The Cougar Patrol

The next stop on the eastern swing through Europe was Krakow, Poland. An ancient city, and former home to the kings of the old Polish Monarchy, the city itself was comprised of many ancient buildings and squares. Home to many large universities, it is a popular desitination for travelers and students alike. So in other words, par-tay.

Since Krakow had the good fortune to be not be bombed into rubble by either the Nazis or the Soviets, the buildings there are very, very old. The advantage to this is that all the bars are set in these maze-like basements. That made for an incredibly cool atmosphere, especially in some of the cooler lounges. Good times were certainly had, and LOTS of vodka was consumed. On then, to the pictures.


The first stop I made upon checking into my hostel was the salt mines at Wielizcka. this mine goes 400 feet under ground, and to get down there, you had to walk down these stairs. For a while. Yikes.


In the mine, which was over 700 years ol,d there were a great many statues and chapels carved out. This first photo is a statue of a saint and a miner giving an offering (Poland is extremely Catholic), and it is carved entirely out of salt. One of the highlights of this place is the fact that you could scratch pure salt off the walls and eat it.


This is the world's deepest church, and it wasa massive room. Apparently, they say mass here every sunday. All told, it reminded me of one of those old villain hideouts like you'd see in a James Bond movie.

This is one of the tunnels underground. It was about 500 meters long. there were tons ofthese tunnels under there, supposedly a couple hundred miles worth. Crazy.

This is the courtyard of the Main castle on the Wawel hill. Pretty snazzy interior. All that white stuff? That's snow. It never went above freezing this entire visit.

This is St. Mary's church in Rynek Glowny, the main square area. You can see it sticking up in the middle of the first photo at the top of the page. It was a huge building, and very ornate inside. Unfortunately, my flash sucks, and it got dark at 3 pm, so I couldn't get any interior shots.

This is the Wawel Cathedral, where all the kings of Poland are buried. It was incredibly beautiful, yada yada yada, and I lied to a priest to get my admission cut to 1.3rd of the price (I do so look 25, dammit). The many little domes are the various differing chapels along the side of the nave.

Another view of Rynek Glowny, from the corner of St. Mary's church. It was all set up for christmas fairs. It also had some incredibly good polish food, which made for a tasty dinner one night. The big building in the middle is the old market place where the trading occured.

This is the city opera house. It looked rather pretty in the nighttime lights.

A view of the Vistula River, which ran along the southern side of the town. Good times.

The second day in Krakow, I visited Auschwitz. That was a rough trip. It was extremely cold, in the middle of nowhere, and there was snow all over. So you sort of got a feeling for how these people lived. The barbed wire was everywhere.

This is one of the guard towers leading into the camp (I'm shooting from inside). The two railroad tracks go to the back of the camp where the crematoriums are located. Not a pretty sight, as they're still there.

Lastly, I took a tour of an old communist utopia factory town in this little POS Trabant, and Eastern German "luxury good". How luxurious was it? The gas tank fed the engine by direct gravity injection, aka, the tank was over the top of the engine block. No fuel pumps here, no sir.

In all Krakow was a fun little city. From there, it was off to Prague, and the last stop on the journey.