Location: Krakow

Welcome to the first of the Poland posts! I thought it might be a good idea to give you all a sense of the date since I was late in posting about Montreal and Istanbul.

16-21 August: Montreal
22-25 August: Istanbul
25-28 August: Krakow

I have a lot of captions this time. For anyone who needs to make the text bigger, hold down the "Control" key and press the + key. When you're done, hold down the "Control" key and press 0.

If you didn't know, Wil and I bought Eurail passes to travel by rail around Europe (except for flights in and out of Istanbul). Travelling by rail is my favorite!! It has all the benefits of travelling by car and plane without having to drive or go through security, and the countryside is gorgeous.

I waited the entire ride for Hogwarts to appear around the bend.

Dexter enjoyed the view, but also could not find Poland's equivalent of Hogwarts.

Krakow is a really neat city, and Poland's oldest. It was settled as a walled city in the Stone Age and has been culturally significant ever since. It's filled with old churches, original fortifications, and ruins of buildings past. In WWII, the city was a German hub and housed a huge Jewish ghetto. The world's first Slavic pope, John Paul II, came from Krakow, and countless statues around the city portray him.

Krakow's main square.

Altar in one of the many churches. 

They all looked like this, with their own unique twists.

Dexter surveys Wawel Castle, Krakow's original stronghold.

Now, a ring of parks surrounds the old city where walls once were, and the streets in and near the old city are still cobblestone. Vendors pack the old city's central squares, so you can buy anything from the tastiest sausage you've ever had (seriously incredible food) to a sheepskin jacket. We even went cycling on trikes!

Plate full of sausage, potatoes, veggies, and bread (for $8).

Meat stand in the square. Best food in Krakow, hands down.

We're so cute!!

Triking along...

One morning, we went on a tour of the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Wieliczka is the oldest salt mine in the world: prehistoric peoples gleaned salt from springs the welled to the surface, but mining officially began in the 13th century and operated until the early 2000s. The mine isn't very deep, but extends under the entire city of Wieliczka with a network of something like 14km of tunnels. Throughout the years, miners built chapels in the caverns and carved statues and images out of the rock salt. Famous people including Pope JPII, Copernicus, and Chopin have visited the mines throughout the ages. You can get married in the mine too!

Salt "cauliflowering" on the walls, destroying the metal. Miners fortified tunnels with wood, because the salt imbued the wood and actually made it harder and stronger with time.

Dexter and Wil helped me turn one of the old counterweight instruments.

Miners carved works like this into the walls in chapels. The "Last Supper" here is only 16cm (6in) deep!

One of the taller caverns. The chandeliers are all hung with raw rock salt.

The morning we left Krakow for Wroclaw, we visited Auschwitz; I've always wanted to. It's quite close to Krakow, which is why there was such a large German presence there during WWII and why Krakow's walled ghetto was so well maintained. It's hard to put the visit into words; the part that made my heart tremble was the display of hair from about 140,000 humans held and killed at the camp. You've all learned about the atrocities of the Holocaust so I won't say much more. If you are ever presented with the opportunity to tour the camp, or any concentration or extermination camp, please do. It's important that we remember that period of history, lest we forget and let history repeat itself.

Looking in on the barracks; you can see some train tracks and the electric fence that surrounded the camp. Almost everything in the camp is as it was during WWII. The buildings in Auschwitz I are brick because it was originally a Polish military base. Auschwitz II/Birkenau camp has the wooden bunkhouses you see in pictures, and was actually the filming site for Schindler's List.

It's hard to believe that the starving, dying prisoners would have seen a sunny sky like this during their stay. Black and white pictures always make it seem gray and desolate.

On that dark note, we'll leave you with a few more pictures of our time in Krakow. Look for the next post about Wroclaw in a few days!

Dexter terrorizes Wawel Castle!

These scaled down replicas of famous buildings only serve to encourage Dexter's insatiable lust for destruction.