Train car entrance at Auschwitz-Berkenau

New Jewish cemetery near Jewish quarter - Krakow

Me in "Hero's Square" - Budapest

trying to open the secret door - Budapest

The Fishermen's Bastion - Budapest

a new me

*ahem* This is Stephanie, the no-longer-a-Peace-Corps-Volunteer but instead a back-packer-through-Europe, just updating this lil ole blog of mine. Yep, I left Bulgaria 5 days ago and am now off on my great adventure! Okay, it's not huge as I'm only traveling for 2 1/2 weeks..but it's still pretty big to me. Instead of heading straight back to the states I decided to take a little detour by way of Hungary, Poland, Ireland, and even North Carolina. But no worries, I'll make it home eventually.

I have to say that it was weird leaving Bulgaria last Monday. I was sitting at the airport thinking "wow, this could be the last time that I'm in BG." Odd to leave a place that I started to consider my second home. It's going to take a while to get used to being gone. I've still got a lot of Bulgarian in me, but it's only been 5 days so I think I'm allowed to still have pieces of Bulgaria...like still nodding and shaking my head in the wrong direction and Bulgarian words popping out of my mouth. I'm sure that stuff will disappear once I'm back in the states and with my family again.

So, already in my travels I've been to Budapest, Hungary, and currently in Krakow, Poland. Budapest was pretty - a big and bustling city with tons to see! But where Budapest was extravagant Krakow is quaint...and I love that! This city is absolutely adorable. So cute. I did go to Auschwitz today and that was not cute. It was heart-wrenching. The compounds - 3 camps: Auschwitz I, II, and II, were unbelievable in size. I don't even know how to put into writing what I felt in being there...in seeing the piles of children's clothes and shoes, the room filled with combs and hair-brushes, the underground cells, the horse-stalls turned barracks for all of the prisoners, the photos of all prisoners who entered the camps between 1940 and 1943, and the unloading docks where all people who were shipped in by cattle cars were forced to leave all of their belongings before being sent to either a work camp or gas chamber. There just aren't words to describe the gut wrenching saddness of being in a place where 1.5 million people were murdered.