Krakow ... These are few of my favorite things

POLSKA! Part 2
Salt, Chopin and chocolate!


We got up before breakfast and got on a train for Krakow. Apparently the woman at the ticket station gave us 1st class seats on the way there, but 2nd class on the way back. Huh, oh well.

After the very long train ride, we arrived in Krakow, dropped the bags at our hostel and went to the bus station to go to the salt mine.


Copernicus!




Salty!



First, we had to go down 380 steps. After that we started our tour. We learned about methane explosions, how they got horses down into the mine, culture and wood.

We heard the legend of St. Kinga, patron saint of salt miners. She was a Hungarian princess and when she was to be married to a Polish prince, she asked her father to give her a salt mine as her dowry (salt was amazingly precious then, one big block could buy you an entire village!). He obliged and as a sign of ownership she chucked her engagment ring down a shaft of the mine. When she arrived in Poland, she ordered the people to quarry a small block of salt and inside that block was her engagement ring! So the salt mine travelled from Hungary to Poland as a gift of great wealth to her new people! Pope John Paul II canonized her. He is huge here! His picture, statue and celebratory plaques are everywhere!

Methane is lighter than air and when mixed with certain gasses, is highly flammable. Unfortunately, miner had to use fire to see. Explosions were common. Miners wore wet outfits and used special torches to burn out the methane.

As you can imagine, getting live horses down there was really special! They were lowered in wooded crates. The horses had to live in underground stables in the mines, so that the horses wouldn’t die of heart attacks.

The miners had 2 chapels that we visited. One of the chapels was small, but the other one was huge. It had salt statues everywhere and a humongous salt chandelier on the ceiling. There were scenes from the life of Jesus on the walls and a salt statue of Pope John Paul II.

The supports were made out of wood because salt preserves it. There was salt leaking out of the wood, but I didn’t think that the mine would collapse, which was good.

The miners made gnomes of salt in front of a mini salt lake. I threw in a zloty and made a wish.

We also learned about tools. I got to help push an old mining machine used to raise and lower salt blocks weighing a ton. Luckily, it was empty.



carriage ride!



After we went shopping, we headed for the elevator and took a bus to the Old Town. We had dinner and took a carriage ride before going to our Chopin concert. Krakow is stunningly beautiful. The Old Town has so many gorgeous things to admire that you need 80 eyes just to try to see it all.

The concert was in a lovely hotel. The first part was a cute chocolate shop filled with little bites of deliciousness. I had just had an ice cream, so while my parents were pigging out on Black Forest cake and MORE espresso, I just had some water (no gas!) and enjoyed the beautiful little tea/coffee room. It had these exquisite glass flower chandeliers.



kingly!



The concert was in a beautiful salon upstairs. The person playing the piano was wonderful. He played really, really well. We all really loved it. He played several pieces including two nocturnes and two etudes, as well as a piece by Liszt and one by Mozart. Everybody clapped until he played an encore. We took the tram back to our hostel and crawled into bed. Tomorrow (after a visit to the castle)we leave Poland.