Where have you been?

Seriously. The miners are a religious and superstitious bunch in Poland. Because they would spend hour upon hour in the mine they decided to build themselves chapels underground so when they took breaks they could nip off for a quick prayer.


Naturally a place of worship should reflect the divine and ultimate nature of God and should be decorated accordingly.


What you see in these pictures represents this feeling. There are several chapels deep underground and all of them contain masterful salt sculptures depicting Jesus, Mary, Pope John Paul the Second, as well as various stories from the Bible. It is because of these chapels and the dedication and effort necessary to produce them completely from salt that the Mine is an international tourist destination as well as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Yeah, a salt mine. Doesn't sound so interesting huh? Here we see the elevator and associated levers and switches we used to descend down into the mine. Interested yet?

After the sobering experience of Auschwitz and a nice lunch in the city of Oświęcim, we headed back to Kraków to prepare for our evening trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. This mine, another UNESCO site, is one of the oldest operating mines in Europe having started in the 13th century. There is not much of a story to tell about the mine itself, it is rather something you have to experience. I recommend you take a second to look at the Wikipedia page for some background.


One thing for sure about the mine is that it is located in Poland, complete with beautiful women everywhere. Here we can see my nephew hinting that I should take a picture of the woman selling us tickets because, well, she was super hot like the rest of them.

The two main areas where the killing took place included the gas chambers/crematorium shown above and a wall used as a backstop for firing squad executions shown below

A few shots of the fencing that surrounds the camp.

A history of the camp and vital statistics can be found on the its Wikipedia page. The camp now is a self-guided museum that shows not only what the camp was all about but also gives a bit of history surrounding the peoples who were most affected.


Much of the camp was rather benign and a bit boring in fact. A few displays, however, were quite dark and ominously depicted the true nature of the camp. One such was a registry of the murdered. There was a large book with the names listed but it was too painful to browse the hundreds of pages. Another example was a large ball of hair that had been collected from the female victims.

From Kraków we made a day trip to the infamous WWII prison camp Oświęcim. Never heard the name Oświęcim? Neither had I. It is the name of the Polish town which under German control was know as and home to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. Poles have a somewhat justified paranoia that the world is out to get them and many of them believe there is a conspiracy to pin the ownership and operation of Auschwitz on them. This manifestation of paranoia is somewhat confusing to me because outside of a few nuts in Iran and America I have never heard anyone say the Polish people supported the Nazi invasion of their country let alone that they operated a death camp. I think it is a self-perpetuated paranoia (in this specific case) because not a single Pole I know referrers to the camp as Auschwitz, everyone calls it by the Polish name for which it was never known.

Anyway, lets put this to rest - Auschwitz was a Nazi death camp. It was located in German controlled Poland but operated by Germans. Towards the beginning of the war more Poles were victims of the camp than any other group of people. Much like the Dachau camp in Munich, the Auschwitz entrance gate has the welcoming mantra of "Arbeit Macht Frei" which means "Work will set you free." Naturally we know this is a base lie, just like the idea that Poles ran Auschwitz.

Although we were able to unpack in dry conditions we were not able to see old town Kraków without an unfair share of rain. We visited Wawel Castle but it was raining quite hard on and off which prevented us from loitering around the property much. We did get to tour the inside but there was no photography allowed and therefore no pictures to post here.


During one of the brief breaks in rain some of the people gathered headed out to the magical center of Wawel Castle to pray or absorb the magic vibes. I have been told that there are three or four magical centers in Poland where people can experience, well, I am not really sure what. But my students assure me there are magic place in Poland.

The next day we drove with my wife down to Kraków. It was absolutely pouring for the first two hours which was actually kind of fortunate because it caused the otherwise reckless Polish drives to slow down a bit. By the time we got to Kraków and found our place the rain had mostly stopped and we were able to unload without too much stress. We were quite please with how nice the place was too. Here is a vew of the stairway up to our flat.

Our trip to the north is finished but before we go here is a quick view of the place we rented. It was very nice but right next to the train tracks. Fortunately the trains stopped around 11:45PM.


After a long hard drive we relaxed back at home with a few video games.

I spoke about this before, much of the castle is rebuilt. You can see why now.

It is obvious why this castle is on the UNESCO list. So beautiful.

Although the Jagiełło tomb was a replica the leaders of the Teutonic Knights were actually entombed at Malbork. One example was the Grand Master Heinrich Dusemer whose tomb cover we can see here. I think this is the actual tomb cover which was undoubtedly damaged during WWII.