Some People Should Never Leave Home

I am writing this entry today after having a wonderful five day vacation to Krakow, Poland. After spending only five short but amazing days there, I've decided the city is in my top three favorite places in the world only second to the Galapagos Islands and Rome. It is a simple and beautiful city overflowing with history.


We had the opportunity to visit both concentration camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. After visiting both, I feel everyone should have the opportunity to visit these camps or places of similar catastrophes. They offered a very humbling experience that I don't expect to feel again anytime soon.


Visiting Poland also brought to my attention why some people should never leave their houses or be allowed to travel. I'd like to take a few minutes to share in my rant with you. These are my top five annoying experiences which I've dealt with numerous places around the world, including my home country, but were personified in Poland. 

1. Parents taking children on airplanes-On the way to Poland (a 2.75 hour plane ride between Dublin and Krakow) there was a couple sitting across the aisle with a smaller boy. I don't know how to judge ages but he was no more than 3 feet tall and was sucking on a nook. Hopefully for you child lovers, that will give you a better age range than it does for me. This kid cried and screamed the entire flight. Yes, the whole 2.75 hours. If sitting next to that isn't birth control, I'm not sure what is. There should be an age limit for flying your children or maybe a child friendly sleeping pill. I bet that market would be HUGE. 
2. 'Photographers' aka just people with expensive cameras-I've found if you're in a foreign country and you want someone to take your picture it's usually good to look for someone in the general area who has a camera similar in quality/price as your own so they don't run off with yours. However, I've also found just because someone has a fancy camera, that does NOT mean they know how to use it. Some great examples of this in Poland were having a 'photographer' cut off half of the statue I asked him to take a picture of me in front of and having another man take a picture of my friend and I with a wall instead of us with the view behind us on the balcony. 
3. Overweight people standing in lines-This is one of the worst things for me. At Auschwitz, Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mine we were surrounded by people who were overweight and though the world was ending if they didn't get into the attraction first. This meant pushing by everyone else or literally pushing us out of the way. This category also includes a VERY over weight woman and her 90 pound husband who boarded the airplane behind us on the way back to Dublin. As we were going up the stairs to the airplane she was right on our asses pushing her very large stomach and breast into our backs trying to make us walk in to the people in front of us faster. 
4. People who don't own deodorant-Do you know how miserable you make other people's lives? One example was a man in his late 40s to early 50s who stayed in our eight bed room at the hostel in Krakow. He showered daily and squirted himself with lots of cologne but never put on deodorant. The whole time we were in Krakow, the weather never got below 85 degrees and there was no air conditioning. B.O. combined with lots of cologne is one of the worst smells to wake up to. I would have to hold my breath every time he walked past the fan, which he wanted to keep turning off! 
5. Pesky people you don't know who end up in your pictures-I can't express how many times people walk in-between a camera and the subject or how many times you're clearly having your photograph taken and they come and stand next to you pointing at something or have someone else take their picture. Some day I just want to be like, 'Umm, excuse me, do I know you? No, okay, then get out of my shot!'