church and spent more money.

I think the most interesting thing we did on our tour was visiting the Salt Mines(Auschwitz and Birkenau was a bit interesting too). We were divided into two groups and we walked for ages down a staircase before we were down in the mines. It was pretty cold and dark there. We had a female guide who showed us all the famous sights in the mines. I really liked the sculptures of salt, especially the one of the dwarves. Down in St Kinga's Chapel, a man, who was crazy after blond girls, took a group picture of us. We didn't have to walk the entire staircase when we should get out of the mines, instead we were squeezed into a dark elevator, which was funny.

Next day we came to Berlin at 2.30. We ate at Hard Rock Cafe, the food there wasn't especially good, but it was a really nice place. They played music videos on TV screens there, the best they played was Metallica and Nirvana.
I didn't like Berlin much, it was ugly and the streets smelled sewer, but the graffiti there was really good.

We vsited " Haus am Checkpoint Charlie", there we saw methods used for escaping over the Berlin Wall. That was very boring! We were told to walk into a room overfilled with old boring newspapers, and I had no idea which newspaper I ought to read first. Actually, I didn't read a single "newspaper" there.

But a long time ago I watched a program on Discovery.From the TV program I remember there was a man who cut the top off his car and drove under the bar, he took his girlfriend with him,too. There were two or three men who did the same thing, but then the guards lowered the bar, so no one could drive under it.

Next morning we went to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Most of the Norwegian prisoners were sent to this camp. The camp had a prison, and a place where they punished people by hanging them from their hands which they had on their back; they hang there until their sinews tore apart. We also visted a place where doctors did medical things to the prisoners.

After visiting Sachsenhausen, we went to the women camp Ravensbrück. I walked around with Venke, we were in the museum looking. We didn't walk around with the whole group, because I was so tired of walking around in concentration camps.

After the visit in Ravensbrück, we startded our journey homewards. I was extremely pissed off on the stupid boat which had no wall socket so I couldn't load my mini disc, and that meant that the next day would be unbelievably boring without HIM or Metallica to listen to.