Auschwitz

After a slow amble across Europe, we are now in Krakow, which is cracking. The Polish roads have given Roxanne (the Land Rover) her first bit of rough, and she seems to like it. We’re less keen!

We spent most of yesterday at Auschwitz - it’s hard to say it was enjoyable, it was rather gruelling in fact, but certainly well worth the visit. It’s a very eerie feeling walking under the infamous ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign, and even the occasional coach-load of school kids (only over 15s allowed though - the first censored museum I’ve been to) can’t detract from the haunting knowledge of what happened there. The Birkenau camp, the epicentre for the Holocaust, is a vast place and at every turn the sheer scale of things beggars belief.

From here we get a brief reprise on the sites of mass-killing (next up Stalingrad) with the small matter of Ukraine to tackle - check your atlas, I guarantee it’s bigger than you think! It also provides us with our first border crossing, so fingers crossed for that!