Wednesday 7th August 2024

Day 7

We started the day with breakfast at 9:20 a later start to the day then making our lunch. Soon after, we walked to the meeting point for the mini bus and started our journey to Auschwitz. It was a heavy and thoughtful tour and everyone had a lot of thoughts to process throughout. 




After the tour, we got back on the mini bus and started making our way to the salt mines with the first level being 64 meters below the ground ( which Tilly fell down the stairs a little while going down the 60 odd flights of stairs). They mined from the 1300’s until 1996. In the mine, they used horses to transport items throughout the mines and pull salt on ropes through the mine. The final horse to leave the mines left in 2002 after many years of helping in the mines and being visited by people on the tours. 


In the mine we went to the third level which was only 1% of the whole mine. While we were in the mine, there was this lady, who was also on the tour, getting very unhappy and calling some of the girls crazy (she thought they were making fun of her although they were just asking questions about what they could see in the mine). Later on in the tour, the same lady kept whistling as she could hear me and saffron whistling as a tic (I’m fairly sure the lady was just trying to be mean at this point as she understood what she was doing). In the mine, there was a chapel that everyone used to go to every Sunday for mass; the chapel had lots of carvings or religious photos. 



In one section of the mine, they had statues of dwarf working in the mines. One of the dwarfs that was at the front was the one who took all of the kids on tours around the mine many years ago. 




On the way out of the mine, everyone was attacking me with all of their orange stickers from the tour in the morning. After the salt mine, we all got back on the mini bus ( after going in a big circle and almost getting lost) and went to go and get some maccies for tea. Some of us got some ice cream from McDonald’s and then started walking back to our hotel eat and head to bed ready for tomorrow.

Until next time 

Team Inter-Rail 🚂


~Ellie

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