Wanna see a salt mine? Na Cl-ater.

Underground brine pool

Oh is this another blog? Well hello everyone, if anyone, who actually reads this blog. This last weekend we had an amazing trip to a beautiful town. Coming just short of Prague, Krakow in Poland is in my top two favorite cities we have had the amazing opportunity to visit! With an early morning wakeup call on Friday (that's right we got to skip class), we hopped on a bus and headed to Krakow. After a short nap we arrived, of course early, to the Salt Mine of all places. We waited in the gorgeous weather for our guide and ascended into oblivion. Now when I say oblivion i actually just mean 53 flights of stairs. But when you are walking down 53 flights of stairs it feels like oblivion.

The Cathedral

Our guide, whose dry humor was actually rather refreshing, gave us the run down on the history and appeal of the mines as well as information on what kind of salts we were seeing there. I could not for the life of me tell you when the mine first started up, but it was a long time ago. Running until the 1900's. As we walked along the rather spacious halls our guide informed us that because we were in an antibacterial area, we could lick the walls! Weird.... But you bet your sweet a** we did! There were four types of salt that we saw on our short tour. And I licked the walls a mere seven times. Well eight if you count trying the water. Our whole tour lasted about two and a half hours, but it didn't seem that long. We saw an amazing Cathedral (in the mine), an amazing pool, which the lady informed us that no we could not swim in, and even ended our tour with a 3D laser light show. All while we were hundreds of feet under ground! How do you beat that?

Krakow

Well don't worry because I will tell you how we beat that! We got back to our hostel and wouldn't you know it. The Americans found a pub crawl. So after heading out with a few friends and spending probably more than our fair share on delectable pierogis, scrumptious entrees of chicken, rabbit, and beef, and yes more than one bottle of wine we headed back to the hostel to get all dapper for the night ahead.
I will spare you from all the pub crawl stuff, more so because my mother will probably shoot me for just mentioning it. But we had the time of our lives. Twenty one of the twenty four of us went out that night, and wouldn't you know it WE ALL MADE IT BACK?!?! It actually made me rather sad that we only have a few more weeks together because this bunch of misfits is actually starting to grow on me.

The flying rat population

Any way enough with all the sappy crap. The next day we had the longest, most intricately drawn out tour I have ever endured. Not that I remember anything from it... Sorry UNK. But from there we were off on our own. I bought a few souvenirs and had some food; which okay break for a second, one thing about this trip and this was really the only thing I had a problem with... I hate birds so extremely, and Krakow just seemed to be the biggest nest of disgusting flying rats that you would ever find. They just would NOT leave me alone... Okay back to being studious. So after I had my freak out on the birds I headed back to the hostel to find a good tattoo place close by. But having been out the entire night before... I fell asleep. So that night I figured it was probably a good idea to stay in and catch up on my rest.
Our last and more solemn day in Krakow was spent at Schindler's Factory, walking through our guide did an amazing job of giving us the Polish history of the Holocaust and the few good years before. Seeing the names was just as eye opening as Auschwitz was, but with a lighter side to it. Regardless it was chilling. We finished up our tour, walking out into the rain, and headed back to good Ole Olomouc!

Guess who's back... back... back... Back again...