The Wieliczka salt mines in Krakow

 Today our guide Agnes took us to the salt mines about 1/2 hour outside of Krakow.  I had never heard of it, but this place is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Poland, with over a million visitors a year.  The salt mine itself was quite interesting, but equally interesting was to observe how they took a liability (an old mine) and turned it into an asset (major tourist attraction and large employer).

The mine was dug out -- mainly by hand -- over the course of centuries.  The miners built room after cavernous room, with an elaborate log support system.  They had to create pulley systems and transportation. Small horses even lived permanently underground to do some of the hardest work.  

We went down to level 3 below ground, but there apparently were 6 more levels not available to tourists.  Many men died in these mines - nearly 1 out of 4.  We went down in reconstructed elevator shafts which had two-story elevators loaded simultaneously above and below, with about 9 people smashed into each cage.  The height was 6 feet, so gents over that had to stoop. 

As a tourist site, the place was amazing.  There were little multi-media shows in several of the rooms, for example, simulating a mine explosion.  There were rooms with crystal chandeliers, which can be rented out for functions and weddings.  There were silly things, like Snow White's dwarves (didn't they work in a diamond mine not a salt mine?) and serious things, like chapels.  There also were multiple souvenir booths, deep in the cave, along with cafes, restrooms, and some handicap accessibility.  Indeed, it is a whole city underground. They employ 400 miners who keep the place safe (but there is no mining there any more) and 500 guides who give tours in all languages.  The guides were choreographed to get you moving out of one location into the next just as the next group was upon you.  They were super well organized, such as having queueing areas for the return lifts.  We wonder if they had consultants from Disney who helped them put it together!  I've often thought that tourism will be the manufacturing of the future from an employment perspective, and this place seemed to represent that vision.

Donna

The party room in the salt mine