wieliczka kopalnia soli

we went to the Wieliczka salt mines today. It was quite interesting. I thought ti would initially be a dry tour of the importance of salt and how they built the mines. well it wasn't about the importance of salt really, but it did go a bit into how they built the mines.

I licked a wall.

It wasn't pure salt, it was rock salt. and the awesome miners carved statues and chapels out of the rocks. they were like dwarves! in fact there were carved sculptures of dwarves working. there's a legend that the dwarves appear in the night and help with some of the work that the workers were meant to do. There were even chandeliers! they made chandeliers out of the salt!

and there were beautiful carvings of saints and the nativity and a crucifix that turned out slightly blurry on my camera but whatever. it was awesome! you can rent the big fancy hall at a rate of US$1000 per hour. maybe some day.

apparently one of the caves is supposed to be haunted by chopin's ghost. I think that's what the lady said. and some of the rooms had a really refreshing smell of pine. not those fake pine smells on those pine shaped car fresheners - those are disgusting. it's caused they used lots of pine to reinforce the passages and caves. It's better than metal because metal would corrode due to all the salt.

well, Auschwitz tomorrow.