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Published: September 29th 2009
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Wieliczka, Poland
Looking down the flights of stairs. I had heard from a friend of my Moms of a place in Poland that was an underground cave carved from salt and embellished in salt. When our plans changed in Warsaw from travelling as far south as Italy, we choose to explore Poland a little bit more, including this underground mine just south of Krakow in the town of Wieliczka. The mine itself, though interesting, was really not all that impressive to a girl that has seen some of the amazing caves in Colorado and Texas. The tour was rubbish, and really not worth the money we paid to get in, but Della and I realized something about ourselves, we are not typical tourists, we would rather explore something by ourselves, not by following like sheep in the herd. The mine was interesting for its historical facets, however much of the tour seemed staged for tourists who like picture books.
The mine exported salt for over 900 years from the 13th Century through 2007 when the price of salt decreased and the mine flooded. I imagine they also realized they could make more money exploiting tourists than taking chunks of the wall and refining it. Over 1.2 Million people
Wieliczka, Poland
I believe this was a stature of Copernicus. visit the salt mine every year, and we happenned to hit it during peak season, so we had to wait in a line of tours causing the tour to last for three hours when it should have been two. One good thing about being able to extend our tour, we got to extend the positive health effects of breathing salt for an additional hour "free of charge" as our non-english speaking english tour guide so often told us.
The mine itself is 327 meters deep and over 300 kilometers long. In order to reach the levels of the mine deemed tourist worthy you must descend 378 steps, which wind in circles over and over until your mind doesn't know which way is up and which way is down, or whether your feet actually are on solid ground. (This part was actually pretty neat.) The initial part of the tour leads you passed various scenes carved by miners (ancient miners) purely out of the rock salt. These statue, though hard to see in the pictures, were marvelously sculpted, true works of art when you think the miners did this using candle lanterns. Then the tour takes you past the modern
Wieliczka, Poland
A door for Della. sculptures not made from salt, but made from various synthetic materials depicting the plight of miner. These particular sculptures really made me want to slap the non-english speaking english language tour guide, though I know they were not her fault. One particular sculpture was even motorized!! You push the button and the magical sculpture turned the wheel and water came out! OMG, I cannot believe this new fangled technology! Yeah... I guess I just wasn't impressed, call me crazy but when I decide to descend into the depths of the earth, what I'm looking for is not really man made shit. Pardon my french.
There were a number of interesting things in the mine, but none of them were natural formations except for some cauliflower crystals on some of the passageways. There was also a church called the "Chapel of Saint Kirga" which is a very ornate underground chapel carved completely from salt including the chandeliers and the giant statue of the pope. There was also a few underground lakes which were pretty interesting, and as I said the various sculptures created by miners hundreds of years ago were pretty interesting. The tour guide, not so much. I'm sorry
Wieliczka, Poland
This scene carved from salt depicts the myth of the salt mine discovery in which a princess who knows her people are destined to starve to death unless they find a means to export drops her betrothal ring down a hole in the ground and demands it be found. The man who found the ring also found the mine rich in salt, a valuable product in those days, and saved the princesses people and her marriage. Or something like that. Poland, but if you are going to say that you have tours in English, at least pick someone who is capable of answering questions. Our tour guide certainly knew the script in English, but when asked a question she would simply repeat the last sentence she had said, so the learning curve for visitors wanting to know more than the script was severely deterred.
They also have stores underneath the surface... lots of stores... that you have to walk in circles past before reaching the queue to leave. I started to get a little panicky there near the end because they simply did not want me to leave and the number of people was making me far to claustrophobic. When the tour finally ended the woman had us locked behind a stupid rope telling us nonsensical things that noone really cared about. By the time she opened the rope I started to run with Della behind me laughing and telling me to slow down cause it looked like we were running away, to which I responded I am through clenched teeth. By the time they led our group down some more stairs and through a labyrinth of tunnels to
Wieliczka, Poland
Same sculpture from a different angle. Suprise! yet another line to get out I really started to get to the point where I needed to be away from all the people jabbering and sweating in languages and scents I simply did not understand. Finally we were escorted to the elevators which our tour guide had told us carried 36 people in the three level lift, each level holding nine. I thought... how bad could it be? How wrong I was, I have never felt more like a sardine in my life squashed into an elevator with six sweating large men, the operator and Della. All in all... an interesting experience, which I would sincerely recommend to anyone travelling to lesser Poland. :D
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maggie blue
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woof
woof, woof (Hi! Mom) woof, woof, woof,woof(You are very funny)woof, woof, woof, woof,woof(you sound like grandpa) woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof(He'll probably miss the salt mines if he ever goes to Wieliczka, Poland.)Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof(Naptime, bye, love mags.)