Cristal Park Tarnow

Today I went to visit a salt mine in the town of Bochnia not too far from Krakow that dates back to the 1200s. The mine is no longer in operation and has been converted into a tourist attraction, which includes not only tours of the old mining facilities but an underground sanatorium, hotel, restaurant, disco and sports hall. The claim is that the air is so fresh down in the mine that one will recover 14 times ...

... to Gabrielka's count :-)) Fortunately they just got a trampoline so I had a chance to work off some of the calories afterword! Burning calories came with a price however, since somehow Asia and I got the idea that it would be fun to jump on the trampoline with her sitting on my shoulders. While I did enjoy myself while this was going on, the next day, ohh my back!

... old wooden structures are being replaced by larger, more modern homes. The roads are being paved as well, but there still no bridge on the road to her town, so we needed to take a cable-drawn ferry a short distance across the river. We drove onto the wooden boat and 7 zwoty and 2 minutes later, we were on the other side! As we travelled to visit each house, homemade Kielbasa was almost always offered ...

So we boarded an overnight train to Krakow, Poland and were greeted by our neighbours for the night, 7 Irish lads and their beers. So I tried to sleep for a while then couldnt and ended up going in and chatting to them for hours. We got the singalong of all the Disney movies going on, these guys were absolutely classic, laugh a minute, smart *****. Linda joined me after she heard my lovely singing of Behemian Rhapsody...then we were told to shut up several ...

While in Roznow we went on a day trip to Nowy Sacz. Nowy Sacz is a medium sized mountain town. It is located near the border and is not really accessible from any major through routes. It has a well preserved core of old buildings and a beatiful square in the middle of town, which itself is centered around a freshly restored city hall. The square is full of pubs with patios, and this being a nice ...

... was raining so I was pleased to be inside. At Krakow it was a hectic mess. I found the board that said about buses and times and where they were going from. It seemed that every 10 minutes a bus was going to Zakopane. I went outside and found loads of people waiting to get on. I went to the train station that was next door and found that the next train went at 5 and took 4 hours to get there! I know that the book says that buses are quicker as they go the more ...

Hi all, sorry for the lapse in traveloging. I ended up extending my stay in Krakow 2 days. I had a great time there but as a result my visits to cesky krumlov and vienna have been greatly compressed. Faced with writing you stuff about these towns and actually seeing them, I have chosen the latter. I have some great pics to upload but USB and cesky krumlov don't mix so that will have to wait until greece. So I'm writing this log retroactively about Krakow but from Cesky ...

... he could use one of them as a placebo. They perfected the zyclon-b gas chamber down there as well, killing 600 soviet POWs in the 'test run' that would lead to bigger things. Finally there was a 'first generation' gas chamber/crematorium just outside the fence. 70,000 people died in there and there are deep scratch marks covering the walls and door. The spooky reality is that auschitz was a small camp. The 2nd generation stuff was far more efficient and larger in scale. About ...

... to visit the Wieliczka Salt mines. I got the minibus from the street outside the bus station for the short 10km trip to the mines. As I approached the entrance building I saw several guides sitting on benches outside the entrance, wearing smart black uniforms, gold buttons and a little guide shield on their tunic like a sheriff's badge. Some carried a white miners helmet and a handbag style battery pack with the headtorch dangling by its cable. It was 47 zloty's ...

The begining of my move to Poland. We went to Nowy Sacz to visit the well acclaimed school WSB-NLU. We walked up and saw "building A", and wished we hadn't put everything on this school. Then we moved on to the better parts of the campus, saw the inside of the department where we would be studing, and decided in the end it was the best ...