A Different Trip

Never in my life would I think I would ever go to Poland.

However, being in the Czech Republic, I realized that the quick train and bus ride to the inexpensive destination of Krakow, Poland was quite popular among most of the students in our program. After hearing stories about the impactful weekend people spent in the beautiful city of Krakow and their visits to Auschwitz concentration camp just an hour outside the large city, I figured I should take advantage of the ten euro transportation and the opportunity to see such a large part of world history. Plus, seeing a new town is always something I look forward to.

After looking into the trip, Keira, Joanna, and I found a Wednesday off of school that we could take advantage of. This is yet another trip where I got to play mom, so I consulted my friends on what we wanted to do but ultimately booked everything which was harder for this trip than I originally thought. I struggled to find a tour time that worked to go on the dates we were looking at, which was explained to me later in our trip during our Auschwitz tour, so I could only book a tour that had both the Salt Mines and Auschwitz in one very long day excursion. Now we weren’t super excited at the thought of going to the Salt Mines, but we heard it was actually pretty neat to see and considering we had no other option, we shrugged it off. I found the cheapest Air BnB possible and packed bags on bags of snacks since we are all ballin’ on a budget and on Monday after my Czech language final (pray that I passed) we were off.

We didn’t get in until about 2 am from the bus to Krakow and took an Uber to our Air BnB. Now I will say we paid next to nothing for this, and the value of the musty place matched the low price we paid. Now I accidentally booked a private room (yet again – however this time it was not clear on the description so I blame the host) and there was an extremely fat cat. I’m slightly allergic to cats too, not like I’ll blow up like a balloon and can’t breathe, but it makes my allergies go a little crazy. We spent about 15 minutes on the floor of our room with bright green and yellow wallpaper that looked straight out of That 70’s Show trying to move the large black and white fluff out of the room. The cat must have really liked us though we definitely didn’t feel the same. Finally, we got the cat our after luring it with treats and went to sleep on our rock hard beds in our tiny room that didn’t even lock to wake up for our 7:45am pick up for our Salt Mine and Auschwitz tour.

In the morning, after our quick naps, we hopped into a van with a sweet little Dutch family. They were taking a little trip through eastern Europe. The kids were no older than 12 and could speak both Dutch and English. One was even taking Chemistry and Literature classes in English in Holland. Crazy to think about as Joanna and I talked about how we can hardly take those classes in English and that’s our first language.

We made our way to the Salt Mines. When we got there we realized that this was a three hour tour completely underground. Yikes.

Our guide (also conveniently named Joanna) was extremely pleasant as we walked down 50 (yes, fifty) flights of stairs to the first level of the nine levels of the mine. I thought my roommate Joanna was going to have a heart attack since she mentioned she hates being underground, but the mines were surprisingly open. Don’t fear, she was okay.

Our guide told us that everything we were looking at was salt in the first room we went to. Whoa. I didn’t lick the wall at first but I will admit I really wanted to and later ended up giving in and giving my finger a lick after touching the wall. Yup, definitely salt.

Apparently being in the salt mine helped with allergies. Thank goodness because my eyes were already swollen and itchy from that dang obese cat. The constant temperature in these mines is about 13-16 celsius (about 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit) which was actually much warmer than I expected. As we walked on the salt floors, we were told about people who visited, the process of salt mining, and even saw different underground chapels including the largest underground chapel.

A chapel underground kind of blew my mind, but these miners were underground for hours and hours upon end and would pray in the chapels before heading to churn a wheel for an hour or use the underground horses that spent their entire lives down there. There was even a tiny nativity scene upon other sculptures made completely of salt. In fact, there were quite a few sculptures of different people, places, and things in the mines. In the picture I posted above, you can see small sculptures of people working in the mines. There are also sculptures of people, like Copernicus, made and even some giant gnomes.

We dove down not only to the first level but to the third level of the mines which was as deep at 110 meters (about 360 feet) underground. World Records have been made at this place, which blew my mind round like 500. Someone even bungee jumped in one of the chambers the mine held. There were gift shops and banquet halls down here, and I was just so amazed at the little underground place that once held so many workers. We couldn’t go down any further because this was the lowest place tourists could go, but we were definitely not salty about our visit. Pun definitely intended.

