Grey salt mining

26.11.06

Took a trip down the salt mines yesterday. I was impressed to learn they'd been mining salt just outside Kracow for more than 500 years! The mine is huge, it has large caverns dug out of rocksalt, some of which have been turned into chapels, cathedrals, ballrooms, displays etc. and feature statues and chandeliers etc. All made of sodium chloride of varying pureness. Quite weird.

I had expected the interiors would be all white and glittering somehow, but they were more grey and just slightly sparkly. The salt-crystal chandeliers were cool in a whacky sort of way, but looked a bit blobby and thick - like some kind of Dinosaur Designs lapshade made from chunks of clear perspex strung together.

Some of the statues were so old they'd melted into formlessness from years of humid air swishing by. We wondered how long it would take to dissolve, say, the statue of the pope if you immersed it in water? The tour guide made hilarious jokes about how a small statue of a dog's face had decomposed due to hungry tourists licking it off. Guffaw

Then we drank a beer 100 metres underground, just because we could, and caught the lift back up the shaft, packed in with about 10 other tourists. After Isco's 'soup with a sausage' for lunch, I think they suffered more than we did.

Last night we checked out some bars around Kazimirs - the area of town in which we have been residing. Did I mention this cool hostel we are in? It's called Good Bye Lenin, it's only about 6 months old and features funky red and white stencil art on the walls and quotes from Lenin such as "A lie told often enough becomes truth" - How true that statement is about the last place we were in - Nathan's Tinea Shack in Warsaw. Ugh!

Anyway, as legend goes, there are more bars per square metre in Kracow than anywhere else. And this seems fairly true. We went to some of the coolest places ever though, decorated with 1930s wedding photos, tiny tables with table cloths and lit almost entirely by candlelight. I got a cup of tea in a beautiful gilt-edged cup, with saucer and they didn't even look at me oddly for ordering tea in a bar. It's possibly not even worth saying I wish they had places like that in Sydney because it's just not gonna happen. Melbourne maybe.