Poland - Week 16

We parked in a camper park opposite the Wieliczka Salt Mines. (35pln, just under £8, for 24 hours including services) as we were overdue a cleaning day. We’d booked to visit the mine at 3pm so took the opportunity to do some “housework” in the glorious sunshine. Andy even cleaned the carpets for me, what a sweetie. It was a great place to stay for a night.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine wasn’t far from Kraków and is definitely worth a visit. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and it’s like nothing I’d ever seen before. They’ve mined salt there for centuries and some of the miners had even carved sculptures out of it. You have to walk down a serious amount of steps (we lost count) but the effort was well worth it. The photos just didn’t do it justice! We booked our time slot online as I’d read that it gets very busy. Today was the first available date, hence visiting Zakopane first.

10 years ago any Polish person would tell you Katowice was Poland’s ugliest city. That’s what we read anyway. We also read that it had the coolest museum in the country and to make it even better, it’s free on a Tuesday! It definitely had the wow factor when you walk inside. The outside of the Slaskie museum gives nothing away. We spent a good 3 hours looking around.

After lunch we caught one of the new trams into the centre. It’s an interesting place. A mix of ultra modern and an ugly industrial past but I’m sure it will be different again in another 10 years.
We also visited Wrocław this as we’d heard how lovely the city was and headed straight for the Rynek, (Market Place). Our attention was soon diverted from the gorgeous town hall and the colourful buildings surrounding it to something a lot smaller ... dwarves! 

Journeywonders.com said

*** Back in the 80’s, communism was still present in Poland and police were very strict about any sort of secret meeting and manifestation against the ruling regime. Luckily, a group of eccentric individuals began a movement called the Orange Alternative. Their strategy? Using the absurd and the nonsensical in order to avoid being arrested by the police.
Can you treat a police officer seriously when he is asking you: “Why did you participate in an illegal meeting of dwarfs?” said one of the leaders. Their tactics involved drawing dwarf graffiti on top of the anti-communist signs that were constantly painted white by the authorities.
Eventually, the movement succeeded in planting the seeds of peaceful opposition and now there is a relatively big statue of a dwarf (called Papa Dwarf by the locals) standing in Wroclaw and funded by the modern-day government of Poland ***
Apparently there are over 350 of them now, but we only saw a handful. I may be over 50 but the kid in me loves them 😍

Note: We parked at the park & ride in Wroclaw (free) and took a tram into the city. (You can park there overnight if you wish.) It takes approximately 20 minutes and cost us 6 zlotys (£1.25) for 2 adults. You can buy the tickets from the machine on the platform or inside the tram. The ticket machines have an English option so they’re easy to use. Once inside the tram you have to push each ticket into the validating machine. This seems to be the system for all trams in Poland.

Another day in Wrocław. In our opinion it’s as good, if not better, than Krakow. Maybe the Gnomes/Dwarves helped, I’m not sure, but we really enjoyed it. It’s surrounded by water, it’s the 4th city in Europe with the most bridges and has over 20 islands to explore. It’s as cheap as chips and has a really interesting history. If you visit southern Poland, don’t miss it.

The following day, we drove to the other end of the city and parked in another free car park (thanks again to the park4night app). We wanted to visit another UNESCO World Heritage site - Centennial Hall. It’s the first building to be constructed out of concrete and although we could see it’s importance it was a very ... well ... grey. 

For a bit more colour we walked outside to watch the fountains dancing to the music for a while. My favourite piece was that well know classic - “Everyone’s a Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut Case” 😁

Lithuania and Poland - Week 15

We left Vilnius after leaving the car park in the old town where we’d stayed the last 2 nights. We drove to Trakai in the rain. We hadn’t seen very much of the wet stuff on this trip so it came as a bit of a shock lol. Summer had definitely come to an abrupt end. 3 days previously we’d been basking in 27oC and then, without warning, we had to retrieve our big coats from Harriet’s garage as the temperature had plummeted to 9oC.

We arrived in Trakai to look at the castle on the lake. I’m not sure what I expected but it looked pretty new to me?? Anyway, we walked around the outside of the castle and back over the bridge to the village. It was a pretty place but only small. I’m sure it would have been a lot better in the sunshine.

The road we took after lunch to Grutas Park was another story! It was one of those ‘shake you all about‘ Latvian style gravel roads. They’re so weird, one minute you’re driving along on tarmac, then the road just disappears without warning. Harriet survived in one piece thank goodness and once we’d straightened things up in the cupboard over the cooker, you’d never know we’d driven 17kms on a god awful road. Well apart from all the splashes of muck down the sides of the van.

