Zak, Krak & Back (HA!)

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If this isn’t my best work, then you can blame Jacek and Co. for keeping me up all night. But I shall, as I always do, endeavour to engage my responders with style and aplomb.

The morning of the move back to Krakow came, as mornings generally do, and with an early start once again. Having packed our stuff the night before, we were relatively well prepared to get on the move. So after paying out rent to the lovely lady who owned the set of apartments, we made our way slowly into town around 9am. Unfortunately for our intrepid adventurers, the rest of Zakopane (i.e. the shops and convenient places to have breakfast) doesn’t get out of bed until approximately 10am in the morning. And until that time, there is no way in hell they are opening their doors for a pair of starving gringos like us.

And so we ended up at McDonalds. Yes, McDonalds. No good coffee (which can cost 8zł in places in Zako -choke!) AND the filthiest breakfast ever. It is only after spending some time away from eating this crap on a regular basis that I realise that sometimes it is worth making the extra effort to buy some fresh produce and some ham and do a DIY breakfast at home. We gagged down our McFatBurgers and felt violated - it cost a fortune and was half the size of the healthy tasty Kotlet Burgers we had eaten at Adamo Pizzeria the other day. It confirmed my theory that Maccas is just as bad everywhere.

The buses departed from the central terminal about every half hour, and as is the way here in Poland you can buy your tickets from the bus driver, which is excellent. Obviously you run the risk of there being a huge line and having to wait for another half hour if the bus fills up before you get to it. But luckily there was only a handful of travellers back to Krak, and we jumped on board and settled in. I must say that I have begun to love the bus as a medium of transport. It is comfortable, safe, and reasonably efficient at allowing the average traveller to attain a good “distance-covered/cost/time-on-your-arse” constant.

So anyway we got off the bus, looked around at where to get the bus to Wieliczka, and made a beeline for it as we weren’t sure what sort of timetable it had. That beeline, however, was made by a bee having an epileptic fit. If you can imagine back in the days of Scooby Doo when all the kids are getting chased by the bad guy in a hallway full of doors, and they keep going in and out of separate doors and getting lost - that was us. We were told to go downstairs, but downstairs at the bus station in Central Krakow is like a rabbit warren. No, scratch that, a set of mole tunnels. After asking half of Krakow where the bus was, and getting the same number of different answers, and going round in circles for half an hour, we finally realised that it was nowhere near where we had been told. It was in a little side street over the other side of the tram line, and was of course just about to leave.

We sprinted, made it, couldn’t get tickets because the ticket machine was broken on the bus, begged the driver to wait, went up the road, bought tickets, came back, tried to organise all our bags and boots and the like into some sort of non-invasive-giant-pile-of-death, and breathed a sigh of relief. The ride was no walk in the park either, as the bus driver seemed like he was intent on killing everyone aboard. At one stage, the brakes were hit hard, albeit flippantly while his highness talked on his phone, and a quite small girl next to me decided that it was time to do a reverse Swan Lake exit down the aisle of the bus. You know the type, hands forward, shuffling backward on tippy toes, graceful and horrified at the same time. Me and the beefy dude across from me managed to get a hand out in time to catch her. Well he caught her and I grabbed the strap of her handbag, so I wasn’t really the hero at the end of the day: I just looked like I was mugging her. She yelled at the driver - something about being humans and not bloody livestock, but he just ignored her and kept driving like an idiot. All the way to Wieliczka - The 13th Century salt mine that was our tourist destination for the day.

We finally reached the mine alive and were very excited about both getting off the bus and reaching the mine. Naturally, being the budding AA candidates that we are, the first thing that we had to do was have a beer and a sit down after our harrowing journey on public transport, so we parked our butts and ordered a couple of Zywiec. I also realised that I was having my mid afternoon crash and snarfed a couple of snickers bars. Riding the sugar waves of grumpy/happy, I finally came to the conclusion that I think that I might actually be diabetic; better lay off the beer and pies. The next question for us was what to do with the 15 kilos of luggage we were carting around, and after spying the big sign that said “Left Luggage”, we ditched our gear and made our way through the crowds of giant-camera-toting Japanese visitors to the ticket box.

