Dublin Excursion

Last weekend I went to Dublin with my group and the first thing we did when we got there was tour the Rotunda hospital, the oldest maternity hospital in Europe where about 10,000 babies are still born there each year. It related to our study abroad seminar class because in that class, we are learning about Ireland's healthcare system. We are looking at how healthcare has changed and developed throughout Ireland's history as well as comparing their system to ours at home in the US. 

Inside the chapel at Rotunda Hospital

After the tour we got to go shopping for the first time since we’ve been here! It was fun to hang out and shop in a bigger city. For supper we went to the Brazen Head, the oldest bar in Dublin. Kate and I shared our meals, she had beef Guinness stew and I had fish and chips, it was excellent.

That night, we went out in Dublin and four of us ended up at the crowded Temple Bar where there were a lot of people and live music! We went there almost every night of our trip and Friday night they had an amazing band. We also went to a pub called The Porterhouse where they have hundreds of beer from all around the world.

Christ Church Cathedral

Friday during the day we toured the city of Dublin with our Theology professor, Brother Colman. He showed us the remnants of the Viking city there and pointed out other landmarks. We went to Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells, which reminded me of the Saint John’s Bible. It is a handwritten book of the four gospels in Latin. We spent the entire day walking and were pretty tired by the end of the night but we got to see a lot of things relating to what we’ve been talking about in theology. We went to a museum where the have an exhibit on bog bodies. They are bodies that were thrown into bogs and well preserved because of the environment, some of them still had hair; it was a little creepy but probably the coolest thing at the museum as well.

Passage Tomb

The next day we went to Knowth, which is a huge megalithic passage tomb. There is one huge tomb in the middle and several satellite tombs around it. The tombs are older than the pyramids in Egypt and they are evidence that these people believed in an afterlife. It also showed that they had knowledge of the solar system and the sun because the two tombs face each other and have places above the doors where the sun shines in on the solstice and illuminates the tomb. The people buried there would have been important and it would have reminded those who saw if of their status as well as the fact that life will end and they too will die and go on to an afterlife.

View from the top of Knowth

Sunday was a lot of fun because we went horseback riding. My horse was named Jack and he was really cute! We rode for an hour and it was a great stress reliever and an enjoyable thing to do with our group.  

Jack and Me!

I liked Dublin a lot and there is so much to do there, I wouldn’t mind returning later this semester or later in life! Tomorrow I start my ten day break where I will be traveling to Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich and Salzburg!

Krakow, Poland - Auschwitz Tour

I had a free weekend with no planned excursions so nine of us went to Poland for the weekend. It seems funny to be able to jet off to a foreign country for three days but it is fairly easy to travel in Europe. We left on friday and returned on Sunday so we were really only there for one day. When we got to our hostel, we settled in and then walked down the street for some authentic Polish perogies. They were fabulous! After dinner we were pretty tired so we explored the city center a little but then headed back for bed.

The next morning we got up early to walk around the city and go to the Jewish Quarter where the ghettos holding the Jews were located during WWII, before the concentration camps in Poland were built. We through the city center where I saw some awesome architecture! There were gargoyles on the building in the center of the square that were really cool! Then we went to a castle built on top of the dragon's cave where the city of Krakow got its origin. The castle looked modern and it was the location of Nazi control when the took over Poland. We toured the dragon's cave and then headed toward the Jewish Quarter and then hurried back to our hostel to catch our bus to Auschwitz.

The drive was an hour and a half long and our driver spoke no English. All he did was tell us the amount we owed and smiled. This is the first time since I've been abroad that I've encountered a language barrier and it was difficult to communicate. We had a private tour with just the nine of us which was nice because we could hear our tour guide well. There were some huge groups and I had no idea how busy it was going to be there. We walked to the entrance to Auschwitz where a sign reads, "Aebrit Macht Frei" which means "work will set you free" the prisoners thought that they might be able to survive but in reality, their chances of coming out alive were very small. It is estimated that about 1 million people were killed concentration camps, most of them at Auschwitz II - Birkenau. We spent three hours at Auschwitz I which has been turned into a museum. Walking through the barracks was surreal, I've learned about the Holocaust my entire life but to be in the place where so many atrocities were committed was a weird feeling. It is one thing so say that one million people were killed but to see all of the shoes of those people was incredibly distrubing. The most difficult place to visit was Block 11 where they held and tortured prisoners. There were slim, tall standing cells where the forced four men to stand in all night and then go to work building the nearby Birkenau concentration camp. There were starvation cells where they kept prisoners that weren't allowed food and dark cells with no windows. I hated the feeling I got in the basement and I immediately wanted to leave. I could barely look into the cells because I was so disgusted with the things the SS men did to the prisoners down there.

Barracks (five women in each bunk)

After this, we went to Birkenau where the mass exterminations took place in gas chambers at the camp. We didn't stay there that long but our tour guide showed us the path the prisoners walked to be sorted into workers or to be sent to the gas chambers. We also saw the place where they stayed and the awful conditions they had to deal with. The gas chambers and crematoriums were blown up by the Nazi to hide evidence of what they did, they also destroyed hundreds of documents showing how many people died and were imprisoned there which is why the number of people who died in the Holocaust is only an estimate.

Overall, I am glad that I toured Auschwitz, it was an opportunity for me to learn and experience the tragedies that occurred there. I can't put into words how the experience made me feel but I believe it is important to be educated about the Holocaust and it is something I will never forget.