Right, where was I? Oh yeah: Poland.
An interesting thing we did in Krakow was vist this salt mine, in the town of Wieliczka.
It's a labrinth of passageways and cavernous chambers, and is at its deepest is 300m below the surface. The passageways stretch for some 300 km, but the tour is a mere 1% of that. We were led on the tour by one of the most wryly humourous elderly Polish ex-miners you are ever likely to meet.
An interesting thing we did in Krakow was vist this salt mine, in the town of Wieliczka.
It's a labrinth of passageways and cavernous chambers, and is at its deepest is 300m below the surface. The passageways stretch for some 300 km, but the tour is a mere 1% of that. We were led on the tour by one of the most wryly humourous elderly Polish ex-miners you are ever likely to meet.
To get down, you walk, on this creaky wooden staircase, spiraling down into the endless depths:
If you look long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. (Nietzsche)
It was a working salt mine until a few years ago, and was in operation since 1200 or so. Now it is a tourist attraction, and inclidesa range of sculptures, all carved from salt by miners, some brilliant, some naff.
You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its flavor, with what will it be salted?
This is the the zentith (or perhaps nadir is more appropriate) of the tour: a true chapel, where everything from the flagstones and the chandeliers you can see behind us to bas-relief friezes depicting biblical scenes are all made of salt.
Surprisingly, because as we all know the medieval man was not a tall fellow, neither Andrew or I banged our heads once.
Feeling bizarrely refreshed as if returning from the seaside, (especially given we as far from the sea as we had ever been) we left Krakow and turned towards the main destination in South-West Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau.
