Wednesday was the only real "planned" day of our stay. I'd found an all-day outing that included Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mines (pronounced "vi LLIJ kah" — for heaven’s sake don’t call them the Krakow Salt Mines!!!). We were scheduled to be picked up at 8:45, and would be gone approx 11 hours. It was a grey, rainy, miserable day, as would befit a trip to Auschwitz.
Our driver Filip arrived early, and since Barb and I were the first pickup we took the best seats. Two blocks away was the next pickup, a Brexiter my age, and his college student daughter Charlie. Then we headed to the Old Town to pick up a Polish-heritage mother-father-daughter from Chicago. And we hit the road.
1.25 hours by car, Filip had plenty of time to give us his thoughts on the atrocities we were going to visit, anecdotes from previous guests ("Did these things really happen?"), and ask us lots of questions about the US.
An interesting and serious guy, 24-years-old, he teaches guitar, plays guitar in two blues bands, raced cars for a while, spent some time as a competitive ballroom dancer (tango is his least favorite), and is studying to guide tours at Auschwitz beginning next year.
He told us a story (which I'd heard before from another teacher) about how a German newspaper doing an historical piece used in the headline "Polish concentration camps". Polish concentration camps? Polish? It caused quite an uproar, almost an "international incident" between two counties which have uneasily chilly relations to begin with... And as a result legislation has been enacted in Poland to codify how these camps should be referred to.