Krakow to Auschwitz I

After a long hard ride from Lublin some 340kms we arrived in the Old Town section of Krakow. Krakow is literally less than 100 kms from the Slovakian border.
We had heavy rain and cold conditions within an hour of leaving Lublin despite leaving in sunny, warm and dry weather that we had experienced in Majdanek.
That's what happens as you are covering longer distances quickly. You either leave the bad conditions behind you or you catch up to the bad conditions from good weather early on. The latter was the case on this day.
When we arrived in the Old City section of Krakow late afternoon the weather was sunny and warm. Hotels were expensive and Sol went looking for something more reasonable than the large major hotels asking 500-700 Euro a night.
He walked the streets looking while I remained with the bikes. A boutique old place was full but directed him to a sister hotel a little further along. It was actually a beautiful old multi story building with modernised large rooms and great amenities.
The bikes had to remain in the street but the chains and covers went back into place to hopefully secure them for the evening.
We walked to the old commercial section which still had signs showing Jewish stores from the pre-war era. Of course there are no Jews left here, they were after all only 70kms from our destination the next day...Auschwitz (German name) or in Polish the town was know as Oswiecim.
My mother spoke of this town often when she refused to call it by its German name unless she referred to the hell camp in that town.
This video shows the final 10 minutes or so of our long 70km ride from Krakow the next morning to the edge of the Auschwitz I Death Camp.
Fortunately the day was magnificent. The cold winds of the previous day had morphed into a sunny even balmy day with temperatures in the 25-28 degrees C as the day progressed.
In the morning as we were preparing to ride out of Krakow a curious German tourist walked up to me and began blabbering in pig latin German. He was interested in the bikes and our port of origin.
Of all the days for me to hear that gutteral German accent right in my face. I looked at him and simply put on my helmet. Sol was a little more polite, I didn't want to know him.
As the tourist walked off I flipped my helmet up and asked Sol..."are you ready for this?"
We were both in distress and visibly nervous at what we were about to see on this day.