The past few days have been pretty busy. After a day of exploring the beautiful old town of Krakow and enjoying a long lazy liquid lunch in the beautiful warm sunshine in the town square I met Morgan at the airport on tuesday night. it didnt really feel like it had been over a year since we had last seen eachother, and when she left neither of us expected we would be meeting up in europe before she came home.
However when we got back to the hostel that we were staying at, we found that due to some lack of communication between the morning, afternoon and evening staff on reception, the 2nd bed that we had booked for that night had been given away after i had checked in that morning. the girl on the desk was pretty nice about it and felt really bad. they offered us a spot in a hostel 5min walk away, or we could share one bed and only pay for one. we couldnt be bothered walking anywhere, and it was only for 1 night and the bed looked pretty big for a single, so we decided to share. 15 months apart on the opposite sides of the world, now we were having to share a single bed. it was pretty uncomfortable as it turned out not to be that big, and was really squishy so we kept rolling into the middle. plus the guy underneath us was a real bad snorer, so not much sleep was had.
the next day we headed out to the salt mine just outside krakow. although it doesnt sound very exciting, it is hundreds of years old and around one million people visit each year. on an average day about 5000 people pass through.
we had to decend down 54 flights of stairs, all made of wood, and then walked along many small passages, through excavation caves and some chapels. one of the chapels was massive and very impressive. it took 30 years to build and it filled with carvings and statues, and candeleirs - all about 100m underground.
the tour went for nearly 2hours and we went as deep as 130m, yet we had only seen around 1% of the entire mine they said. perhaps the strangest thing we saw was a football match being played in a large excavated room. lit by elegant chandeleirs and surrounded on all sides by salty sandstone walls, it was perhaps one of the most interesting football pitches on the earth - or under it for that matter.
Getting out was a bit of a worry though. we had to line up in a small cramped passageway for about 20min before we made it to the 4 story lift. I would hate to think what would happen in an emergency when they needed to evacuate everyone. although i didnt think too much about it until we were aboveground again.
yesterday we made the trip out to auschwitz which was a pretty intense experience, similar to the killing fields of cambodia. it really doesnt do much for your faith in humanity after seeing some of the things they are cabable of doing.
The most moving palces though were the ruins of the former gas chambers that the nazis blew up as they fled.Many people arrived thinking that they were being relocated for work and had even bough land. they were told that they had to have a bath, were forced into an underground chamber to undress before going into the gas chamber next to it. there were even fake shower heads installed. the germans upstairs dropped pellets down to gas them then incinerated the bodies. there was one display of some of the tins that contained the deadly pellets. there were piles and piles of them, all with the poison sign cleary showing.
today we caught a bus down to zacopane, at the start of the Tatra mountains, just on the border of slovakia. it was a bit of an interesting bus ride. i think we even got lost at some point as the driver did a 3 point turn in the middle of the road.
it is very beautiful and cold here. there is already snow on some of the surrounding mountains which we could see when the rain and clouds cleared thisafternoon. we caught the train up to a hill overlooking the town with the mountains in the background and it was just beautiful. however absoultley freezing and very very windy. by far the coldest that ive been since leaving home.
after a few nights here we are heading into solvakia, just on the other side of the mountains. we are going to stay for a few nights in a little hostel that is located in the mountains, about a 5km hike up from the top of the chairlift. should be a very beautiful and remote place.