Entry to Wieliczka was a bit on the dear side, at 40zł ($15.50) a pop for the Polish tour, but not nearly as expensive for the pagans who spoke other languages. They had to fork out 64zł - suckers! THEY don’t have an awesome Polish girlfriend who just LOVES translating constantly. HA! We purchased our tickets and also bought an AV ticket for 10zł allowing us to take movies/photos inside; in hindsight, later in the tour, we belatedly realised that everyone was taking photos and videos anyway and that we had been suckered. I was also wondering at that stage why I was being told to wear my jacket. It was a hundred and ten degrees in the waterbag outside and I was about to expire. It then occurred to me that we were about to go underground, and the deepest point in the public mine is 136m (max depth overall is 327m), where for 300km of tunnels the air temp is a constant 12 degrees celsius. Toasty!

We noticed was that our tour guide was a very old and stout geezer, had an enormous moustache that would have made Aussie Dave weep, and was wearing a hard hat. It then occurred to me that I, however, did not, and was not exactly sure why he was allowed to have one and I wasn’t. Besides, he was going to die soon anyway, and I’ve got plenty of living left in me. As we walked in the front door, with me considering stealing the fat controller’s lovely hat, we found ourselves on THE BIGGEST STAIRWELL I’VE EVER SEEN. Sorry guys, I keep trying to delete that and write that in lower case, but the computer just won’t allow it: it really was that big. “How big?” I hear you ask. Try 45 floors and over 400 steps down into the bowels of the Earth. I took a photo down the middle so you can see it for yourself.

We made it to the bottom after a while and began the tour. And I have to tell you, this place is just a world of it’s own. It reminds me of a giant ant hill, but the whole place, apart from the wood keeping it from falling down in parts, is made of solid-as-stone rock salt. Yep, we’re talking lick the walls and say “Mmmm, salty!”-type-thing. We had a good group of people on the tour, who got out of the way for our stupid photos and were generally jovial, including standard-issue muscle bound poser and minx girlfriend wearing not much clothes and in heels. She was gonna get cold, but I wasn’t complaining.

The place is just epic. Think Jenolan Caves but way more history and size. The problem for you wonderful readers is that we can’t really show you what it was like down there. Any attempt at good photos is folly in itself; it’s too dark, too many particles in the air, everything is the same dark brown colour and this causes things which stand out beautifully in the ambient lighting they had down there to completely disappear against the walls under heavy flash. I’ve included a couple of A/B photos to show you the difference. Suffice to say however that when not lit up or looking through a camera lens, the mine is an incredibly pretty place. We wandered through tunnels and small galleries, looking at salt sculptures and learning about the history of the mine. It basically used to be underwater, in the Ocean you see, but later on about eleventy thousand years ago the sea receded and left the salt to solidify. Or something like that.

The tour progressed gradually to larger and more spacious areas, and the climax of the place was in an underground church where a mass was being held, complete with full-blown choir singing hymns. Scratch the Pope’s big wooden joint in Zakopane for a religious epiphany, this place is now numero uno in that respect. To listen to the acoustics of a rock salt hall filled with hundreds of people the size of Gunnedah’s Town Hall, 100+m underground, is just mental. Took a video of it, but not sure if I can get it attached. We continued through the mine, oohing and ahhing at the ancient mechanics of mining thousands of tonnes of rock salt and getting it up to the surface. The end of the tour was at an elevator that was lucky to hold about 5 people, and felt like it was going to fall apart. If that wasn’t bad enough, the frickin thing went from -130m to surface in about 20 seconds, clattering and shaking the whole way. I loved it, but Aleks was sure that she was going to die. And that was the end of Wieliczka, now the best thing that I have seen since I have been in Poland for scope and old-school amazingness.

We made our way back on the bus and tram system after some confusion as to which way we actually had to go, and reached Kasia’s house all by our little selves without having to ask directions. We were absolutely ravenous by that stage, so the executive decision was made to get some of the local Pizza into our stomachs as fast as possible. The Pizzas here, while nothing in comparison to Terry’s Pizza in Gunnedah as all the true pizza lovers in the world know, are very large and hit the spot beautifully, so it was a welcome eatingfest. (Aleks' Note - and they provide 2 free sauces - condiments!) Not only that, I needed to have as much energy as possible for the next day... a shadow was falling over my mind that I couldn’t ignore. The next day, I was venturing (alone mind you), to Poland’s version of Mordor - Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination and Concentration Camps.

