Krakow to Auschwitz: Guided Tour & Hotel Pickup, Small Group

4.77

(4664 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first thing I noticed was the hush — not silence exactly, but that kind of heavy quiet you get when everyone’s thinking the same thing. Our driver picked us up just after 8am in Krakow, right at the apartment door (I’d worried I’d miss them, but they texted the night before). The minivan was clean and cool; there were only six of us. Someone made a joke about Polish coffee being stronger than the Wi-Fi — it helped break the ice on the way out of town.

It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to reach Auschwitz from Krakow. I watched fields blur past while our guide, Ania, explained a little about Oświęcim’s history. She didn’t sugarcoat anything. When we arrived at the Memorial, she handed out headphones so we could hear her even when we drifted apart in those echoing corridors. The air smelled faintly metallic — old stone and rain — and there was this moment in one of the barracks where I just stopped listening for a second because of how cold it felt inside. Not temperature-cold, more like… memory-cold? Hard to explain.

Ania told stories that weren’t in any textbook I’d read back home. She pointed out names scratched into brickwork by prisoners; I saw one faded mark and wondered who they were. At Birkenau, it started drizzling a bit. No one talked much as we walked along the tracks. Someone behind me whispered something in German — maybe a prayer? It stuck with me all day.

Afterwards, our driver took us straight back to Krakow — no fussing with trains or buses. We dropped people off near Rynek Glowny and at their hotels; I just wanted to walk for a while when we got back. The tour itself is about seven hours start-to-finish but honestly it feels longer in your head. Still thinking about it now, actually.