Stop 11: Vilnius, Lithuania

Vilnius apparently has the largest baroque 'old town' in Europe. Despite that, it's compact and very easy to walk it, especially when you're staying right in the thick of the 'action'.  It took us about 20 minutes to walk end to end (N-S) and half of that to cross it.

Once we had got out of Warsaw and avoided travelling to Belorus (see the previous blog), and slowly crawled through the obligatory road works ("welcome to Europe" said the waiter), we again made it into a new city just as the rain was threatening to start again ... there were huge puddles everywhere.  Maybe because it was a smaller city, driving in was relatively straight forward, and we looped through some inner old city streets and emerged through an archway into the centre of tourist territory, on the street where we were staying ... just north of the 'Gates of Dawn'.

The apartment is in a small courtyard complex, up one level of wooden steps. A narrow balcony runs around the courtyard on each level. There's a lovely and 'romantic' bedroom, a small sitting area/kitchen and a small bathroom. Parking was very easy ... in the grounds of the monastery behind the apartment, and through the Basilian Gates. In fact, with the slope of the land, we could look out our bedroom window level with the flower garden of the monastery, and across, almost, to where the car was parked.

We spent the next three days very pleasantly wandering around the old city. On the first day, we took an audio-tour of the old city (from the Tourist Office) ... which took us five hours, including a lunch stop. This took us all over the old city, including to a lookout above the old city:

to the Gediminas Hill tower (via a funicular):

to the Jewish quarter, and to the artists' quarter, Užipis, across a small river.... amongst other places.

Another day we dropped into a couple of churches:

 and went on a boat ride on the main river, the Neris (which was pleasant but a bit pointless as the boat simply (and without commentary) battles upstream against the current, turns and comes back again).

But some interesting sculptures hanging under the bridges:

I also met up with Antanas Fokas, the leader of local folk group Sutaras - and did an interview with him in a street cafe.

(this isn't him ... it's on the Musicians Club)

Later that day, we also met and had dinner with Jeanette Stovel, Canadian Chargé d'Affairs, and sister of our friend Krista.

There were some tourists round, but they were largely located in the main shopping street, and Vilnius didn't seem over-run by them/us:

We had some great meals, and just enjoyed hanging out in a relaxed and relaxing city:

Stop 10: Warsaw

It was hard to get to Warsaw ... and even harder to leave.  That's got nothing to do with the attractions of the city; rather it's a direct consequence of traffic and road construction!

For a start, Jane (our occasionally trusty GPS voice) took us from Krakow, back via Katowice and the tollway. Somehow she decided that this would be faster than the direct road to Warsaw. Maybe it would have been, if it weren't for the roadworks going on and slowing us down. (However, it was probably faster than had we been coming from Katowice to Krakow, where that side of the tollway had been blocked by an accident, with a consequent multi-km tail-back, with people out of their cars and sitting on the median strip!)

But that was all nothing compared with the roadworks within Warsaw when we arrived there. The major roads into the city are all being built and rebuilt!  Where-ever Jane wanted to take us off the highway via an exit, that exit was now closed. We circled and circled. We got sick of Jane saying: "Where possible, turn around!" and decided to ignore her after she had us retracing similar circles for a while. But she then led us from our detours back into the same frustrating system. We crossed the river ... a couple of times ... and somehow, miraculously, discovered a way out of the roadworks and round some wooded areas, which deposited us into our suburb, just north of the old city.  Whew!  It took us at least half an hour extra to do all that.

(But that was nothing, as we'll see, with trying to LEAVE Warsaw.  We'll just note for the moment that Jane had us looping around closed exits from under-construction freeways for about an hour. We finally decided to ignore her totally, follow minuscule signs in Polish directing us to a possible destination in the general direction we wanted to go. It took two loops of that, missing one vital decision ... going right at a fork rather than left ... going round the whole system once again ... and eventually we were out ...

