Mine Life

Friday day, QueenB and I drove with a friend up to the Wieliczka Salt mine located 8km outside of Krakow. The tour (which we took in Polish because it costs extra to go on an English tour!) begins with descending 56 flights of stairs into one of the mine shafts. From there we commenced walking 2 of the 300 kms of underground passageways that have been made available for tourists. This mine has been worked for approximately 900 years and continues to produce small quantities of salt today. As one might guess the working standards of the mine now are much improved from those hundreds of years ago. In previous times, prisoners sentenced to death had the option of being put to death or working in the mines checking for methane gas. How was this done? Methane gas when put into contact with open flame, explodes. These prisoners would crawl along the mine shafts with a torch attached to a long pole to ensure that the shafts were free of gas for the other workers. Of course if they found methane gas...their service and sentence was completed. If the prisoners made it through a couple of years without being blown up, they were free. The mine has been used as a tourist attraction since the mid 18th Century. Thus, our tour like Pope John Paul II's tour (he's a big figure over here) covered 2kilometers of the undergound maze of passageways and included a trip to the subterranean museum that explained a lot of the geology involved with mining salt. One of the most interesting stops along our way was the 3 of the original 17 chapels found underground. Miners, being superstitious and religious observes (1 out of every 10 miners used to die) created a network of chapels underground for easy access during their work day. The largest and most ornate of course being dedicated to St. Kinga, the patron saint of miners. This chapel is cavernous and replete with salt figurines, chandeliers, alters, and staircases. The mine has many of these areas with huge vaulted ceilings and beatifully carved salt pieces. Weddings take place underground and there is actually a sanitorium for asthma and allergy suffers located at the 135 meters deep mark. Although I'm not an allergy sufferer, my trip down the mine was invigorating! A wonderful mixture of sweet saltiness!