This may sound terrible, but I really don't have anything to say here about Auschwitz. I have a lot of private thoughts, but all I have to say here is that if the opportunity presents itself, you should visit. I'm really glad that I did.
Auschwitz was a full day, and the following night was similar to the first: dinner, drinks at the hostel, late night munchies, then back to the hostel to sleep.
The next morning, Lia and I decided to part ways with Jennifer and Jesse. While they headed to the Jewish quarter to shop, Lia and I headed to Wieliczka! The Wieliczka salt mines have been operating since the 13th century.
The inclusive tours, with transportation, weren't running in the morning, and so Lia and I had to navigate there by tram AND bus. There were a bunch of stops for the bus in Wieliczka and we had to ask the bus driver where to get off for the mines. We started to walk the wrong way to look at a sign and he honked at us and everyone on the bus pointed in the direction we had to walk. Pretty sure a few Polish people got a good laugh at us.
The lines to get in were EPIC! You would have thought it was Cedar Point or something. We had to wait in line for over an hour just to buy our tickets, and then even longer until the English-language tour started.
The tour was 3.5 km and covered less than 1% of the mines!
We walked down a billion stairs
(according to Wikipedia it is actually "some 400" but look at that! That's really far down!)
And we saw a bunch of stuff carved out of salt. Some parts looked like a cave, but none of it actually was. They just looked like it because of the path they carved into the salt. There was even a taxidermied horse. Yeah, I just turned "taxidermy" into an adjective.
There were a few chapels.
That is painted wood. It is 200 years old and has never been restored, because the salt is such an effective preservative. Cool, huh?
That was nothing compared to the biggest chapel
The entire thing was carved by just three men-- and only one man at a time!
This recreation of the Last Supper is just slightly more successful that my family's at Thanksgiving '06
I think they had the advantage though. Stone doesn't laugh, and you can carve as many people as you need.
But I digress. Lia took a picture of me
Then we realized that her alignment was less than ideal, and I appeared to be wearing the chandelier as a hat. Hilarious, but a redo was necessary
Also, apparently everyone's fave pope, JPII, once visited! They commemorated this event with a salt statue
Then came a weird light show and an art exhibit. Apparently there is also a boat portion in the works that looked very much like the best scene of Willy Wonka. So basically, the coolest salt mine ever. I could probably live there if I didn't enjoying seeing sunlight every now and then.
Afterward we found a really simple shuttle that cost as much as a tram ticket and it took us directly back to the city.
We met up with Lia and Jesse at the hostel again, ate some more, and then headed for the NIGHT TRAIN! To Prague!
Such a crazy experience, so glad I did it.
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