Slovakia

On our way from Krakow, Poland to Budapest, Hungary, we drove through Slovakia.

Welcome to Slovakia

The landscape of Slovakia is very beautiful with hills, the Tatra Mountains, trees, and open areas that have not been developed yet. However, there are also some very ugly factories from communist times after Word War II. In the mountainous areas of Poland and Slovakia, wood is very important, and we saw wooden homes and churches. The roads in Slovakia are very windy and bumpy.

Slovakian countryside

Slovakian castle

Wieliczka Salt Mine in Krakow, Poland

We took an excursion to Wieliczka Salt Mine. The mines were used for mining salt until the late 1990s, but they were open to tourism long before that. Each of the rooms were mined for salt, and then some miners carved statues out of salt after work hours.

Salt statues

The salt mines house the largest underground chapel. It has a hand carved altar and many reliefs in the walls, including a nativity scene and a copy of The Last Supper. Even the tile in the floor is hand carved, and the chandeliers are made from salt crystals. There is also a statue of the pope. The whole chapel was carved by only three miners, except for the statue of the pope, which was carved by a fourth.

St King's Chapel

Altar and salt crystal chandelier

Hand-carved relief of The Last Supper

Salt statue of the pope

The salt is surprisingly gray from impurities. Many people find it hard to believe that salt can be that gray, so they let you lick the walls to taste the salt.

Phil can verify that the mine walls were salty

Krakow, Poland

We started our tour of Krakow in the Jewish quarter, called Kazimierz. Before WWII, more than 70,000 Jews lived here, but now there are only 200. Only one synagogue is still used for services. The rest have been turned into museums. There are many cafes that serve Jewish food, but they are not kosher because there is no rabbi to certify them.

Former synagogue

Jewish-style restuarants

Only active synagogue in Krakow

The bus then dropped us off at Wawel Hill. We walked up the hill and saw Wawel Castle and the cathedral where Pope John Paul was bishop, arch bishop, and cardinal until 1976 when he became pope. The Polish are very religious (>90% attend church) and about 85% are Catholic, so the Pope is a great symbol of Poland. There were statues of him everywhere.

Wawel Hill

Cathedral on Wawel Hill

Interior courtyard of Wawel Castle

The dragon is the symbol of Krakow. The legend goes that a large dragon used to live in the river. He would eat 5 girls each week. No one could kill the dragon until one man killed a sheep, filled the carcass with sulfur, and left it by the dragon's den. The dragon ate the sheep. It did not kill him, but it made him so thirsty that he kept drinking water until he exploded. The man who came up with this idea was named Krak.

Phil and Julie and a view of Krakow

Royal Road connecting Wawel Hill with the Old Town

Horse carriage in the Old Town

In the center of the Old Town is the cloth market. Now they also sell all kinds of great souvenirs: dragon trinkets, amber jewelry, wooden items including chess boards, glass items, embroidered clothes and doilies, etc.

The cloth market

St. Mary's Cathedral is located on the corner of the Old Town square. The story goes that a long time ago, a trumpeter played the trumpet to warn of the invading Tartar army. However, the trumpeter got shot in the throat by an arrow in the middle of his tune. So now, someone in the tower plays the same tune on the trumpet, stops part way through, and waves his trumpet to the crowd each hour.

St. Mary's Cathedral

Beyond the square is a fortress built to protect the city.

Fortress

Bridge that reminded us of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice

City Gate at the end of the Old Town Square

Theater

Dessert pierogies
Sweet cheese, blueberry, and strawberry pierogies in a cream sauce. Very yummy!

As we were walking around the square after dinner, we saw a lot of police gathering on one side of the square and heard people chanting on the other. We were, of course, in the middle and wanted to get out before something happened. As we started to make our way through the square, we saw that the people were all wearing Polish scarves, and we realized that there must be a soccer game on TV. Police were surrounding the church and had bullet-proof vests, shields, and guns. We managed to get out of the square and later found out that the game was the Polish national championship and that Krakow was playing in the game and won.

Auschwitz-Birkenau & Auschwitz Concentration Camps

We stopped at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp to view the site and then had a guided tour of the nearby Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Auschwitz was the original camp. When that wasn't big enough, Birkenau and other satellite camps were built. Birkenau is much larger than Auschwitz.

At Birkenau, we saw the large brick entrance to the camp with the railroad tracks that brought the prisoners into the camp. Once inside the camp, there were rows of brick barracks to the left that were used by the officers. To the right is where the wooden barracks for the prisoners once existed. At the time of liberation, the guards and officers burned the prisoners barracks. All that remain are the brick chimneys. There are rows and rows of chimneys. A few prisoners barracks have been rebuilt to serve as a reminder of the conditions in which the prisoners lived. The train tracks go to the far end of the camp, where the crematoriums once were. These were also destroyed before liberation.

Train tracks leading into the entrance of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp

Rows of chimneys where prisoners' barracks once stood

The first two barracks appeared to just be rows of toilets.

The rest of the barracks had rows of bunk beds. We were told that each barrack held 400 prisoners with more than one person per mattress.

