Visiting Auschwitz

As you know, the famous concentration camp, Auschwitz, is located very near to Krakow. It is around 66 kilometres away, in a small village called Oswiecim - Oswiecim is the Polish name for Auschwitz, which is the German name. There are two camps here, Auschwitz and Birkenau, there are both in the same village, but about 3 kilometres apart from one another. There are two options when visiting the concentration camp:

The first of these is to follow a guided tour from Krakow, starting at one of the tourist agencies that are set up around the edges of the Central Plaza. They will bring you here, give you audio-guides, take you to another camp (usually) and finally bring you back to Krakow. The entire trip will cost you around 40€ per person.

The other option is to do it by yourself. This is a little bit more of a hassle, but it is quite a bit less expensive and it is not hard to do.

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The first thing to worry about is how to arrive at Oswiecim from Krakow. From the bus station, which is in front of the famous Galeria Krakowska, there are buses that leave every half an hour in the direction of Oswiecim (if you say Auschwitz they will still understand and give you the ticket). It will cost you about 3€, but you will need to be on time, as the buses are more like small trucks with not very many seats. If you have the ticket and you can see that there is nowhere for you to sit, they will tell you to either sit on the floor of the truck or tell you to walk. This is normal in Poland, it is your choice if you want to walk for an hour or so or whether you want to sit on the floor of a truck.

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Once you have arrived to the village, the bus will drop you at the entrance to the car park, so then you will simply have to go to the ticket office. Here, there are two things you need to keep in mind: if you want a tour with the audio-guide in your language you will need to pay 10€. From what I remember, the Spanish ones are only at 10am and 12pm, so you will have to wake up quite early to get them. If you want to enter on your own and simply read the information they provide, you can enter for free and go into all the different sections. The truth is that there is quite a lot of information written throughout the whole tour and you wont miss out if you decide to explore without the audio-guide.

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Once you have finished looking around Auschwitz, you will need to leave the car park and from there there is a free bus to Birkenau that runs every 15 minutes, more or less. As I said, this is in the same village, but it is a 3 or 4 kilometre walk in the cold Polish weather, so it might not be very inviting.

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Once there, as well there is free entry and you can go in each section and read all of the information there, with or without the audio-guide once again. When you are finished, return to the car park to get the return bus to Auschwitz and from there you'll have to get another for 3€ to get back to Krakow. The return buses usually leave every 30-40 minutes until 6pm.

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The length of the entire visit can be about 4 or 5 hours, and if you have walked, the time walking from Krakov and back will be around 8 hours, so make sure you leave a whole day for your trip. Another thing to remember, is that the walk there is more or less totally through mud, snow or water, and you will also be out in the open, so you will need to wear lots of layers, especially if its winter. The truth is that, if you are only spending a few days in Krakow, I sincerely recommend you don't go on this trip, since you are not going to see more than you would watching any documentary about the Second World War and, as I have already said, it takes a whole day to completely see the whole place.

Lastly, and most importantly, this is an extremely important historical landmark for millions of people and it deserves the utmost respect.

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