Day 22 - Salt: Health Hazard or The Poor Man's Marble?

Hey Team,

So we are moving further east and have hit the country of Poland.  This was quite the impromptu trip for me.  I wasn't planning on coming this direction, but I ended up with an extra couple of days, so I thought I'd hit a couple of spots that I wouldn't normally go to.  Krakow is in the southern part of Poland and is probably the second most important city here behind the capital of Warsaw.  However, according to what I read, it the coolest one to visit.  The main point about coming here was to see the Auschwitz Concentration Camp (about an hour away) and the Wieliczka Salt Mines (30 minutes), but I did want to see "The New Prague" of Eastern Europe.

Now before describing my impressions, let me first throw out a couple of qualifiers.

1)  The weather was absolute garbage the whole time.  Like 40 degrees and wet.
2)  I did basically zero prep work on what I was going to do in Krakow.
3) I only had a day to see what I wanted to in town due to the other two spots.

So having gotten that out of the way, I have to confess I was not impressed with Krakow.  It has some nice places, including the largest Medieval Square in all of Europe, which you'll see, but overall, it just didn't pop to me.  It was still ok, but is toward the bottom of the list of places I've seen, which you have to remember are arguably some of the prettiest places in Europe, so it's all relative (sorry to all of my Polish friends).  On the plus side, it was amazingly cheap to do stuff at and I stayed at a great hostel.  Here's some shots of the city.:

Are you Catholic?  Do you like Churches?  Are you both Catholic and like Churches?  Great News!!!  Apparently there is a building code in Krakow that states there must be one built every 50 feet or so.  Like this one. . .

or this one. . .

. . . or this one.  I don't think I had to move in order to see these three. I just needed to rotate my body about 90 degrees a couple of times and bam!!  There was another one.  I would think there is some serious competition for a congregation.  My guess is there would be some major incentives bandied about like free John Paul II (he's from Poland) bobblehead dolls if your one of the first thousand to Mass, or a cheap raffle for a replica Popemobile or something like that.

This church here is the Big Dog in town, St. Mary's Basilica.  It is a brick church that was built in the Gothic Style (again) in the 14th century.

Here's an inside shot of it.  As you can see, it looks very similar to the other's I've shown you but it does have some unique features including the wood carving on the altar there which is considered one of the best in Europe.

Here's a shot of the largest medieval square in all of Europe.  It would probably take you over 10 minutes to walk the perimeter.  Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of renovating going on here so I couldn't take any really nice shots.

Here's a shot of the 14th century Wawel Castle in the Old Town District of Krakow.  It sits right on the Vistula River and it's huge.









So after doing a bit of sightseeing in town, I hitched a bus for about half an hour to the Wieliczka Salt Mine which is an original member of the UNESCO World Heritage Site (this is a big deal by the way).  It had been continuously producing salt since the 13th century until just a few years ago, where it is now a museum.  It goes nearly a quarter mile underground and has over 300 km of tunnels.  Salt was one of the most valuable commodities in the Middle Ages because of it's ability to preserve food.  In fact it was called "White Gold" (guys try this out on your lady friends the next time they want jewelry.  I'm sure they will be very amused at your hilarious little joke), and in certain areas of the world, it was used in place of currency.  A little trivia for you  In every European language the word "salt" is the root word of "salary", so you can see how important it was financially.

Here's some shots of the countryside of Poland on my way to the tour.  Lots of farmland that looks just like this with beautiful rolling hills and green green grass.

So we finally arrived at the Salt Mine place (The World Heritage Site remember), and this is what I saw when we got out of the bus.  My first thought was, "Awesome, maybe we can catch the last half of the little league game that this non paved parking lot is connected to".

Fortunately, it got better (although the parking lot was amazingly close to the site) and we met up with our tour guide and began our walk down approximately 800 or so steps.  At our deepest decent we made it down to about 135 meters below the surface.

After 800 or so years, this place looks like a massive honeycomb. So in order to make sure a few million tons of rock salt doesn't fall down onto the nice tourists walking around, there are a couple of these beams strewn about.  Notice they are made of wood.  Iron cannot be used due to the corrosive nature of the salt.

So I haven't really told you what's so great about this place.  It's not just that it's this really old and massive salt mine.  It's also because over the centuries, miners apparently have a lot of down time and started to carve things into the rock salt.  And as it turns out it wasn't just a bunch of four letter words in Polish or "Joanie Loves Chachie".  Unlike most people, these guys (has to be guys because women where not allowed to work in the mines apparently) actually could quit their day job.  The amount of detail on these sculptures is stunning and apparently it's not the easiest thing to do. The rock salt is very brittle and if you break off Copernicus' nose here (he's a famous Polish scientist who determined that the Earth rotates around the Sun and not vice versa) you can't exactly super glue it back on.

Here are some of the Seven Dwarfs doing their thing.  (I fear that some of my younger readers may not have seen Snow White since it has nothing to do with a computer) but these guys are. . .you guessed it. . .Miners!  Hopefully the irony is not lost on anyone here.

So this is about the most amazing thing I've seen in a while.  This is an actual chapel carved out of the salt mine.  And it was done by 3 miners over a 70 year period.  Popes have come down here to see this thing, and if you have enough coin, you can get hitched down here as well.  The following shots are some details of the ginormous room.  70 years people!!!

Had to show you this.  This is the floor.  They didn't bring in a bunch of linoleum and lay it down either.  They actually carved this out of the salt.  This entire room is about 90-95% pure salt. I felt bad just walking on it.

I have to confess we were encouraged by our guide to participate in unprotected salt licking in the mines so we could "taste the salt".  I knew I shouldn't but the temptation was too great.  I can only hope I'm not one of the scores of other people who foolishly engaged in these unsafe actions.  As the saying goes, "Once you tasted salt in the Wieliczka Salt Mine you've tasted salt with everyone else that the Wieliczka Salt Mine has tasted salt with".

Here's a shot of me in front of the altar where they actually celebrate Mass.

Here is the salt sculpture of Poland's favorite son of the last 50 years or so, Pope John Paul II.  He visited this chapel multiple times but never as the Pope.

I think this one might be the most remarkable piece in the room.  It's a redoing of The Last Supper by Da Vinci and it is unbelievable.  It might be hard to see here, but the depth perception this thing projects is incredible.  In reality it only has a depth of about 6 inches or so.  This is carved right onto the wall of the room.






Just a great trip and tour of a remarkable site.  Afterwards, we headed back to Krakow.  Tomorrow will be the serious post of the blog as I go on a tour of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.  As I said earlier I'll post the Dachau Camp pictures from as well.  Not fun, but I think good for everyone to see.  Hope everyone is doing well.  Later. . .