Don’t worry, I’m still alive, just overwhelmed with life at the moment. But since I’m looking for a break tonight, do you care to hear about our visit to Krakow?

First impressions

As I mentioned in the last post, we traveled from Warsaw to Krakow by train in about three hours. The train ride was fine, but I think I’ve been spoiled by the fancy Inter-City Express (ICE) trains in Germany, so I was not overly impressed. When we arrived, we found our hostel was a 15-minute walk from the train station, conveniently located midway between the Old Town and Kazimierz, the old Jewish section of town made famous by Schindler’s List.

We were immediately enchanted with Krakow. It was the country’s capital for over 500 hundred years, and somehow survived World War II with its medieval, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture intact (the only major Polish city to do so). For our first afternoon, we walked to the Old Town and toured St. Mary’s Church, the Barbican (a remnant of the medieval fortifications), and the Cloth Hall. For our first evening, we ate dinner in the Old Town and had drinks at a laid back bar in an old cellar.

Thursday we devoted ourselves to making the day trip out to Auschwitz-Birkenau, which deserves a post of its own (soon to come). That evening we ate a traditional Polish restaurant near our hostel, searched all over town for a bar showing the Munich football game (with no luck), and then finally ended up at a delicious chocolate restaurant as a reward.

The salt mines

I was pretty exhausted by Friday, so we slept a little later and had an actual breakfast at an adorable cafe that was popular with German visitors (as we came to discover). It was a good thing that we fortified ourselves, because it was a bit of a challenge to find our transportation out to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. The Lonely Planet simply said that there were mini-buses leaving every 10 minutes from “near the bus terminal.” We never found out where that was, but did end up on a terrible smelling public bus heading in the same direction, which dropped us off about 1km from the mine.

This mine has been in operation for the last 700 years. We were taken on a tour about 120 meters beneath the surface through about about 3.5km of tunnels (which represents only about 1% of the mine). There were also lovely “carved chambers, chapels, an underground lake, and exhibits on the history of salt mining.” Pretty impressive, to say the least. And over the last 700 years, the mine has been visited by some important people: Nicolaus Copernicus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Dmitri Mendeleyev, Karol Wojtyla (the later Pope John Paul II), Bill Clinton, and crowned heads.

Perhaps as entertaining as the mine itself was our attempt to leave the mine. After our tour was over, we stood “in line” with dozens of Polish schoolchildren for the exit to the elevator to the surface. After a bit of a wait, we were lead along tunnels for at least 10 or 15 more minutes with the schoolchildren — however this time the guide spoke no English (or German), and we had no idea whether we were being lead deeper into the mine or out of it. Finally we reached an area with several elevators and abandoned by the guide. After milling about for a few more minutes, 10 adults were herded into a mine shaft elevator that had not quite enough room for 10 adults to stand in. Then we were whisked up the 120 meters, the wind blowing in our hair, and the sound of shrieking school children from the elevator adjacent to ours. Quite the adventure, and I’m not even including the bus ride back into Krakow!

The symbol of Poland

Saturday we tried to make a brief trip to Wawel, “the very symbol of Poland,” before our noon train back to Warsaw. Although were were able to visit the Crown Treasury & Armoury at Wawel Castle, this particular tourist site really isn’t set up for the individual tourist. Had we more time, we would have joined a tour group and spent the day touring all of the Castle, the Cathedral and the grounds. I was a bit disappointed, but we were still able to take some beautiful photographs of Wawel Hill.

And that concludes our tour of Krakow!

We enjoyed ourselves a lot and easily could have spent several more days there, as there are so many churches, museums, and historical sites within the city itself, let alone all of the worthwhile day trips outside the city.  You can find lots of photos here.

More posts from our trip to Poland:

• Warsaw
• Auschwitz-Birkenau