(This is a continuation of the previous post... and, regardless of the title, I'm still in Krakow at this point in the story.)

While still in Krakow, I also visited the salt mine at Wieliczka, which is an amazing place.  The tour guide started by informing us that we would begin by walking down 54 flights of stairs, and she really meant it, although each flight was only 7 stairs deep. (Are you doing the math in your head?)  I was counting on the way down and lost track somewhere around step number 230, or so.  She also mentioned that although the tour takes two hours, we would see less than 1% of the area of the mine that had been excavated.

Salt was discovered in Wieliczka at least as early as the 13^th century and the mine was officially in operation beginning in 1473. At that point, obviously, most of the work was done manually with pick axes and iron wedges to break the rock (which contained the salt crystals) into blocks that could be hoisted to the surface.  Roughly 7.5 million cubic meters of material was removed between the mid-1400s and 1996 when the mine ceased operation. (Cheaper sources of salt were available and it was no longer feasible to use the mine.)

Along the tourist route, we saw all sort of sculptures – all carved by miners, and all made from the excavated rock or carved into the walls.

There's even one of the last pope, who was a pretty popular guy in Poland.

The largest room is 50 meters long, 15 meters wide and over 12 meters high and is lit with chandeliers decorated with salt crystals. (I wasn’t able to get a better picture, unfortunately, because of the size of the room, so you’ll need to use your imagination a bit here.)

At the end of the tour (which terminates, not too surprisingly, in a gift shop), we got to ride an elevator back to the surface, thank goodness.

My next stop was in Bratislava, Slovakia where I had a full day free to explore before my session at the technical university. In the morning, I roamed around the town’s center a bit, enjoying the spring-like weather and I visited the old town hall which now houses the city museum.

The basement of this building also contained a prison at one time and the exhibits of the manacles, torture devices, and related paraphernalia left little to the imagination. Yikes.

I also walked along the Danube (or Dunaj, in Slovak), which bisects the city. I thought this was a neat bridge and later learned that it’s referred to as “the UFO” by locals. There is a restaurant in the spaceship part up top, which is apparently quite exclusive.

In many places, the Danube forms the boundary between Slovakia and Austria, but the other side of the river in Bratislava is just more of Bratislava, with the border a bit further west. One of the local professors told me that under communist rule, people from other [communist] areas would come to Bratislava, thinking they would cross the river and be free.  So, entire families would risk their lives crossing this river (which, even during dry months is deep and swift-flowing), reach the other side, kissing the ground in happiness, only to be picked up by the border patrol for attempting to escape.

In Bratislava, I noticed a trend that I had also seen in Olomouc and which I think is pretty cool.  Local businesses (mostly stores) “adopt” a group of graduating high school students and have window displays with pictures of the kids and at least one teacher.  Here’s one poster that was in a bookstore window…

… and another one (in a women's clothing store) that I thought was rather, um, interesting.

Scattered throughout the central part of Bratislava are statues that are just plain fun.  Two in particular caught my eye.

After my presentation/seminar the next day, I had a couple of hours free before I had to catch the train to Prague, so one of the professors took me to see an old (really old!) castle in the village of Devin, about 10 kilometers from Bratislava.  What is left of the castle and its walls is really amazing, mainly for the size of the place and its location way, way, way up on a hill above the river.

The original castle was finished in the year 899 (no, I didn’t leave out any numbers), and there have been several archaeological expeditions to retrieve valuable artifacts from the area. The location was quite strategic, not only because it’s on a hill, but because it’s at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers.  Here, the land on the other side of the river really is Austria.

Finally, even though the hotel I stayed in was clean, quiet, and in a lovely neighborhood (thank you to my colleagues at the technical university for putting me up!), I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the telephone in my room.