Europe Trip 2025 - Wieliczka and Zakopane

Both can be done as day trips by train from Kraków, although Zakopane is much farther away and also deserves a much longer stay.

Wieliczka is only 23 minutes by train from Kraków. I've been to the Wieliczka salt mine a couple times, but it was still worth going. The mine is evolving: there are two walking tours now, there are new chambers, the guide was entertaining, there is a restaurant underground, there is a large underground mining museum included in the price if you still have strength after walking 135 meters (about 40 floors) down the stairs (not all in one go) and 3.5 kilometers of the tourist route...

Local train from Kraków. I like the ramps that cover the gap between the platform and the train.

Wieliczka Rynek PKP train station.

Choose your adventure.

Both Regis and Daniłowicz shafts are walking distance from the train station.

Daniłowicz shaft.

Underground church. You can actually attend a Sunday mass here, free entry.

Underground lake.

Lord of the Rings vibe (a statue of Kazimierz Wielki).

One of dioramas.

Zakopane is a popular tourist town at the foothills of the Tatra mountains. It is 2 hours from Kraków by the fastest train. There is a national park with many walking trails, skiing in Winter, cable car to Kasprowy Wierch which sits on the border with Slovakia, and more... Btw, the wikipedia page has outdated information - you buy tickets for the cable car in advance, for a specific time, either online or in the ticket machine. There is no need to queue for 3 hours.

On the way to Zakopane.

Zakopane main train station. You can get city operated and private buses from here. Don't be scared of private buses, especially from Kuźnice back to town - they will probably be a bit cheaper, more comfortable and may be faster than city buses - they leave when full.

Kuźnice - the starting point of the cable car to Kasprowy Wierch. I saw one of these drivers casually throw rubbish onto the street - very poor form.

Bike parking and repair station.

A monument to the Tatra couriers (guides, sportsmen) doing illegal cross border runs for the Polish underground state during German occupation and later during communist times. History is complicated - see Goralenvolk.

There is always one cable car coming down and one going up on each of the two sections.

The view from the cable car.

The sign at the top station of the cable car showing color-marked tourist trails with walk times.

The yellow trail, on the Slovak side. There are no border checks between Poland and Slovakia - both are in the Schengen zone.

A view of the cable car station.

There is a palpable feeling of animosity towards Ukrainians from some Poles. I was a witness to one incident at Kasprowy Wierch: a young man, maybe 16-20 years old, cut in line for the car coming down (a storm was coming and lots of people wanted to come down, so a line formed), people ignored it, but later he sat on a small bench inside the car, and for that he was scolded by an older man standing nearby who was a caretaker of someone in a wheelchair, and who was also pointing that the seat should be given to a woman standing nearby with a small child on her hands. I mean, when you are a young person on public transport in Poland, the custom is that you give your seat to elders, disabled, pregnant or people with small children, but because this young man spoke Russian earlier, he heard anti-Ukrainian comments too.

There was also another situation. I spoke with a lollipop man in Grodzisk who told me that once a Ukrainian bus driver got angry that he had to stop. He remembered that altercation long afterwards.

If you are in a major city in Poland, there is a very good chance that the shop assistant, cashier, bus driver, waiter, or cook is Ukrainian. I even heard a very strong eastern accent from a WW2 museum guide in Gdańsk. Ukrainian refugees got the right to work automatically in 2022, and they do work - the participation rate in the labour market in on par with Polish citizens, and is the highest among OECD countries. On the other hand, not everyone speaking Russian, or Polish with an eastern accent is Ukrainian - they could be Belarusian, Russian or even Polish repatriates from the former Soviet Union. 

A lot of the online anti-Ukrainian propaganda is from paid Russian accounts. Hopefully, when Russia loses the war, which I believe it will, the tensions will lessen.