(But then we realised, along the road, that Jane was attempting to take us to Vilnius in Lithuania via the shortest route - through Belorus ... a country for which we didn't have visas, nor were allowed to take the car!  So we had to over-ride her again ... "turn around where possible" - sure Jane ... and get nabbed at the Belorus border?!!!)

Anyway, that's just the preamble and postamble to Warsaw.

We were staying just north of the old and new (i.e. 200 years newer) towns, just across the railway line, in an apartment in a gated community.  Our host was out of the country but had left keys with the guard ... and it was easy to access. Parking was free and in the street. The apartment was on the 4th floor of a modern block, with a lift ... luxury!!  It was a good sized space, very modern and well appointed.  Some scaffolding, as they seemed to be painting the building ... but this was coming down while we were there.

It was a bit of a walk into the old town, but not too bad ... and there were a few restaurants nearby, as well as a supermarket. We ate at one of the local restaurants, disturbed only by a 'concert' of improvised piano music from another nearby restaurant - which seemed to consist of random crashing of keys, in an attempt to persuade us that neither melody nor harmony nor rhythm nor tonality nor ... competence ... was required.  We shared bemusement with locals of all ages.

The next day we walked into the old city and picked up a conducted 'free' tour for a couple of hours. The young woman, Martina, was very engaging, telling us stories about the history of Warsaw ... in a vaguely chronological account, interrupted by some (hopefully) good-natured ribbing of Krakow.  She covered the founding of the city, good and bad kings, through to the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw Uprising. We saw buildings, statues and commemorative plaques.

It was a useful way to see the city. At the end, as with these 'free' tours, we put some money (a tip) into a small bag ... and this became her 'pay'. Others are encouraged to, for example, write a review etc ... to contribute in any way they see fit.

Then later that day, we met up with Mateusz Dobrowolski from the local bands RUTA and (as manager) Warsaw Village Band. We had a pleasant chat and swapped some CDs. Since we were meeting further up in the Centrum area, this 'forced' us to take a tram each way (too far to walk easily) and enabled us to ride in one of the cute, narrow trams that run through the city and that we'd been admiring.

As we noted above, getting out of Warsaw was then the major challenge the next morning ... but we did ... and were on the way to Vilnius.

We liked Warsaw. Either there wasn't the mass tourism of Krakow, or the size of the city enabled the tourism to be absorbed more easily. Also, we reflected, the massive destruction of the city in WWII (85% destroyed, and 95% of the old city) meant that it has been rebuilt with conscious attention to reproducing styles and consistency. So the cityscapes in the old city are charming. On the other hand (and here we go with comparisons that Martina encouraged), Krakow was spared the destruction, so there there was a gradual erosion of styles as individual buildings were added, changed, demolished etc and this has meant that a more haphazard present is preserved ... as a city grows and changes naturally. So, for example, decisions have been made ages ago, and bit by bit, about adding buildings in the middle of a handsome square, that then break up the harmonious whole.

We only had a couple of nights in Warsaw, and traffic meant this was just one full day.  It probably deserves more.

Down the Salt Mine

As we noted in the previous blog, the visit to the Salt Mine at Wieliczka was the highlight of our stay in Krakow. Wieliczka is a small town on the southern outskirts of Krakow. It takes 21 minutes to get there on a very modern and comfortable train. The Salt Mine is then an obvious 5 minute walk through the town.

We'd previously bought tickets for the 11.30 am English tour. We lined up (clearly marked) and were conducted into the mine building by our young guide, Mat. We started by descending the main vertical mine shaft by hundreds of wooden stairs ... ending round and round, down and down. The levels were numbered, so you could see how far your were descending, but a later schematic showed that this was less than half the total depth of this shaft.

