Polska (a long-ish journey)

Howdy!  It's been a busy travel week for me, though it was the last leg for a while - more on that later.  For now, we have Poland to talk about!  My friend Alex expressed a desire to see something 'happy' in Poland, saying he thought it was the saddest place on earth.  While Poland has not often enjoyed national sovereignty, and it's periods of outside rule have included the Nazis and the Soviets, the country has many beautiful architectural and cultural marvels, and Krakow, with it's circle park and trumpeter are no exception (can you tell that I'm writing this with internet access and some time?  Good old links).  C and I spent a total of four days in Krakow (the final an unintended consequence of a transportation mix-up) before moving on to the equally picturesque Polish town of Torun.

I had traveled through Krakow once before in 2001, on my 'study abroad' European tour.  Nick Pawlowksi hosted me there for two days and I remembered distinctly the parks around the old city (where the walls used to be) and the parks along the river where Nick and I spent an afternoon.  C and I also enjoyed an afternoon of lazing by the river enjoying pear vodka and tonic water in the 70 degree sun.  It was one of the most peaceful afternoons of my trip.  Other highlights include hearing a concert in a 14th century Church of St Peter and St Paul, touring the great salt mine of Wieliczka (will-itch-ka), and spending a number of afternoons sitting in the center of Krakow, admiring it's churches and tower and spring atmosphere.  So, for you Alex, some happy pictures of Krakow:

Note the decoration on the top 

Church of St Mary

The Trumpeter!  (look closely)

Inside Church of St Mary

The central square - the Trumpter lived in the church in the background

View from the same spot - towards the tower

The Tower

Fearsome guard of the tower

The Church where we heard the concert

A portion of the wall at nighttime

Center square with maypoles (I think)

The church!  (again)

On our third day, one of the very few cloudy days we had while traveling, we visited the Wielizcka salt mine - the 14th oldest corporation in the world (!).  The mine was lovely, much more open than the underground city we visited in Turkey, and much warmer than the silver mine we saw in Salbohed Sweden.  We toured a very small part of it (3% I think?), and saw many lovely statues and carvings, along with a few chapels and what they called an underground cathedral.  Everything was salt - the walls, carvings, even the chandelier - and while some of it was white and chrystally, most was the dull gray of rock salt.  It was an impressive tour - I hope the photos can do it justice:

Everything was made from wood and rope - everything else corroded like crazy 

The story is long but basically the princess inherited a Hungarian salt mine, but then they found salt in Poland (white gold), with her ring in it - this is the first bit of salt mined, found when they were digging a well

These dudes would crawl in to burn off methane - 1 in 10 died

Salt stalagtites

Old stairs

In the chapel

Everything carved from salt

Additionally, all of the carvings were done by miners - not professional sculptors

Salt chandelier - 2,000 pieces

JP2 - who was from the area

Support structure in the mine

After our Krakow visit and more transportation troubles than I've ever had in that short a period of time, we arrived in Torun, a small, similarly lovely town in Northern Poland.  Transportation mis-adventures take one: on our way home from the salt mine, we were told to hop a bus for the 15 minute trip back to town.  We did so, onto a packed bus - no ticket machine in sight, the driver a long way off.  We had just decided to try our luck when it ran out and a ticket checker guy came on (with a security helper who got in the face of someone who had our backs when we complained that there were NO indications of how one might get a ticket, nor a machine anywhere in sight) - alas to no avail.  We got off the bus, Corinne doing the talking, and we got ticketed for one count of freeloading (a 35 dollar bus ride - ouch) but less than a two count.  And C is not under warrant in a Prussian state.  Phew!  Take two: on our first attempt to leave Krakow, I asked for two tickets for the 942 to Torun, and was sold two tickets for a trip to Torun - only they were for the 930, which is a 'regional' train, not express, and did not have assigned seats, and was not for the 942 which we were not allowed to board.  This was confusing because nothing on the ticket indicated much at all other than Krakow to Torun (regional tickets are not for specific times).  Fine fine, we spent another day.  Take three: the next day, when we DID get tickets for the 942 express to Torun with a change in Warsaw, we found that we had tickets for the wrong rail company, whose trains alternated hourly with the one we were on.  So basically we had to buy new tickets on the train for the second leg of our journey and ask for some of our money back for our unused ticket in Torun.  Take four: after Torun and Gdansk (which I will detail for you in a moment) we found the Gdansk airport no problem and I checked my bag with our airline Wizz-Air, which was a classy and inexpensive as it sounds.  Corinne, having checked in online, did not check in at the airport.  So when we were in line to board (open seating on low-cost carriers in Europe), she was told that she needed to have her ID checked before she would be allowed to board.  Luckily by a mistake of mine, we were in the wrong line anyway and had a half hour.  Still, not a terribly comfortable amount of time for someone to journey back through security to the check-in counter (closed) to get her ticket stamped.  She was back in 10 minutes and we, breathing deeply, were on our way back to Sweden.

I'll toss a few final photos of Poland and a description of our time in Torun and Gdansk on the next entry - this one is too long as it is.  Thanks for reading!