How do you stay cool when it’s 95 degrees out all afternoon? Go to an underground salt mine! Once you’ve gone down a zillion steps to tunnels 400 feet under ground, it really is nice and cool.

We spent the morning and early afternoon on a tour of the Wieliczka salt mine outside of Kraków. When it closed in the 1990s it had been in operation for seven centuries. We walked through about 2 km of tunnels, a tiny fraction of the 200 km carved into the near solid rock salt down there. There are also cavernous entertainment spaces, stables, chapels, and even a few lakes down in this bizarre underground world where everything is made of salt.

Yesterday we visited the incredible museum dedicated to the German occupation of Poland in World War II, which is housed in Oskar Schindler’s enamel factory, where he protected hundreds of Jews from the German atrocities most of their neighbors met.

We’ve also spent plenty of time just soaking up the beautiful architecture and lovely green spaces in this amazing city. Kraków is incredibly beautiful, historically fascinating, and buzzing with life even in the heat wave. A few random pics below.

Wawel Cathedral

Escaping the afternoon heat at a river bar

Cool bike

Musician in the Market Square

This guy is everywhere in Kraków

We arrived today in Kraków, once the capital of Poland and quite simply one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. So far we’ve just walked around and taken it all in. And taken a few pictures to share.

The view from our hotel room — Rynek Glówny, the largest medieval square in Europe

Architectural detail from Rynok Glóvny

Me and King Casimir III the Great

Interesting sculpture on the Vistula

Old Town Warsaw, rebuilt after WWII

The Polish capital of Warsaw is a truly inspiring place. I’m amazed to find such a vibrant city after what this place has been through.

Lunch in beautiful and inspiring Warsaw

Poland was practically ground zero in World War II. The Germans started the war here, built their most horrific concentration camps here, and subjected most of Poland to six brutal years of occupation. Poland lost more of its population (16% to 20% of the national population, depending who you ask) than any other country, including Germany (8 to 10%).

Enjoying the afternoon buzz of Old Town Square

On August  1, 1944, as the German war effort was collapsing and the Soviet Union was moving through Poland toward Warsaw and eventually Berlin, the citizens of Warsaw rose in rebellion against their German occupants. In the first days of this Warsaw Uprising they took command of key parts of central Warsaw amid general euphoria. But over the next six weeks the Germans fought back with vastly superior weapons and resources, forcing a surrender by the brave people of Warsaw on September 23.

Monument to the Warsaw Uprising

In reprisal, Heinrich Himmler ordered the complete destruction of Warsaw and the murder of every single inhabitant. German troops spent October through January systematically destroying every building in Warsaw — homes, churches, offices — with special attention to any archives or monuments of historical importance. A city of 1.3 million inhabitants in 1939 was reduced to barely 1,000 people living among rubble by 1945.

To make matters worse, Soviet troops sat just on the outskirts of Warsaw through all of this destruction, resisting please for help from their Polish “allies” in the city’s darkest hours. Stalin apparently hoped the Germans’ efforts would make the Soviet subjugation of Poland after the war a little easier. And of course, the ultimate destruction of Nazi Germany was of little consolation to the beleaguered Poles, who were then subjected to 45 years of Soviet Communist domination.

The destruction of Warsaw was so devastatingly thorough that Poles had to debate whether to move their capital after the war. But instead they committed to stay and rebuild. In parts of central Warsaw, especially the Old Town, they spend the subsequent decades rebuilding everything precisely as it appeared before the war. They painstakingly re-built blocks and blocks of apartments, shops, churches, and even the Royal Palace from pre-war photographs and historical records.

In 1989, Poland’s decades of struggle against their last oppressor, the Soviet Union, came to an end. They since joined NATO and the European Union and the modern European world. Warsaw is now a thriving capital of 1.7 million people. I wander these streets in amazement of the human spirit.

From a moving exhibit of rare color photos of central Warsaw after the Nazi attempt to annihilate the city

Old Town Square, where every building was rebuilt exactly as before the city’s total destruction