Commentary to the group (of about 40 of us) was through little earpieces and covered the history of the mine, its structure, and the major attractions along the way. There was continuous salt mining here from the 1500s until the mid 1990s, and its is still a 'working' mine in that there are miners employed to maintain it ... something like 200 miners, plus 600 guides employed.  There are masses of tourist visitors, but the way in which they are managed in groups, and the complexity of the mine tunnels and cagers meant that it never seemed crowded ... and we seldom saw more than one other group in the areas in which we stopped.

Earlier tourists had been Copernicus and Goethe:

Even the wood beams, subject to immersion in the salted air, become saltified or ossified over the years:

Here are some other photos of scenes from the mine:

 Some of the stops and displays are about the processes of salt mining. The equipment is still there, some of it in working order, and illustrating the changes in techniques use over the centuries. There are full-scale models and small dioramas. In a couple of places there are 'cheesy' effects: false rumbles and flashes of explosions, to highlight the dangers involved.  It was pointed out that miners here had always been valued: provided with health care etc, child labour avoided ... such was the value of salt.

But the big highlights of the tour were the chambers carved by the miners. Some of these were chapels hewn from the salt; and some of these were 'moving' chapels, that were dismantled and moved on as seams were worked out, and new seams opened up. But some were spectacularly huge: a giant chapel with wall bas-reliefs and statues; a monstrously tall open space with wooden steps snaking up the walls high above us; equally enormous spaced braced by massive wooden beams. Each passage led to an even more spectacular space. This really was a 'wow' experience.

The photos here show only a little of what is to be seen - and the stories we heard.  We wound down and down, through slopes, but also down more staircases. (There are other tours apparently, that shadow the miners' lives.) And it was pointed out that we were seeing only about 2-3 km of the 100 km of tunnels, and about 20 of the 200 chambers ... about 2% of the whole mine.  It must be enormous.

Finally, Mat led us towards the exit, but first to a restaurant 300 m underground.  

We had to, of course. And then another long guided trek through further tunnels to a lift that took us from the lowest levels back to the surface. We emerged in a different location in the town.

What a great day!

Stop 9: Krakow

Krakow greeted us with a downpour and some music.

We drove from Wrocław the slow way ... off the main motorway, through the smaller towns. But it was still quite a drive around the large industrial agglomeration of Katowice. Hot and humid as we dropped in and out of pursuing showers, where the temperature dropped briefly and then rocketed again as we left the rain.

But as we got to Krakow, we could see the clouds darkening over us. We drove into the old southern market square (Rynek Podgórski), contacted Beata our host, got the first bits of luggage into the apartment, and then the heavens opened and it poured.  Brilliant!

Once this cleared, we heard some singing outside, so went to investigate. A group of six young women were on the corner of our building, singing a cappella. It was beautiful and fascinating. Who were they?  Not a clue.  What language?  We'd assume Polish ... but it sounded more Bulgarian or Georgian. They sang a few numbers, embraced and left. There was no attempt to collect busking money. Was this specially to welcome us to Krakow?  We thought so.

The old square is a little south of the main old town and the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, just across the Wisła River. The apartment is in a small building, looking out over the square to a church on one side, but  into the building's quiet courtyard on the other (where there is car parking via a very narrow gateway). The building was once the Deer Inn, evidenced by the sculpted figure of a double-bodied deer on its corner.

It's a lovely apartment with a large lounge room and bedroom, a small kitchen and bathroom between these, and an entrance hall from the courtyard balcony ... up two flights of stairs.

The area provided all we needed in terms of food, and we ate locally each night: Italian, Thai, Chinese, Polish... There's a 'temporary' display on boards in the square detailing its history, with photos and bilingual commentary.  This area was the gateway to the second Jewish Ghetto, where Jews were sent from Kazimierz prior to their removal to extermination camps. A chilling reminder, including a large-scale sculpture installation of larger-than-life chairs in another square just along the river.

