Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Rynek Square, Krakow, Poland.
It was a short walk from the Kraków Train Station to the Polonia Hotel, where we stayed for two nights while exploring Kraków, Auschwitz, and a salt mine.
In Krakow, there were very few remains of the walls surrounding the Royal Castle as we made our way to Rynek Square, this square is the largest in Europe and in the middle it has a covered bazaar.
The nearby Saint Mary’s Cathedral had a bugler in Bell tower, who performs every hour 24/7 at all four ordinates of the Bell Tower.
After stopping for a quick bite to eat, we continued onto the inside courtyard of the Royal Palace and along the outside ramparts that drops down to the river below with views of the city.
During the hot afternoon, I stopped several times for various types of lemonade.
I walked through the covered bazaar in the middle of Rynek Square, and enjoyed a string orchestra playing on the shady north side of the bazaar accompanied by an opera singer—her rendition of Carmen.
A few streets away from Rynek Square, I discovered they were having a pierogi competition. I enjoyed trying several of them, including a bigos, a mushroom and onion, and apple pierogis for just 19 zlotys—$5 USD.
It was then time to go on the tour of the Schindler‘s enamel factory by oversize golf cart. Schindler and his factory were featured in a Steven Spielberg movie called Schindler‘s List for he saved thousands of Jews from extermination by doctoring some paperwork.
As a part of the tour we stopped at the plaza in the former ghetto which had empty chairs that symbolized how the Nazis came through and throughout peoples’ personal belongings through the windows, including chairs.
Across the street, who is the pharmacy which played a role in rescuing other Jews from extermination.
After the tour I returned to Rynek Square to get another, bugle performance at the top of the hour. On the way we saw this bar, expressing similar sentiments about Putin, Covid, and Trump.
I enjoyed a delicious dinner at the Amber Restaurant, but had to move inside since it started to rain.
The following morning, I took a bus out to Auschwitz with its extermination camp.
We begin the tour by walking through a long tunnel and corridor where names of those who were exterminated was being read as we then came out to the beginning of the Auschwitz camp with its sign—Arbeit macht frei— work makes one free.
Our guide, Magdalena, very effectively conveyed to us enormity of these crimes against humanity through her descriptions and showing us the pictures in the various buildings we walked through that were used for processing and eventually executing prisoners
In some, there were piles of belongings, such as glasses, shoes, hair brushes and combs, and suitcases that prisoners were forced to leave behind.
One building included many pictures of the prisoners, but later on there were no pictures just names and later still, just blank frames to signify how prisoners had overwhelmed the process of documenting those the Nazi had exterminated.
In Building 11, we were showing the cells where people were tortured and later killed through a variety of means including where people were stripped naked and then taken out and shot. between buildings 10 and 11.
We came to another area where people who violated some of the camp rules, including attempting to escape or helping those who escape, were publicly hung as a warning to others not to violate the rules.
They had one room that had bales of human hair that had been stored to make blankets and bedding items
After leaving this portion of our tour, we returned to our minibus and drove to the Auschwitz II—Birkenau where our guide,Magdalena, rejoined us for the rest of the tour.
Much of Birkenau had been built with wooden barracks where prisoners were held before they were exterminated in the gas chambers. The Nazis had burned most of the barracks down before the Russians showed up to liberate the camp. They also moved many of the prisoners to other camps in advance of the Russians arrival.
We went to the end of the railroad tracks and saw the place shown that is bricked lined and underground where they had people stripped down and enter the “shower rooms” to be gassed and then later cremated.
There are individual memorials in each of 23 languages honoring those who had died.
Some of the Jewish prisoners had to carry out the role of handling the dead and cremating the remains. Most didn’t work there more than three months before they too were exterminated.
After that, we returned to towards Krakow to the Wieliczka Salt Mine.
Before going into the mine, we enjoyed having some beverages at a local café and decompress after experiencing the horrors of Auschwitz and Birkenau.
The salt mines had existed here since the 1400s and are currently being commercially worked.
We ended up going down about 500 feet in a series of stairs where we saw several scenarios of life in the mine along with lots of religious sculptures, friezes, and huge rooms for holding religious services.
They showed the evolution of mining and how mining was done to extract the salt. Currently they use hot water to create brine instead of dig out the minerals.
They even had a salt sculpture of Pope, John II who was born in Poland. Nearby there was a frieze of the Last Supper along with other religious events.
When it was time to leave, they asked if we wanted to stay another 20 minutes for more of a tour, but we were so tired, that we chose to head to the elevator. After walking several minutes along the corridor, descending a little bit more we came to where the elevators were.
I had imagined huge industrial type elevators like found in hospitals, but the ones we crammed into were stacked 3 on top of each other and were the smallest elevators. I’ve ever been in.
When I thought we were full, they put two more people in for the 45 second trip to the top—what a ride!
When we got out of the mine, the promised thunderstorms had shown up so we made a quick dash to our minibus, and our speedy driver got us back to our hotel in record time despite the rain.
By now it was about 9:45 PM, and it was too late to go to restaurants since they closed about 10 PM. I joined Simon and Rebekah to go to the nearby Polish 7/11 type store. I got two beverages and a Panini which the clerk heated.
Since my last meal was early breakfast, I enjoyed eating this sandwich, even though I don’t really like sandwiches, and drank a half a liter of sparkling lemonade.
By then it was time to shower, wash some clothes and go to bed.
After a big breakfast, we headed out to catch our 10:25 AM Flixbus for a 3 hour drive across the border to a resort in the Carpathian Mountain Range in a village called Tantranska Lomnica, Slovakia.
It was a rainy and cloudy travel day with temperatures around 62°F.
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