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Krakow/ Auschwitz
Hi
I will be returning to Krakow next week after initially visitng in summer. I plan to revisit Auschwitz & Birkenau - this time without a guide and I have a couple of questions;
1. Would you advise getting the bus or train from Krakow to Auschwitz?
2. If you catch the bus, where from/ to? I am familiar with the location of the train station and I am assuming that you catch the train to Oświęcim.
3. Will I need to catch a taxi from the train station/ bus stop in Oświęcim to Auschwitz?
4. I am aware that there are shuttle buses between the two camps, where are these located?
Also, has anybody been to the Krakow-Plaszow camp? is this worth visiting and if it is how do you get there?
Thanks
I will be returning to Krakow next week after initially visitng in summer. I plan to revisit Auschwitz & Birkenau - this time without a guide and I have a couple of questions;
1. Would you advise getting the bus or train from Krakow to Auschwitz?
2. If you catch the bus, where from/ to? I am familiar with the location of the train station and I am assuming that you catch the train to Oświęcim.
3. Will I need to catch a taxi from the train station/ bus stop in Oświęcim to Auschwitz?
4. I am aware that there are shuttle buses between the two camps, where are these located?
Also, has anybody been to the Krakow-Plaszow camp? is this worth visiting and if it is how do you get there?
Thanks
0
Comments
The shuttle bus goes from Auschwitz main camp to Birkenau and back.
I visited Plaszow this year. Afraid there isn't an awful lot to see apart from a large memorial though the grounds are quite large. Plaszow is a suburb of Krakow and quite near the city centre itself. The house where Amon Goth the Camp Commandant lived is still standing (it's been up for sale for years).
I'm assuming you are not with a vehicle and using public transport so the easiest way for you to get to Plaszow would be by taxi or bus from Krakow. It's only a few miles from the city centre. I do have the gps co-ords for it but don't think they will be of any use to you?
2. The bus leaves from the main train station.
3. The bus stop is outside the visitor centre. Note that it's not the last stop, though I think it's obvious when you get there. However, I've read reports that buses back get very crowded in the afternoon.
You'd need a taxi from the train station.
4. There's a large carpark outside the visitor centre, and the shuttle bus leaves from there. The same at Birkenau, though that's spread out, and I don't know where the stop actually is.
How long does the bus take?
total price. £500 plus he paid for all entry, he took us to the salt mines on seperate day as well, he was wonderful.
I know this has nothing to do with your question but i would highly recommend anyone going to book a guide.
That's generous of him to pay your entrance fee!! Also guides are inclusive with the entrance fee anyway so he wasn't getting you some kind of VIP treatment!!
FWIW my personal opinion is Auschwitz is not really the best choice for anyone wanting to visit a Concentration Camp. I found it far too commercialised with coach tours pulling into the car park. Everybody goes to Auschwitz and some people amazingly even miss Birkenau which was the purpose built extermination camp (Auschwitz was a labour camp). The main entrance into Birkenau is what most people will be familiar with....they won't recognise anything in Auschwitz.
Majdanek near Lublin in Poland is one of the best preserved Camps. It's huge, yet when I visited last year there were little more than a dozen cars on the car park.....and that was peak season during the summer!
About an hour and a quarter, I believe. The best place for info is the Krakow Forum on Trip Advisor. These questions crop up about once a week, so just go down the list of questions. And most of the people who answer know a lot more than I do. Which isn't difficult.
There's no entrance fee for either Auschwitz or Birkenau. If you visit in the summer, and arrive after 10am,, then you must join a guided tour. In the winter, you don't have to.
If it were your first visit, I'd suggest going on a guided tour. Transport, transfer and guide for about £20.
My advice is get there early before the school parties and coach trips arrive
I'd disagree that people wouldn't recognise anything in Auschwitz. The "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign is pretty infamous. I do agree that the better experience is at Birkenau though as it gives you a greater sense of the suffering that the persecuted went through due to the scale of the site. I can't imagine why you would want to miss out on this as a regular, free shuttle bus will ferry you between the two sites from right outside the Auschwitz visitor centre.
To the person that recommended a £500 visit, that is more than my whole trip cost and is a ridiculous amount to pay when, without a whole lot of effort, you can make your own way there via public transport. It's amazing how scared some people are of doing things for themselves that they'll pay that kind of money for something so simple.
Mr_X, just follow jsmith99's advice and also use the TripAdvisor forums as every question you can think of has already been asked in there for a popular destination such as Krakow.
Buchenwald is big and I visited there during peak season in summer and there were only half a dozen other folk there.
No idea how much time you have got in Poland, but it would be well worth looking at visiting Majdanek Concentration Camp which is near to Lublin. Also Sobibor (Extermination) is not so far off here either.