today and yesterday have been very busy, with both days including day trips out of poland.
Yesterday we spent the morning relaxing and wandering around the town, also spent some time at the hostel talking to others staying here, met some french people who we swapped emails with us and said we could stay with them, people are so nice to strangers in europe.
We visited the Wieliczka (pronounced vilishka) salt mines, about 30mins out of krakow. We walked the 600 stairs to the tunnels below, where it is all airconditioned but still a little cool. Out tour guide took us around the tunnels for 2.5hours, and we still only saw 1 percent of the total 300km of tunnels in the mine. I didnt know too much about the salt mines, but i imagines white walls...wrong..some of the salt is a white-ish or pink-ish colour however most of it is a mottled greeny black colour, it makes really smooth walls that kind of shimmer in the light. The tunnels are huge and nothing like the squeezing we did at the silver mine in kutna hora.
The salt mines still produce 500-600 tonnes of salt a day, however this is mainly to ensure the stability of the mine, which is listed on the UNESCO cultural and natural world heritage list. People use to work in the mines, and there were also horses who lived permanently underground, to pull the salt up. The salt mines are amazing not because of the tunnels, but because of the carved chapels, halls and sculptures. There is an amazing cathedral over 100 metres underground, totally carved from salt, even the chandeliers. The walls are covered in carvings, including a version of the davinci last supper.
The lowest point of the tunnel we visited was 130m and so quiet is was a little eerie. From there we caught the lift back up, which travels 4m per second, in a tiny little cage with 9 people crammed and jammed in..i had a tiny little spanish nanna next to me who mumbled in spanish all the way up..the only part i understood was "ohhh myyy god"...
Last night was kinda quiet, met some people around the hostel and had an early night.
our bus for Auschwitz and Birkenau left at 8am, so breakfast was early. There are 3 camps around the auschwitz area, we visited two of them-auschwitz and birkenau. Birkenau is the largest, over 300 sq km, compared to the much smaller auschwitz camp. Auschwitz was originally built to house polish soldiers so the structures were alot more permanent and sturdy..and warmer then the wooden structures that were built as a concentration camp. However birkenau was largely destroyed to hide the evidence when the soviet union was close to liberating the area, all that remains are the hundreds of chimneys and the railway line.
Our tour guide was amazing and definately gave us an insight into all aspects of life in europe during WW2 and of life in the concentration camps.
The 6 hours we spent at the two camps were confronting and really sad to imagine what humans are capable of doing to fellow humans. One of the museums in the old housing structures read
"If we do not learn from history we are bound to repeat it".
Tomorrow we are catching the train to berlin, germany. Train leaves at 7.30am and arrives in berlin at 5.30pm..and thats the express train..its going to be a long day.
love to all, and i hope all mothers had a very nice mothers day..sorry our calls were so late.
Love jess xoxoxooxox