We walked across the foot and bicycle bridge into the old city ... it was a bit of a walk, but always fascinating.  In the days we were there, we did that walk a few times.  Initially we wandered past Wawel Castle and around the old town, admiring the huge old town square (the Rynek ... though again this was hugely interrupted by the building of the Cloth Hall in its centre) and hearing the interrupted bugle call from the Basilica Mariacka tower (interrupted in tribute to the original bugler copping an arrow in the throat). We tried to get to see the underground areas of the Rynek, but the first available timeslot was late that afternoon ... so we didn't.  We had a drink in the square, but had to hassle the owner into giving us our change ... she was just hoping we'd forget it.

Instead we took the hop-on-hop-off bus around the town for an overall orientation. We were told in Wrocław that Krakow originated the small-scale golf-buggy tours, so there are several competing firms offering small 'personalised' tours. While these provide an 'intimacy' (though some are simply a smaller version of the pre-taped audio tour), they are also rather more expensive than the larger buses. However, the competition provided by them seems to have 'marginalised' the larger hop-on-hop-off buses (that are found in many cities), and the Krakow version was harder to find. We waited on a corner with no sign (where we'd been told by Turismo that it left from) and eventually it did turn up.  (It did mean we bought and ate a 'chimney cake' while waiting.)

Maybe there's just one or two buses that make the hour plus loop, admittedly taking us to areas and sights we wouldn't have visited. It was OK. We cruised round in one go, finally getting off at Wawel Castle and heading 'home'.

The next day we decided to go to the Salt Mine at Wieliczka. This meant walking into the city again to buy tickets (we were advised to do this here to avoid lines at the mine itself, though it turned out that these lines weren't that long for English-speaking tours) and then across the old city to the railway station to catch the train to Wieliczka, some 21 minutes south of Krakow (a more efficient and cheaper way of getting there than suburban bus or special minibus). Ticket machines at the station wouldn't work, so we queued at a window to buy the train tickets, with time running out to get a train that would enable us to be there in time for our time-designated tour ... and then some others in the queue were told that you didn't need to buy a ticket there, but could buy it on the train. Which turned out to be correct, and faster ... buying either from a correctly working machine on the train, or from the conductor. So away we went.

We'll write separately in this blog about the brilliant Salt Mine tour. Just let us say: do it!  It was a highlight of our visit to Krakow.

Coming back from Wieliczka, we were able to get off at the station previous to the Central station, on our side of the river, and a short walk from our apartment.

On our last day, we headed to Wawel Castle, on its mound next to the river, just south of the old city centre. We were definitely back into mass tourism here, with vast crowds heading up the two ramps to the Castle. Queues for tickets to the apartments etc stretched vast distances, so we decided not to bother, but look around the public courtyards, and the Castle Cathedral.

Finally, we wandered back into the city and again tried to book the Rynek Underground tour ... but everything was sold out for the day!  So we didn't get to see it.  But we headed to the Basilica Mariacka, where the ornate altar-piece is opened everyday at 11.50 am ... We just missed its opening (while queueing for the tickets) but did get to see it in its opened form.

And then left the church in time to hear/see the bugler playing on the hour from the church tower and then waving his bugle at the large cheering crowd of tourists.

Then across the square again to the old University (Collegium Minus) where we waited in the courtyard, with its academic astrological clock:

for a tour of the museum archives ... science and technology as it were, with long raves about Copernicus etc ... and some very funny, wry,  giggling commentaries from the guide.

There were some wonderful things on display: astrolabes, telescopes, clocks and so on:

as well as the University's formal rooms (three levels: heaven upstairs where the professors lived; earth in the middle where everyone ate; hell downstairs where the classrooms were).

This tour left us with an appetite, so off to a quaint restaurant of the Writers and Artists Club, upstairs near the corner of the Rynek.

And back 'home'.

Overall, Krakow was interesting, more for the neighbourhood where we were located than for the major sites/sights, which were spoiled for us by the intensity of tourism. Apart from the Salt Mine, of course, which somehow absorbed vast numbers and provided us with a stand-out spectacle!  Read on.