Hi, guys! I hope you all enjoyed watching my insta stories and followed our small adventure in Poland. Last week, I decided to take a short trip to Poland. Not sure why. Maybe it was the idea of an easy direct flight. While I was living in Europe, I didn't have any interest in Eastern Europe. Most of the time I tried to see more of the West and South. Well, Poland should be on your must-see countries list. Even though I had a short stay there, I truly fell in love with Warsaw (despite negative comments that Warsaw is boring). Anyway, I am gonna share with you more about Warsaw in my next blog post. For now, I'm going to concentrate on the more somber travel destination of Treblinka.
For today's post, I want to share why Treblinka is worth a visit, and how you can you get there from Warsaw. You would ask why Treblinka, or what to do there? Well, Treblinka was an extermination camp in Poland, that was operated by Nazi Germany during World War II, where over 800000 of Jews and other people were killed. You may not know this, but my husband is a big student of history. It is why we couldn't miss our chance to take a trip to this place. When we arrived to Poland, we tried to find as much as information as possible for how can we can travel to Treblinka. I was able to find some information about how you can get there by train, bus, taxi or rental car.
We did plan to rent a car, but as we found out later, in order to be able to drive in Poland, you need an international permit. Unfortunately, we didn't have one! Well, our second thought was to take a taxi, but calculating how much it would cost us, we decided that it might be a bad idea. To find a bus or train was the cheapest way to go. After doing some research on the Internet, I found out that you can take a train from Central Station that goes to one of the villages, from which you take a cab to the site. Since we were lacking in Polish language ability, it was a bit hard for us to understand if this was a good idea. But a few nice ladies (complete strangers who saw us being lost) explained how to take the metro to get to Central Station, where later we were able to buy tickets for the train to Malkinia. The train ride was super smooth. The clean bathroom, seats and free Internet made our trip to Malkinia very pleasant. It took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
As soon we got off from the train, we got a cab who said that he knows where to drive. Luckily, he was able to speak a bit of Russian, and explained that we will spend more than 2 hours there, and he would come back to pick us up. We were skeptical it would take that long, but he was spot on. After arriving to the extermination camp, we bought tickets to enter and started to walk around according to map. I don't know how to explain, but I think that every person should visit the Treblinka Memorial to pay respect to these victims. The place is very quiet, yet emotional and powerful. The only sound was the wind rustling through tall grass and trees. If you have been in Auschwitz, you will see a big difference in this place. It's hard to imagine the atrocities that happened here, when everything is so peaceful and beautiful. Make sure to bring some water, bug spray, and very comfortable shoes, because the walk in the forest will be quite tough if you are not a good walker.
We did plan to rent a car, but as we found out later, in order to be able to drive in Poland, you need an international permit. Unfortunately, we didn't have one! Well, our second thought was to take a taxi, but calculating how much it would cost us, we decided that it might be a bad idea. To find a bus or train was the cheapest way to go. After doing some research on the Internet, I found out that you can take a train from Central Station that goes to one of the villages, from which you take a cab to the site. Since we were lacking in Polish language ability, it was a bit hard for us to understand if this was a good idea. But a few nice ladies (complete strangers who saw us being lost) explained how to take the metro to get to Central Station, where later we were able to buy tickets for the train to Malkinia. The train ride was super smooth. The clean bathroom, seats and free Internet made our trip to Malkinia very pleasant. It took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
As soon we got off from the train, we got a cab who said that he knows where to drive. Luckily, he was able to speak a bit of Russian, and explained that we will spend more than 2 hours there, and he would come back to pick us up. We were skeptical it would take that long, but he was spot on. After arriving to the extermination camp, we bought tickets to enter and started to walk around according to map. I don't know how to explain, but I think that every person should visit the Treblinka Memorial to pay respect to these victims. The place is very quiet, yet emotional and powerful. The only sound was the wind rustling through tall grass and trees. If you have been in Auschwitz, you will see a big difference in this place. It's hard to imagine the atrocities that happened here, when everything is so peaceful and beautiful. Make sure to bring some water, bug spray, and very comfortable shoes, because the walk in the forest will be quite tough if you are not a good walker.
Comments
Post a Comment