Auschwitz Birkenau Guided Tour With Transportation

I have mixed feelings about a review. Having gone through “the process” I now understand that there are two parts 1) your driver who gets you to Auschwitz and gets you in line and buys your tickets. This is tricky as from what I understand for small groups (less than 20) you get there and just wait to buy tickets. And…it can be 2-3 hours to get a tour time with an English guide! And I should add this is on top of waiting for a hour to get to the point where you can actually buy a ticket. The driver then hands you over to an Auschwitz tour guide who actually does the tour of both camps. With that said…our driver contacted us the night before to move our pickup time from 8 to 6. Ok. Then we get there (after an hour drive) and have to stand in line for an hour. Meanwhile the driver has checked out the tour situation and told us we could MAYBE get an English tour at 11 or 12 (mind you it’s 7:30 at this point). Or, we could get a polish guide and get a guide book. What the????? Because we were a group of five with this driver, we couldn’t have booked tickets in advance. However, I got “lucky”. The driver somehow found me another driver who had one spot left in his group that was about to get in for the tour. So…I paid an additional $50 to move to that group (ticket price and transport back to krakow) to save me what most likely would have been 3-4 hours had I stayed with my original driver. Are you confused? So am I and I went through that process! The actual tour through Auschwitz and Birkenau was amazing but that quite honestly was the luck of the draw as all tour guides are hired and trained by Auschwitz. All this company did was to provide the driver who did communicate the new pickup time, reminded us to bring passports, tried to explain the guide situation (there is a shortage of English speaking guides at Auschwitz) and showed up on time. What this company needs to do is to figure out how to get a group together that is large enough to actually get a reserved time with a tour guide in the desired language.

Our driver, Olek, drove nicely and informed us promptly about the schedule change. The Auschwitz tour was brilliant; the guide was very knowledgeable, and the tour was well-organized. However, we had to skip the Birkenau portion with the guide and visit it on our own, as we arrived early at the camps.