Bunker used by guards during harsh weather

At Auschwitz, we had a guided tour of the camp.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp

The Infamous "Work Will Make You Free" Gate

We were taken into many of the barracks, which have now been converted into a museum. Some showed photos of Jews and other groups arriving at the camp. Others had registration paper work and photos of the prisoners. Others had thousands of shoes, luggage, glasses, prostheses, and tons of hair that had not yet been used or destroyed.

We also saw a barrack filled with bunk beds and torture chambers. There were standing cells too small for prisoners to sit, and there were dark suffocation chambers. This is where Zyklon B was first tested for gassing prisoners.

Barracks used to hold prisoners during WWII

Electric fence used to keep the prisoners in the camp

We also saw the showers (gas chambers) and crematorium. Estimates based on registration records and capacity estimate that 1.3 million people diead at Auschwitz and that 1.1 million were Jews mostly from Hungary.

Crematorium above the gas chambers

Czestochowa, Poland - Jasna Gora Monastery

The first stop along our drive from Warsaw to Krakow was the Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa, Poland. This monastery is known for its painting of the Black Madonna and Lech Walesa's Nobel Peace Prize.

Entry to the Jasna Gora Monastery

Steeple

A monk gave us a tour of the cathedral. This monk lived in Doylestown, PA for 9 years, because he was placed in a church there.

Inside the ornate cathedral

The church was packed, because several dozen children were receiving their first communion.

Chidren receiving their first communion

The Black Madonna is at the front of the nave. Despite the ongoing service, we were able to walk around the church and get close up to photograph the painting.

The Black Madonna is believed to have been painted by St. Luke on a wooden table top from Mary & Jesus's home. As the wood ages, the skin of the mother and child darkens. The painting supposedly has miraculous healing powers, so many people, particularly Poles, go on pilgrimages to see the painting.

The outfits are made for the painting by the nuns. There are several different outfits for the painting, which are changed periodically.

Black Madonna of Czestochowa

One of many copies of the Black Madonna at the monastery

We also saw the treasury, which holds the other outfits for the painting as well as old hand-embroidered tunics worn by the priests and the veil worn by Mother Theresa at her first communion.

The monastery also has Lech Walesa's Nobel Peace Prize. Walesa was a Polish union leader who ended communism in Poland through the movement "Solidarity", which used strikes and peaceful protests. Communism in Poland ended in 1989, and then Walesa became the first president of Poland.

Lech Walesa's Nobel Peace Prize

Photos of Lech Walesa

Warsaw, Poland

Our hotel was located near the Palace of Culture and Science, the tallest building in Poland. The building was a gift from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Many Poles, particularly during the Soviet era, viewed it as a symbol of Soviet domination.

Palace of Culture and Science

The first stop on our guided bus tour of Warsaw was the statue of Chopin in the Lazienkowski Park. We had a group photo taken in front of the statue. If anyone from the tour has a digital copy of the group photo, I would love to get a copy!

Chopin's mother was Polish, and his father was French. He spent his first 20 years in Warsaw and his last 18 in Paris, so the Polish love to say that he was more Polish than French. He is buried in France, but he asked his sister to send his heart back to Poland. His heart is buried in a church in Warsaw. So, the Chopin statue in this park is under a weeping willow tree next to a heart-shaped pond.

Statue of Chopin

Plaque in a Warsaw church saying "Here rests the heart of Frederic Chopin"

Monument commemorating the Polish uprising against the Germans during World War II

Jewish Ghetto Uprising Memorial

Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers with the Palace of Culture and Science in the background

Statue of Nicholas Copernicus
Planets and their orbits were inlayed in the ground around the statue.

Zodiac clock on the side of a building

The most scenic view of Warsaw:
The Old Town with colorful buildings, King Zygmunt's Column, and the royal winter palace on the right

The royal winter palace

Inside St. Anne's Church
The church had marble columns, but a lot of the fancy details were painted on the walls and ceiling as if they didn't have the money for the real things.

Phil by the Old City Wall

As the story goes, there were mermaids living in the nearby river, but it became too polluted, so the mermaids came out of the water, grew legs, and moved to Chicago, which has a larger Polish population than Warsaw.

A statue of a mermaid in the Old Town Square

At the end of our tour, we watched a movie about Warsaw before and after WWII. During the war, 85% of the city was destroyed from bombing and burning of the buildings. Amazingly, most of the city was rebuilt in the 1950s.

A plaque outside the house where Madame Curie was born

We took our first excursion of the trip to see Palace Wilanow. The palace was built by King John III. He and his wife and children lived there during the summer. There was a large memorial to the king and his wife outside:

Memorial to King John III and his wife

Palace Wilanow, which looks similar to Versailles

Julie in front of Palace Wilanow

We were not able to take photos inside of the palace, so we'll have to describe the interior.

We were able to see the king's and queen's sleeping chambers. The rooms had elaborate fabrics on the beds and as wallpaper. The painting on the queen's ceiling was recently restored and looked beautiful. In many of the other rooms, there were large collections of paintings.

In the hallways, the walls and ceilings were painted with religious and nature scenes. However, several have been destroyed by sun or water. There is also a large statue of King John defeating the Turks and Tartars, saving Christianity in Poland.

King John and his wife had 12 children, but only 4 survived to adulthood. The children's bedrooms were on the second floor and were supposedly only half height, but we did not get to see that floor of the palace.

Out back, there is a French style garden that was being renovated.