I want to make it clear to you guys reading this that I don’t really want to go into a whole pile of detail on this subject. To be really honest, the place was devastating for me, and even now I’m having trouble writing about this. The camps are a vicious, despicable place that embody a complete disregard for a human being’s right to life; they are the product of a collaboration of sick minds who deserved far worse than the fate most of them suffered after the War had finished. Considering my Polish family knows all too well what happened during the Holocaust, I don’t believe that I would be doing any good going into gory details. If you want nitty gritty information on what happened, you can read about it online.

So the next morning I got as decent a sleep as I could before getting up and doing a quick ringaround to find out when the tours started, I realised that I would arrive just as one was starting at around 3:20pm if I legged it out the door at midday. I bolted down some breakfast and Aleks took me to the Bus station, where I finally found a little bus that got me out there (2 ½ hours) for only 9zł. The bus trip was okay, apart from having a gay and very ugly guy leering at me the whole time and trying to get in my space; I wasn’t impressed, and gave him a look eventually that said in no uncertain terms to bugger off, but I certainly wasn’t going to get deported for beating up a gay dude. No Sir.

Upon arrival, I paid for an audio guide with an English group, which cost me 43zł. I thought this was a pretty reasonable price to pay, even though entry was free I wanted to understand as much as I possibly could about what took place nearly 70 years ago in the camps. The little piece of audio gear that looked like an iPod that hung around my neck that had headphones - this acted as a radio receiver for my guide, a Polish lady in her mid forties, so that we could hear her on a single channel individually amongst the other groups that were touring through in various sizes and languages. We went to Channel 2 and made our way to the gate of Auschwitz I, which was the spot that served as the original administration camp for the three main camps (Auschwitz, Birkenau, Monowitz). From the moment I walked under the gates, where the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Brings Freedom) crown the rusting iron, I was silent.

The tour of Auschwitz I took about two hours and I saw what was essentially a gentle reminder of the barbarity that was experienced by the people within the walls of the camp. There was no blood and gore, no extensive photos of bodies piled up, nothing to make you sick. But there didn’t need to be. The insinuation, or rather what the visitor infers from the words written around to explain the function of each building, is enough. The weight of what took place began to hit home about halfway through, and I struggled the rest of the way. But the funny thing is that I seemed to be the only one really doing it tough... The rest of the people on my tour treated the place exactly for what it was intended to be - a museum. They seemed to retain this feeling of detachment from it, and I can understand that most of them probably don’t really know that much about it. As soon as I saw the people I know in the faces of the prisoners, I realised that I had lost the fight to stay cold. Like Eisenhower did in 1945, I visited every nook and cranny and made sure I understood everything to the point of feeling sick - because I don’t ever want to see something of this calibre again.

The end of the tour was a small bus ride over to the skeletal remains of Birkenau, which was the largest Nazi Extermination Camp in the war. Most of it is now only the stone chimneys which are attached to the long-rotted wooden buildings. Some in the first row still stand, and shows the number of people that were fit into such a small space. The size of Birkenau itself is enormous, and it takes a full 15 minutes to walk from one end to another. This was also the place that some of the scenes in Schindler's List were shot, which I am most ashamed to say, I haven't seen yet. And after Birkenau, I was spent. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take photos inside the building which I totally respect, but it won’t be hard to remember.

That afternoon I caught the bus back from Oswiecim (what the town was originally called before Germany annexed it during the war) and made my way back home to Kasia’s place, a little subdued to be honest. Luckily once I got there at about half past nine at night, the most beautiful Kasia had the biggest bowl of Spaghetti Bolognaise I have ever seen waiting for me, and it was absolutely sensational, almost as good as Aleks’! Being absolutely stuffed, we turned in relatively early after drinking some delicious red wine.

Wawel Castle was our mission for the next morning, as we didn’t have time to see it on the last run through. We shaped up and shipped out of the house of K & K and got our butts on a tram and somehow magically found the castle, which was completely amazing to us, as we thought we were lost horribly from the moment we left the house. As we reached the castle we dropped off our bags (for free again!), and went up to the ticket booths to book our tickets. The tours that we decided to do were of the Castle’s Armoury and the Crown Treasury and seeing as we had already done the cathedral and the Zygmunt’s Bell tour last time we were in Wawel, we decided to go for the State Rooms. The State Rooms were not specifically the royal bedrooms but were a lot cheaper and was still an hour long and gave us an excellent idea of the amazing inside of the Castle.

