Krakow, Poland

This past weekend, I traveled to Krakow, Poland with a great woman from the Hash club. The experience began in fine form, as I shared a sleeper train car Thursday night with two older Hungarian women. We couldn't really speak to one another, but they offered me candy, so I felt pretty good about the situation.

Poland: 40M people, Polish language, Zloty currency
Krakow: ~800K people, Former capital and home of "Poland's Camelot," Known as one of Poland's most charming cities

Krakow is an awesome town. It has a huge, gorgeous central square that features one of Europe's prettiest cathedrals. Every hour, a trumpeter stands at the tallest window of the church and blares a tune that stops mid-way through. Apparently, this trumpeter would play a song to warn the town of attacks... until 1241, when he was hit by a Tartar arrow mid-way through and stopped mid-note.

Another highlight was a salt mine, constructed 700 years ago and Europe's oldest that's still in operation. There were 2000 caverns in the place, all made completely of salt. Our tour began when our guide seriously asked us to lick the walls. There were amazing salt carvings and cathedrals all the way through the mountain, partly due to tourism, partly due to the miner's boredom, partly due to the miner's need for religion in such a dangerous environment. For instance, Copernicus visited in the 1490s, so some miners carved a salt bust in his honor. The above picture is of the salt mine's Chapel of St. Kinga, constructed for the Hungarian princess credited with bringing the salt to Poland. Again, everything is salt. The chandeliers are made of salt crystals and the "tile" floor is actually carved salt. It was made by three miners who worked separately over a period of decades. All of the miners pooled their money to send one of the carvers to art school - in thanks, that carver came back and carved the Last Supper on one of the walls.

My friend and I lucked out - we stayed in the world's #1 hostel from 2007, as voted by users of a few famous hostel websites. It was really fun and really clean (these don't usually go together at backpacker joints) and we met some neat people, including 4 Army officers about to re-deploy to Iraq. At one dinner, 3 of the 5 present had climbed Kilimanjaro that summer and a 4th had lived in Arusha, Tanzania (the nearest major town) for a few years. So, it was a great group.

While in Krakow, we also visited Auschwitz. I will post separately about that.