Tuesday was an easy (rainy) day. In the morning, we walked through Krakow to St. Florian's, which was where Karol Wojtyla served while he was teaching at the University. It was a pretty little church, and Rena & I were glad to be there because we had just found out about the fires (Florian being patron saint of fire fighters).
After Mass, we walked back and grabbed lunch (in the rain). In the afternoon, we had the option to go to the
Wieliczka Salt Mine, which I totally took in honor of Mole Day. These salt mines started operating in the 1200s, and our 3 hour tour took us through about 1% of the place. OK, so I know you're all like, "Big whoop... a salt mine." The reason the salt mines at Wieliczka are fab is because, for years and years and years, the miners would work all day (mining) and then spend a ton of free time carving sculptures and chapels and all kinds of magic. Basically our whole tour we saw nothing but salt. It's true. Let's begin.
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So this was our tour guide, Mark. I took this picture without knowing how truly awesome he was; I was just all over the snazzy suit with the shiny buttons topped by a hardhat. As it turns out, Mark was quite awesome. The more time separates us, the more I wonder about his truth to BS ratio, so take all salt mine stories with a grain of ... salt ... unless they're linked to facts on the wide wide world of webs. Anyway. Mark is a Pole who was taught English by an Irishman, which makes for as awesome an accent as you are imagining. Also, he was hilariously dry and full of stories.
We had to walk down a million rectangles of stairs. I counted. You can count for yourself if you want.
A salt statue of Copernicus (who, I'm embarrassed to admit, I did not know was Polish. I have so neglected 25% of my heritage.)
This is a depiction of the legend of St. Kinga. She was a Hungarian princess, who was betrothed to the King of Poland. As a dowry, she asked for salt - because the Poles had lots of gold and silver but no salt. Her father gave her the largest salt mine in Hungary, into which she threw her engagement ring as a sign of...... who even knows what. Didn't matter, though, because when she got to Poland, she had people start digging and they found this very salt mine with her ring in it.
The other big legend of the salt mine is about gnomes (there were a lot). Apparently, and I'm totally kicking myself for not trying this, if you kiss a gnome with a mustache, you will find a good husband shortly thereafter. Some of the gnomes have been kissed on so much that their mustaches (and parts of their noses!) have worn away. Because of this, Mark recommended finding a mustachioed tour guide to kiss instead.
This is St. Kinga's chapel, all of which is made of salt except the whitewashed wood in the upper left. The floor is salt. The chandeliers are salt. The statues are salt. The walls are salt. It was off the chizzains.
They used to do boat tours through the mines. One day some German soldiers came through (by the way, the Nazis totally set up camp in one of the deep mine rooms because it was safe from bombs) and decided to dance on their boat in this little spot pictured above. They capsized, obvs, because what else happens when you dance on a boat, but the water is so dense from salt that they didn't sink. They were trapped under their boat, however, so they suffocated. Needless to say, they don't do boat tours anymore.
So the part of this adventure that's not pictured is how to get out of the salt mine. After walking down for three hours. Yeah.... they have two elevators. One of which I rode, the other of which I did not. Can I tell you, though, that I chose poorly? I - and 8 others - took a 5 person cage elevator up for about a 4 minute ride. Packed in like sardines. It was high stress. Don't worry; I survived.
This was our last night in Krakow, I was a little crapped out (plus way stressed re: fires), so I didn't do much after dinner when we got back. A little journaling, a little reading, some sleep, etc.
