KRAKOW TOURS: 1000th guests – 18th June 2011
Krakow Tours 1000
“Outstanding experience from 8am to 8pm!!”
This review of KRAKOW TOURS was posted on Tripadvisor recently.
“Outstanding experience from 8am to 8pm!!”
“I have been involved in the travel business worldwide for 25 years, so i feel i know a thing or two about ground handlers and local tour operators. I came across Phil Clark of krakowtours.co.uk on tripadvisor, I was most impressed by the various personalised comments and reviews of his Auschwitz and salt mines tours. My wife Alma and I were fully aware of the harrowing experience which lay ahead on our visit to Auschwitz. I was worried as we were due to visit two camps and the salt mines all in the one day, however Phil has the winning formula!!
Phils tour operation is run on a personal one to one basis. He takes six clients per day in his wonderful converted American style mini-bus, which is a pleasurable experience in itself. He also provides a lovely picnic lunch for all of his clients. Reviews on other tour operators show that accessing these sites/camps can be a drawn out and painstaking process, however with Phils operation there is no such issues, your straight in. It is a most difficult day, but i feel that Phil has got it just right. By taking in the brilliant and dramatic salt mines at the end of the afternoon, it helps dramaticaly to relieve the pain and anguish of the previous hours. It is my personal belief that everybody should visit these historical sites at some stage in there lives. I cannot recommend a better person, with a more caring and knowledgable personality than Phil Clark of krakowtours.co.uk.”
Eamon and Alma Duffy
Drogheda
Ireland
Many thanks to Eamon and Alma for this tremendous review of our tour.
View more reviews HERE on Tripadvisor, the worlds #1 travel website.
1 Millionth visitor to Wieliczka salt mine
KRAKOW TOURS – The number of visitors to the historic salt mine in Wieliczka near Kraków has topped the one million mark.
On the penultimate day of 2010, Ms Urszula Szczęsnowicz, who came to the site with her family from Mława, north of Warsaw, was greeted as the one millionth visitor by the Director of the Salt Mine Kajetan d’Obyr.
She was given a red-carpet treatment, taken on a special tour of the place, presented with gifts and asked to put her signature in the Visitors Book, alongside such celebrities as Fryderyk Chopin, Duke Edward Windsor and the King of the Belgians Albert II.
2010 saw a three percent increase in the number of visitors to Wieliczka. Foreigners account for 52 percent of visitors. The British top the list (56.900), followed by Germans (39.300), Italians (36. 500), French (32.500) and Koreans (31. 600).
The Wieliczka Salt Mine was founded in the middle of the 13th century. It features a 3.5-km touring route for visitors that includes historic statues and mythical figures. There are also a large chapel, an underground lake, as well as a private rehabilitation and wellness complex.
In 1978 the Wieliczka Mine was included in the original UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
Early start to Christmas eve in the Salt Mine.
KRAKOW TOURS – Christmas Eve celebrations have already started in the Wieliczka salt mine, near Krakow, where carols sung by the miners and their families echoed from the St. Kinga chapel, 200 meters below ground level.
The special Christmas mass began at 7 am this morning.
This underground sanctuary and its salt sculptures had been created in the 18th century.
The first midnight mass was said on Christmas Eve 1865.
The tradition had been interrupted after World War Two when the communist authorities banned the celebrations giving safety precautions as a reason and were resumed in the late 1980′s.
Krakow Tours – #1 attraction in Krakow (TripAdvisor)
For the time being KRAKOW TOURS are ranked as the NUMBER ONE of 54 attractions or ‘Things To Do‘ in Krakow.
Also ranked NUMBER ONE in Southern Poland.
Thanks to all our guests for submitting such great reviews.
250th Customers for Krakow Tours
KRAKOW TOURS - Karen Fuller and friends from Toronto, Canada were Krakow Tours 250th customers. A bottle of bubbly to celebrate after their Auschwitz and Salt mine tour – 15th Oct 2010.
Fire at former Nazi Death Camp
KRAKOW TOURS – Majdanek, a former Nazi concentration camp located near Lublin in eastern Poland, caught fire Monday night, destroying many of the wooden structures and as many as 10,000 pairs of shoes belong to victims who died at the camp, officials said Tuesday.
The fire started in one of the L-shaped barracks and was noticed by a security guard when he saw smoke coming from the structure as he was making his rounds. The fire department was called promptly but the wooden camp did not have much of a chance. Sixteen fire brigades came to the rescue, numbering 48 firefighters, but it took seven hours to contain the fire, which spread quickly and furiously over the camp.
The source of the fire, which brought an estimated one million złoty in damages, is yet unknown and, although speculations of faulty wiring and premeditated arson have not yet been completely eliminated, they seem unlikely to have been the cause.
Niepolomice Castle, and the stolen Wawel Chakra.
Krakow Tours to Niepolomice and the castle.
KRAKOW TOURS – Commonly known throughout history as the ‘Second Wawel,’ it shouldn’t come as surprise that the Royal Castle in Niepołomice shares (steals?) a bit of lore from the more famous royal residence in Kraków.
No there’s no tale of a dragon (though you’d think with all the dark, spooky woods surrounding it they could at least cook up some kind of Grendel story), but Niepołomice does try to get some of the good vibes from one of Wawel’s more famous legends – that of the fabled chakra stone.
According to many eastern religious, spiritual and yogic traditions, a chakra (if you don’t know) is a specific point where the powerful network of energy connecting all living things can be felt the strongest. Apparently when the Hindu goddess Shiva sent seven sacred stones – corresponding with the seven natural chakra points on the body – hurtling across the earth, one just happened to end up on Wawel Hill in Kraków and has since become a hit with travellers seeking to channel its powers.
