This weekend we took a class trip
to Krakow. The first day we went to the salt mines. They started mining
the land there for salt in the 14th century, and it is still used to a lesser
extent. We walked through the tunnels for two hours and still only covered less
than one percent of the entire mine. Since electricity is relatively new,
they had to haul everything up to the surface by hand. There was a pulley
system set up that allowed blocks of salt to be brought to the surface while
supplies were sent down. They used horses for horizontally moving salt to
get it to the lifts. Some of the horses that they used were brought down
to the mines as young horses and then lived the rest of their lives without
ever seeing sunlight again.
Saturday we had a little tour of the town and then went to
the castle. The castle was very big and pretty from the outside. We had a tour
around the inside of the castle but it was really hot and I couldn't hear the
tour guide so it wasn't much fun. After the castle we walked down to the
city center where there was a festival going on. There were a bunch of little stands set up
that were selling food and little souvenir items. We walked inside of the big church that was
on the square and it was one of the prettiest churches I have been in. A lot of the walls were painted red and it
just looked different than most of the other churches we have been in so far.
St. Joseph's Church
Sunday morning we went to
Schindler's factory. I had seen the movie in a high school history class but I
didn't remember anything from it, so I learned a lot from the tour. He was a
Nazi soldier who wanted to help the Jewish people. He basically spent his
fortune bribing Nazi leaders to allow him to have an all Jewish workforce
throughout the war. Schindler chose intelligent people to work in his
factory, like professors, doctors and musicians. The factory was ran by around
1,000 Jewish workers. While they did still have to live in a
"concentration camp" in the factory grounds, these Jewish people were
able to live without constantly being fearful of persecution. All of
the people who worked there made it through the war safely. After the war was
over Schindler didn't have anywhere to go because he technically was a
Nazi, even though he saved all of those people from the death camps. He
eventually found some of the Jewish people who he saved and lived the rest of
his life with them.
It is crazy
that this upcoming week is going to be our last week in Olomouc. I feel like we just got here a few weeks ago,
but our time is almost up. Next week we
are traveling around Moravia with the whole group and then we are free to do
whatever we want to for the remainder of our time in Europe.
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