The State Rooms consisted of most of the formal meeting rooms and the like, rather than the Apartments which were considered to be more private. As we made our way through the place, we realized that it was similar in look to the Royal Castle in Warsaw, however everything in Wawel wasn’t rebuilt… All this stuff really was from the 15th Century, with some artifiacts such as busts of ancient romans etc are from 2nd Century AD! Bloody hell! The floors were amazing, the paintings are amazing, and even the carved wooden roofs and al fresco paintings have to be seen to be believed. There are Tapestries from the Jagiellonian Dynasty that have somehow survived all this time, so big they cover an entire wall in a really big room, at least 8 x 6 m in size.

Once again we encountered the problem of not being able to take photos inside the Castle, although I’m not exactly sure why… Something to do with crime I suppose. We took about an hour to walk around the State Rooms and then moved over to the Crown Treasury and Armoury, and this is where I was in my elephant element. Being the huge fan of swords and shields and hack ‘n slash gaming that I am, and also a huge fan of fantasy stuff, this place was heaven. The SIZE of some of the 14th and 15th Century Great Swords in there are phenomal, we’re talking as tall as me and more. And the amazing thing is that they only weighed a maximum of 8 pounds! This is a real art that’s been lost after all these years. There were hundreds of swords, shields, halberds, spears, guns, crossbows, even right up to giant cannons weighing hundreds of tons.

Unfortunately you couldn’t touch any of the stuff, OR take any photos, but it was still amazing. Full suits of armour, ranging from basic chainmail to full Gothic Plate, stuff from as early as the 10th and 11th centuries, right up to full Horse Armour. And that was just the Armoury. The crown treasury held the actual swords and scepters of Kings long past, including the actual coronation sword that was used for many years to Crown the Kings and Queens of Poland. Everything else was there too - rings, cups, plates, heaps of other expensive gear all covered in gold and precious stones. WOW.

After we got out of the Armour/Treasury we realized that it was absolutely pissing down with rain, but were going to miss our train that was leaving at ten past four. We decided against going to visit the legendary Dragon’s Den under the Castle, as we were definitely running out of time, and starting making our way in the pouring rain to the Train Station. We stopped along the way for a super fast feed at another Milk Bar, both of us smashing a big pile of pierogi with sides and drinks for a mere 21zl! From there it was a real hustle, as we were walking for a good half an hour and trying to remember where exactly the train station was! In the end it was a bit of a photo finish, but we made it through the lines of people waiting for a ticket and onto our train with about 10 minutes to spare and obviously, a little bit damp as well. The train ride home went fast thanks to our books and no idiot passengers, and we arrived home to Wujek Jacek picking us up from the station and driving us home.

That’s about it for now folks (thank Christ), tune in next time for what happens when Nemo decides it’s time to try more vodka with the family in Warsaw!

-- Fishy

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Photos

The Wieliczka Salt Mine
Krakow

The Stairwell Down to the Mine
Wieliczka
Krakow

The Fat Controller in front of Copernicus' Sculpture
Wieliczka
Krakow

Salt Sculptures of the Miners
Wieliczka
Krakow

And Without Flash
Wieliczka
Krakow

King Kazimierz
Wieliczka
Krakow

A Dwarf
Wieliczka
Krakow

The Chapel
Wieliczka
Krakow

A Salt Chandelier
Wieliczka
Krakow

Nemo next to one of the underground lakes
Wieliczka
Krakow

130m Underground
Wieliczka
Krakow

The Mine Tunnels
Wieliczka
Krakow

Work is Freedom
Auschwitz

Shoes
Auschwitz

Execution Wall
Auschwitz

Electric Fence
Auschwitz

Comments

[Andrew]

AV ticket
Wieliczka AV ticket. Believe it or not, but one of my friends was arrested in Egypt museum for not buying the ticket and making ONE photo of the mumy. He was offered to go to the police arrest, or pay the fine. How much ? He was asked to empty his pockets, and they took everything !!! Auschwitz. You don’t ever want to see something of this again. Neither does anybody else probably. And that's why I was in shock, when I went to Cambodia. Will people ever learn ?