We took a stop at a Polish restaurant on our way to Auschwitz, what we really came for. My friends and I had packed enough snacks that we didn’t need to grab lunch, but grabbed some coffees instead as we had been snoring on our bus ride from the mines to the restaurant and we wanted to be awake for our trip to Auschwitz.

Now, I thought about writing about Auschwitz in this blog piece, but I really want to dive into my experience there, and devote an entire piece to it. So you’ll have to check out my next blog post to hear about that one, but to give you a brief summary before that post I want you all to understand that no matter how much I try to put this visit into words, nothing will describe the feeling of standing on the platform that Hitler commanded his soldiers to bring carts full of hundreds of people to be killed on the spot or brought to be tortured and humiliated. Nothing. And even then, standing on that piece of disgusting history, I knew I would never fully understand the tragedies that happened and the fear that was struck into these millions of people that came through the camps that we visited.

The visit was the most impactful thing I have experienced since being Prague, which I figured it would be, but I really (really) wasn’t prepared for all of the things I would learn about the lives of the people who came through this specific camp that was only one of many camps organized by Nazi Germans. The emotions I felt are indescribable, but I will try in my next blog to give a little taste of my thoughts and feelings as I walked around the camps.

Feeling humbled and taken aback, my friends and I decided to find some dinner in the city and go back to bed when we returned. We found an extremely Polish restaurant near the Old Town in Krakow and ordered some pierogis (Polish dumplings filled with meats, potatoes, or fruits), sausages, stews, and even goulash. We tried to local beer and decided we liked Prague’s beers better but enjoyed our tasty and filling meals.

Back to our Air BnB we went. There were new guests in the shared facility that night. They were quite loud and sleep felt next to impossible, but after such a long day, we finally drifted off.

Naturally the next morning it was raining and would continue raining all day. We threw on our hoods and headed to the Wawel Castle Complex. I was pleasantly surprised with the beautiful buildings that made up the cathedral and castle. The beautiful blues and golds of the building were wonderful to look at.

The entire area was quite beautiful and since we were visiting on a weekday, it wasn’t packed with people, though there were a few school groups. We could really soak in the castle complex while our clothes soaked up all the water from the rain.

We wondered over to the Old Town Square of Krakow. I was surprised with just how similar it looked to Prague, though the colors were just more muted it seemed. They also had a statue similar to the one in Prague’s Old Town Square, a tower, and buildings with various shops and restaurants all around.

We got our souvenirs and grabbed lunch before our bus had to leave.  That in itself was an adventure.

We couldn’t call an uber from the restaurant, and realizing we were close to the time of departure and still needing to go to our Air BnB to grab our bags. Without another option, we started running. Here we were in Krakow, frantically trying to pull up an Uber as we booked it through the rain. Out of breathe and soaking wet, we finally got an Uber to come to our apartment address and we ran up the stairs to the door.

Great, we couldn’t figure out how to open the dang door. I remembered how the host opened the door for us both times we needed to come in, so we hadn’t even tried to open it alone yet. I tried knocking on another apartment door where an angry Polish woman immediately slammed the door in my face the moment I started talking. When our Uber driver came, he complied to help us with the key if he started the journey on the app so we were charged. We said sure Mr. Uber driver please just help us, and somehow after a little finagling he was able to open the old door. Needless to say, after our experience here I gave our Air BnB quite the strongly worded review.

We were off to the Airport where our bus got us and we saw our arrival time there was 1:02pm and our bus left at 1:00pm. We looked up other buses and trains to get us back, but hoped for the best. Thankfully, by some weird stroke of luck that I have never experienced before except the one time I won a raffle when I was like seven, the bus had to stop earlier to change buses and was about fifteen minutes late.

We boarded the bus and back to Prague we were. Though I wouldn’t dare say our experience in Krakow with our Air BnB and the tour of Auschwitz was pleasant, my trip almost feels complete by seeing this piece of history in Eastern Europe. I wasn’t sure when else I would venture this way, and knowing I had people that also wanted to venture to such an interesting place to see such a tragic piece from history reminded me that my life really is something special, and I am thankful for the life I live, especially after seeing the way some people were treated, tortured, and ultimately killed.

Though different, every trip is valuable in my eyes and teaches me something new about myself, history, my friends, travel, and more. Thank you Krakow for the different experience.

It’s back to Prague we go, though for me only for a short time as I leave for Munich, Germany tomorrow afternoon. Travel upon travel as I only have three weeks left in my adventures abroad. Stay tuned for more!