Salt mine! But first, other stuff.
I was told the typical food of Krakow is the deep-fried crispy pork knuckle, so I went to a typical restaurant that had tablecloths with those awesome Polish flower patterns, they look like this:
Where I ordered the pork knuckle. I have limited knowledge of the porcine foods being brought up without them in my home so I was not prepared for the massive meat knob that was placed before me.
Seriously, it was huge. I started delving in and it was nice. It tasted exactly like a turkey leg from the RennFaire. And it’s really not as much meat as you’d think, there’s a giant bone going through the middle. The knuckle came with mustard and horseradish. Lemme tell you something: Eastern Europe loves its horseradish and I am 100% here for it. Horseradish is a wildly underappreciated foodstuff and we need to incorporate it into more of our daily meals because hell yeah. So good. The Moomins got another authentic Polish dish which was duck with apples. She loved it.
But the true star of the meal was the personal pan pizza-sized breadloaf filled with mushroom soup. Yes. Oh yes.
The other restaurant we went to, and I recommend this heartily, is Grandma Raspberry. That’s the name of the restaurant. Raspberries are a big deal in Poland, kind of like blueberries in Maine. The top floor of the restaurant is fine but we were seated in the basement which… okay. I’ve never personally been to a bar / brothel in the Wild West during the gold rush so I can’t say if this is what it was like but I can say that this is what I imagine it was like. Sort of. The basement was decorated with swagged fabric and flowery couches and lamps that I can only describe as slutty (“Gentlemen, why don’t you rest your weary feet here for a moment and have a refreshin’ glass of fizzy water while I go get the girls?”). There was a man in the corner playing jingly-jangly music on a pianer. The waitstaff was all underage pretty blonde girls with roses in their hair (“We got a lovely new crop of ladies on the train last week, they’re as fresh as a new penny and rarin’ to please”). I think in an attempt to “Grandma” it up there were vitrines filled with antique dolls but it only contributed to the prostitute-y vibe.
Make an effort to check it out if you go to Krakow. The food was really good too. Here’s the menu: http://kuchniaubabcimaliny.pl/files/menu/krakow-ul-slawkowska-17_12-11-2013.pdf
Okay, salt mine. Remember the whale bones which were mistaken for dragon bones earlier? That means there used to be a sea there. The sea dried up, the salt was left behind. For millenia bubbly salt water came up to the surface and people gathered that but around 1300 the water dried up so people started digging for the salt crystals. The salt is vaguely green due to a small amount of other minerals mixed in with the salt, same as how Himalayan salt is pink. In a couple of spots the salt is reddish due to minute amounts of iron. But it’s all mostly greenish.
It starts with you waiting in a room that looks like it’s from a train station. The salt mine has been a tourist attraction for hundreds of years apparently. It’s still in use and extremely large. We were in there for about two hours walking through both big and small chambers and we only saw about 6% of the mine, so there’s a ton more that’s actually being mined presently.
Important to know: if you suffer from claustrophobia don’t visit this mine. In order to keep oxygen flowing there are all kinds of scary metal doors and the doors behind you have to slam closed in order for the doors in front of you to open so sometimes you are trapped in small shafts with many people for a several seconds at a time.
You then walk down waaaaay too many steps. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it except they were kind of spiral steps so you get dizzy and lose your sense of up or down about halfway through. It is not awesome.
Because salt is plastic and has some flex to it the miners cut down the entire forest surrounding the mine to prop up the inside. A great deal of it is painted white because you need fewer lights to illuminate a white space. It makes everything easier to see and when it’s 1753 and you’re under the earth dealing with oil lamps that is definitely a plus.
Until fairly recently the miners used their own back-breaking labor to chop the salt out of the walls. Now they use machines and dynamite but in the parts we were in you could clearly see the pick marks from the pick axes.
And in some places moisture got in and made what is called “salt cauliflowers.”
The early employees there were apparently treated really well. They were paid decently and they only worked eight hour shifts. The only problem is they had to walk up and down all those gazillion stairs. Some of the workers had artistic skills and that’s where the coolness of this place kicks in. Being super-devout Catholics they carved a chapel. The floor, the walls, the chandeliers – all carved out of salt and all by mine workers. It’s very impressive.
There are other chapels throughout the mine but they have non-salt elements. WHICH IS CHEATING.
There are pools of saltwater and no surprise here, they are very salty. In the 1800s there used to be rowboats you could rent and paddle around down there but a boat tipped over and three people drowned so no more rowboats.
In addition to the chapels and pools there are niches with sculptures, both religious and non-religious. There’s King Casimir the Great who, it is said, “inherited a Poland of wood and died in a Poland of stone,” implying that he built up Poland and brought it into the modern era (as modern as it gets in 1350).
They have gnomes that come to life at night and help the miners (TRUTH. FACTS. POLAND.)
There’s Princess Kinga and the story of the mine. Taken from Wikipedia:
There is a legend about Princess Kinga, associated with the Wieliczka mine. The Hungarian princess was about to be married to Boles?aw V the Chaste, the Prince of Kraków. As part of her dowry, she asked her father, Béla IV of Hungary, for a lump of salt, since salt was prizeworthy in Poland. Her father King Béla took her to a salt mine in Máramaros. She threw her engagement ring from Boles?aw in one of the shafts before leaving for Poland. On arriving in Kraków, she asked the miners to dig a deep pit until they come upon a rock. The people found a lump of salt in there and when they split it in two, discovered the princess’s ring. Kinga had thus become the patron saint of salt miners in and around the Polish capital.
There are a couple of people I do not recognize:
And Pope John Paul II who I very much recognize:
As we headed out we walked through the giant room where wedding receptions are held. It is pretty common for people to get married in the salt chapel.
In a children’s play area there are anthropomorphic salt crystals harvesting… themselves, I guess.
And if you’re wondering did I lick a random probably unclean wall? I most certainly did. It tasted pleasantly salty.
Okay! That was my trip to Eastern Europe (you should go) in winter (but not in winter). Now back to art and internet posts.
