Today I have a suggestion for these who like to spend their holiday around Vienna and have an additional 2 hours of free time to fill.

In the Hinterbrühl mine gypsum was tapped starting from 1848. However, in 1912, as the result of an explosion, the lower levels of the mine were flooded and the work had to stop. The many litres of crystal clean water in dark corridors tempted people to visit the mine, so the Austrians created a path for tourists in 1932. Thanks to this we may admire this charming place.

Convenient placement and perfect protection against bombs meant that during the second World War the Nazis took over the mine, pumped out the water and transformed this tourist attraction into an underground plant producing parts for Heinkel He 162 warplanes. To make the plant more useful, they painted its whole interior white and concreted the bottom of the drained lake.

After the war the grotto was flooded anew and again made available for tourism. Despite the devastating actions of the Nazis, the mine together with its underground 6200 m2 lake is still a uniquely beautiful place and one of the most well-known underground tourist paths in Austria.

It is difficult to admit but we Poles not always like each other. It is seldom when the Pole is happy with another Pole's success. In contrary we often with vindictive satisfaction discuss somebody's failure. though similarly to other nations we have many people to be proud of. There are Poles as well which successes are more known abroad than in Poland.

Completely by coincidence we've got to know the successes of one of them during the trip in Austria. The history of one of very picturesque castle is strictly connected with our fellow countryman.

The Kreuzenstein castle lies in Lower Austria and was at the beginning the property of Habsburg family. The lot turns were not favorable for the castle. In his worst time it was difficult to describe where are its gates, mote and towers. At that time on the scene appeared Polish Wilczek family and especially one of its most famous representative Johan Nepomuk Graf Wilczek. Noble Wilczek originates form Dolna in Cieszyn Silesia. In XVIII century it got rich thanks to coal discovered on their grounds and became one of the richest families in Habsburg country. Graf Wilczek was at that time Renaissance man. He studied archaeology, art history and natural sciences. He was the main sponsor of Austrian North Pool expedition after which he became the President of Austrian Geography Association and was supporting building of polar meteorological stations. In honour of him were named such places like Wilczek Ground, Wilczek Ireland in Arctic Franz Josef Ground Archipelago and Wilczek Cape where nearby lies Polish Polar Station Hornsund.

The Graf contributed to set up of Vienna rescue service which evaluated later on into Vienna Emergency Medical Service. Graf Wilczek was the founder of Vienna Art Lovers Association, art patron and lover.

I like sightseeing and visiting new places, even though my relatives know that the journey itself doesn't belong to my favorite ways of spending free time. My life would be much easier if I could take Harry Potter's Floo Powder and travel hundreds of kilometers in a minute. We try to avoid going to indoor exhibitions with our kids. We make an exception for unique museums such as those where you may touch the exhibits. I really do not like to run after my children repeating all the time "don't touch", "don't sit here", "don't move it" and catching the disgusted look of the museum's workers. Due to this, at the moment we prefer sightseeing outside. Into this category we may put shows, parks, gardens and open-air museums. I really like the last one in particular. Unfortunately I do not have family in the countryside, where kids could learn that milk, butter, and cream don't grow in supermarkets, cows are not violet and chickens are not Angry Birds. We try to show our kids how and where people used to live and work 50 or 100 years ago. I like very much when my father comes with us to such places. He often knows how the particular exhibits worked and tells interesting stories about them. The kids are all ears.

Lately we discovered that we don't have to travel too far from Warsaw to visit a XIX century village. The nearest Open-Air Museum of Folk and Landowning Culture that we know of lies in Kuligów on the Bug river. The creator and owner of this place, which has been open since 2000, is the ethnography lover Wojciech Urbanowski.

New exhibits have been appearing constantly since the first year it was opened. Today you may see here a forge, a village house, a garner, a barn, a cowshed, a little house for nobility and a coach house. The owner says that the main goal of this museum is to show the surroundings of the house for nobility and the occupations from that time. The horse-drawn vehicles and the occupations connected with them (rope maker, wheeler, smith, and saddler) are the pearls of the exhibition. You can also see a rope maker's and carpenter's workshop, a mangle and a carding mill.

Going to the small village of Rogalin, placed picturesquely on the right bank of the Warta river, we didn't assume that the palace of the Raczyński family would be so impressive. Rogalin, which was counted among the most beautiful places of Wielkopolska, became a centre of political and cultural life in the 70s of the XVII century, when Kazimierz Raczyński, a writer of the crown, the main starost of Wielkopolska, and marshal of the crown in the Stanislaw August Poniatowski court, entertained his guests.

We parked our car in the empty car park and went through the gate. The panache of the courtyard and palace made an impression on us. The compound consists of the main building and two connected outbuildings. Along the courtyards are placed a woodshed, stable, coach house, and servants' quarters.

During the Second World War the palace was the dwelling of a Hitler Youth Movement school, but fortunately there was no lasting damage to the architecture. Its original equipment was heavily depleted. In 1948 this unkempt relic was passed on to the National Museum in Poznań, where an agency was created, which has been working here ever since. The palace compound regained its former glow in recent years with the help of resources of The European Union. It has been possible to visit this place since spring 2015.

Kórnik Castle was always out of our way: too far, not the right direction, not enough time. This weekend we took the time to catch up and visit this place.

The castle on the lake shore, known since the XIV century, is an undisputed ornament of the small town of Kórnik. The first gothic castle was built here on a fortified island in the XV century. One hundred years later, the Górkowie family built a brick-built residence and, as with almost every other castle, each new owner altered it according to the prevailing style and their own personal preferences. The current look is the creation of the Działyński family. Tytus Działyński and Jan Kanty Działyński remodelled the castle with the intention of displaying works of art and national memorabilia. Their relative, earl Władysław Zamojski, enriched the collection with his own ethnographic repertory from Australia, Polynesia and Madagascar. He left as his legacy the whole estate to the Polish nation. Since 1954 the castle and library has belonged to the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The front of the castle didn't make a huge impression on us. Maybe the neo-Gothic bridge across the moat bestowed upon it a bit of airiness and charm. Only a walk around the castle changed our mind. The round tower with asymmetric windows and the deck and porch from the direction of the park made a much better impression. You can go inside the castle. We "danced" on a beautiful wooden floor wearing huge felt slippers. A long time has passed since I last visited a museum with such old-school shoes. My children put them on for the first time and they had great fun sliding on the floor as if they were on ice. All the children accompanying us in our tour group did the same, and the stoic calmness of the museum staff impressed me.