Then we arrived at the disturbingly macabre Grutas Park. You have to pay the €15 entrance fee (2 adults) and walk around a forest on a concrete path listening to the odd bird flying over head and some weird music played over some loud speakers. We didn’t see any other “tourists” while we were there so it felt quite eerie. There are statues of Russian Dictators everywhere. In 1993 when the Lithuanians finally got their freedom, they tore down anything to do with the Soviet dictatorship and the owner of the park saved as many as he could and moved them all to Grutas. The locals don’t like it because it reminds them of the Gulags but everything I’d researched said it was worth visiting.

What they didn’t tell you was it also contains a zoo where the animals and birds are kept in pretty awful conditions. How ironic is that. Anyway, I couldn’t look at the poor things anymore and we left, just in time too as it started to pour down.

We headed for the country border and drove past some signs pointing to Belarus, (the closest we got to it was 30kms) it’s a shame we couldn’t visit the country as there’s so much red tape and hurdles to jump, we felt that life’s too short, maybe next time.

We carried on to the Polish border with fingers and legs crossed that we would be driving on better roads. We weren’t disappointed, and as we drove into Poland, the 13th country on our ‘Big Trip’, we actually felt like we were back in civilisation AND we gained an hour as we’d crossed a time zone.
We stopped the night in Augustow and in the morning carried on driving. We drove to Warsaw and stopped at Ikea for some food and to let the traffic die down. We wanted to head south to find some warmth and sunshine. We even bought an engagement ring!

That evening we arrived in the sleepy village of Zalipie. We woke up in the morning to gorgeous sunshine and blue skies. We had a look inside the Dom Malerek (the village hall) where a lovely lady showed us around. Some of the local women were painting pots etc. In the traditional style. She gave us a map of the village so we took it and went on a 4km walk around.

In 19th Century, traditional southern Polish cottages had cooking stoves that would puff out smoke, flooding the house with soot. So on special occasions the ladies of the house would mask their rooms with ornamental paintings using lime whitewash, black soot and beige clay. This practice then evolved in the 20th Century into something more colourful, a tradition that is still honoured to this day, giving it a real folklore feel to it. There are enough of the original cottages that still have the paintings around their doors, windows, fences, bridges, wells, kennels, bee hives, farm buildings and trees to make the place worth visiting. Even the church and the fire station have been adorned with painted flowers. One of the owners invited us in to her home to see how it had been decorated. We didn’t share a common language but smiles can go along way can’t they. Wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone did this, instead of looking at grey and dull buildings, I’m sure we’d all be much happier in a more colourful world 😁

Krakow, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has turned out to be the second best city we’ve visited so far! (Stockholm is still no.1) We stayed at ElCamp on the outskirts. It’s a motorhome dealership with grey & black waste disposal points as well as fresh water (60ltrs 50pln about £1.18). We paid just under £9 per night and that included electric hook up. It’s not a pretty place, but we weren’t bothered as we were there to visit the sites. The bus stops right outside the gates (which has a security guard on at night time) and cost us the grand sum of £2.69 return into the centre for 2 adults.
The first day of our 3 night stay we did a walking tour of the Jewish quarter to learn about what happened there. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to visit Auschwitz but felt I needed to learn something about the horrors of WW2. 68,000 Jews were murdered after being rounded up and made to live in the Ghetto in Krakow, 68,000 men, women and children. It beggars belief doesn’t it. Jakob, who took us on a tour around the Jewish Quarter was fantastic but didn’t really have a good word to say about Steven Spielberg’s version of the film he made about Oskar Schindler. Did you know, Schindler was a Nazi Spy and received a gold star, the highest award in Nazi Germany at the time. You learn so much on the tours.

The following day we returned to the old town as we found it fascinating and not only that, we wanted to learn more, so yes, you’ve guessed it, we went on another walking tour. There are 6 or 7 different ones you can do. The old town is beautiful and full of cafes, restaurants, fabulous buildings and horse drawn carriages. Well worth visiting. 

We drove another 60 miles south from Krakow to Zakopane. Parked right next to the ski lift. The views from the top were amazing. Shorts and t-shirts in Krakow and big coats and woolly hats up in the mountains. It was cold but gorgeous. Thank heavens Harriet is well insulated!!