Almost every postcard of Kraków shows the city's beautiful buildings — the thousand-year-old Wawel castle, the gold-domed cathedral, the big yellow medieval Cloth Hall in the middle of Market Square. Don't get me wrong: they're all magnificent. St. Mary's Church, with its unbelievable collection of stained-glass windows and bright red-and-blue folding altar, would be enough to put this place on the map by itself. But I'm finding that the best parts of my visit are taking place underground.
Take the Cave of the Dragon, for instance. According to local legend, it was inhabited by a rather nasty creature who made a habit of devouring the townsfolk, until a shepherd named Krak came up with the idea of feeding the dragon a sheep filled with gunpowder. This may have been the first use of exploding livestock in recorded history. As it happened, I arrived on the day of the Festival of the Dragon, when the whole town comes out to buy little stuffed dragons and watch a parade of dragons pass on barges down the Vistula River. (Presumably, some of them explode, although last night's torrential rainfall put a damper on things).
It's also interesting to poke around in the crypt beneath the cathedral, which is filled with many of Poland's kings, as well as bishops, poets and national heroes. Many of the tombs and sarcophogi are quite beautiful, carved out of red or black marble, which makes it all the more surprising that in many cases not all of the person in question is residing there. Marshal Józef Pilsudski, who helped re-create Poland at the end of the first World War, sent his heart to be buried with his mother, while a famous Polish general who fought in the American Revolution (and has a really long and hard to spell name, so forgive me if I don't mention it here) and later organized a revolt of farmers against the Russians, sent his heart to remain in the castle in Warsaw. (I'd just like to point out here that if anything should happen to me, I'd like all of me to end up in the same place, thanks. I'd offer to donate my heart to someone who needs one, but after what I've been eating for the last week, I'm not sure that anyone would want it).
Even eating happens underground here, because many of the restaurants in Old Market Square are in buildings that are at least 700 years old. As a result, they've sunken into the marshy ground of Kraków, and what had been the main floor centuries ago is now the basement. That doesn't seem to hurt their ambiance, though — the restaurants here seem to be full of nooks and crannies for conversation. The one I ate in tonight was decorated in the way I'd imagine my crazy, rich aunt might decorate a room, if I had one, and if she served beer by the half-liter...
Kraków has at least three out-of-town historic sites that are worth seeing. Two of them are the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau, and I'm not prepared to write about them right now. The third, however, is a blast.
I never expected to get excited about a salt mine, but the one at Wieliczka is amazing. I spent more than two hours 400 feet underground, and still only walked one of the 200 miles of tunnels in the mine. The mine is more than 700 years old, and has been a tourist attraction almost as long — both Copernicus and Goethe were early visitors.
Each enormous chamber is filled with statues, frescoes and even a huge — one hundred feet tall and two hundred feet wide — church, all of it carved out of rock salt. Supposedly, breathing the air is good for you — Polish miners swear by it — though personally, I think that it being just about the only place in Poland where people aren't allowed to smoke may account for its reputation. But it's big and weird and full of history — Austrian soldiers drowned in a boat in one of its salt lakes, and the Nazis used one of its chambers to assemble airplanes — and I'll have a lot of pictures to show you all when I get back.
And some salt, too, if anyone's interested.
No comments:
Post a Comment