April 8, 2009

After sleeping in until 11 today, we had a lazy afternoon. Ania and Nikki went to walk around town while I stayed behind and cleaned up the apartment a bit. Anna came over around 3:30 and took us to her office so we could pay the rent. She also asked us when to send the cleaning lady over to change the sheets and towels and such. As we had our Salt Mine tour at 4, we told Anna to just send the cleaning lady today.

Very soon after we got back to our apartment, we went back downstairs and met up with Mike, the guy taking us to our tour. We hopped into the van, the same one we took to Auschwitz, and drove about 45 minutes to a small town outside of Krakow where the salt mine is located. After about a 20 minute wait, we entered the salt mine with our English tour guide.

We walked down 54 floors, totaling about 340 steps before entering the first part of the salt mine opened to tourists around 34 meters below the surface. The tour consisted of only 1% of the total mine going down as low as 150 meters below the surface. We walked along the designated path, through caverns and chapels constructed by the miners with only primitive mining tools like the pick ax. There were many sculptures done by the miners in the rock salt found in the mine. The sculptures were magnificent to behold, especially knowing that no professional artist did the sculpting, only amateur miners.

The first chapel we visited was the chapel dedicated to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things. Miners were said to have prayed to St. Anthony so that they would not be lost in the mine. After doing down more steps we visited a cavern turned into almost a cathedral. At 101 meters below the surface, the church was made entirely of salt: chandeliers, reliefs on the walls, statues, side chapels, floor, ceiling, walls—all of salt. There were reliefs of Harod and the magi, the slaughter of the innocents, the nativity, and travel to Bethlehem, fleeing into Egypt, the wedding of Cannes, the Last Supper, the crucifixion, and Doubting Thomas. All were beautiful reliefs, especially the one of the Last Supper which had excellent use of perspective but was only 12 centimeters deep. Inside the church, which our guide told us has Mass every Sunday and can be used for weddings; there was a salt monument to John Paul II, who visited the mines as a student twice and bishop once but never as the Pope.

We descended into many more caverns and other interesting sites before taking a lift back up to the surface. I bought a few gifts for people that I hope they will enjoy and even found something for Raquel’s baby shower.

After returning to the apartment we had a simple dinner of noodles and sauce before turning in for the night.