According to local legend, King Kazimierz the Great liked his Niepołomice retreat so much he brought a piece of the Wawel chakra stone here and buried it beneath the castle in one of its gothic cellars. Since all this Hindu mumbo-jumbo doesn’t jive with Wawel’s status as a Catholic spiritual centre, Wawel authorities have done everything possible to downplay the legend; however keen observors will notice a plaque in the courtyard of Niepołomice Castle vaguely identifying the place where Kazimierz His Greatness deposited the chakra chunk in 1340.
Tours to Niepolomice and the castle are available from Krakow Tours, why not combine it with your Wieliczka Salt Mine trip?
Extracted from Krakow In Your Pocket Guide Book, available here.
Oswiecim, under the shadow of Auschwitz
KRAKOW TOURS - The small Polish town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German) has long felt that it suffered from association with the horror of the nearby Nazi death camp, but some residents hope the town can begin to be seen in a more positive light.
“You want a map of the town, not just the museum?”
The tourist information officer looked sceptical at first, then delighted. She rummaged in a drawer – clearly one she did not open that often – and pulled out a brochure.
There were, she ruefully admitted, very few visitors to this place interested in anything beyond the Auschwitz museum.
After I had made my own visit, I headed away from the crowds into the elegant old town centre. A modest cafe or two were open, old men sat in the tree-lined square feeding the birds, shoppers ambled around in a scene you would find in any small Polish town.
No signs in any foreign language, nowhere selling souvenirs.
While more than a million people arrive up the road at the museum every year, in the town centre there is no hint of it being a tourist destination.
Resentment
And this bizarre divide has caused considerable tension.
Although the museum provides some jobs for locals, others complain about costs incurred in providing, say, parking space for visitors who bring the town little in return.
There have been rows when planning permission for the museum’s expansion has been rejected by local authorities.
And resentment goes deeper than that.
Some people feel tainted by the terrible history looming over this place.
It is hard growing up somewhere the rest of the world sees as the symbol of evil.
Some visitors to Auschwitz make a point of shunning the town, not wishing to linger. They cannot understand, they say, how anyone could still live here.
Jewish past
The reaction from many local people has been to turn their backs on history.
All this was encouraged by Polish Communist rule, keen to suppress Jewish history in particular.
Oswiecim’s former synagogue was used in Communist times as a carpet warehouse, until a British academic, Jonathan Webber, discovered it in the 1980s.
As Judaism was then so taboo, he recalls, he had to pretend he was looking for an Armenian church.
He paid the warehouse workers a few dollars to carry away the stacks of carpets and reveal Hebrew inscriptions on the walls.
That former synagogue is now a Jewish centre.
On the staff is Artur Szyndler, who grew up in Oswiecim under Communism.
He told me that all the time he was at school, a mile or two from the Auschwitz site, he never once heard the word Holocaust.
But after the end of Communist rule, he studied Jewish history at university, as a growing number of young Poles now do.
Pointing to old maps on the walls of the centre, he explained how Oswiecim had had a Jewish majority before the war.
With its location at a well-connected meeting point of countries and peoples, it was known as a place of unusually good relations between faiths, and for tolerance of refugees.
But that location became a curse during Nazi rule, and Oswiecim was chosen as the final destination and place of murder for over a million Jews and many others too, who were deported from all over Europe.
Reconciliation
Oswiecim’s own Jewish residents were among the victims.
There are no Jews living here today, but the centre in the former synagogue has regular visits from Holocaust survivors who were born in the town.
It wants to draw visitors from the Auschwitz concentration camp site into Oswiecim to explore the history of the rich society the Nazis destroyed.
And the Jewish centre is just one of several places in the town exploring the nature of genocide, and the possibility of reconciliation.
At the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer, I came across a man who plays a remarkable symbolic role as the only German living in Oswiecim today.
Manfred Deselaers is a Catholic priest with a ready smile but a deeply serious mission.
After German reunification in 1990 and much talk of Germany moving on from its past, he decided to settle permanently here.
He immersed himself first in its darkest history, studying the claims made by the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess, that he was a Christian believer.
Today Father Deselaers runs courses bringing former Auschwitz prisoners – Catholic and Jewish – together with young Poles and Germans.
Sometimes even the descendants of Germans who worked at the death camp are there.
Given this kind of encounter, he tells me, Oswiecim-Auschwitz can be a place with a “remarkable positive power, which is strange but it’s here”.
“It’s important that people are not simply overwhelmed, but see something good,” he says. “That Hitler does not have the last word about this place”.
It will never be straightforward for Oswiecim to emerge from the shadow of Auschwitz.
The reconciliation work is a start, drawing on memories of the town’s brighter history before the Nazis arrived.
It is seen as offering a kind of map – like the map I found buried in the tourist information office – showing a way towards a more positive future for a town still trapped in the most terrible of pasts.
What’s New From Krakow Tours
KRAKOW TOURS – Are pleased to announce three new tours available in and around Krakow.
We have now formally introduced the very popular ‘Auschwitz and Salt Mine in a Day‘ tour. This may seem like a lot to fit in to one day, but rest assured we make it extremely comfortable for you.
And for the kids we now have a ‘Kids Day Out‘, this tour can be tailor made to suit the kids’ favorite activities, a selection of which are detailed here on our website.
Finally we have started a ‘Mystery Tour‘, to show you some of the many delights the region around Krakow has to offer. You see a national park, at least 3 castles, an amazing little chapel which in theory doesn’t exist, caves and even a real life desert.
Krakow Tours
