It’s the year 1517, you’re out in the hills and you dig up some “White Gold”, sodium chloride, a.k.a. salt. The next thing you know you’re in the mining business. This is before environmental impact studies and OSHA regulations so you start digging like a gopher at a golf course to extract the stuff. Hundreds of years later you’re still shoveling salt by the truckload and you’re left with scores of vestigial mine shafts and mountains of waste. What do you do? If you’re in southern Germany you turn it into a tourist attraction.
One year I’m on a European vacation with my wife, son, and father. We are driving through Bavaria on a pleasant summer day when we end up in an area called “Berchtesgaden” home to the Königsee, Hitler’s Eagle Nest, crystal-clear mountain lakes, spectacular alpine scenery, and Bavarian hospitality. I spot a sign to the “Salzbergwerk” (German for salt mine) when my data banks start clicking away. “I remember visiting this place with my parents when I was a kid, ” I say. “Let’s go check it out”. “Why would we want to see a salt mine?” my 8 year old son Kyle grumbles. This is one of those situations where it’s easier to show him rather than try to go through some lengthy explanation, so off we go.
We pay the few Deutsche marks, this was before the Euro invaded Germany, and we start the tour. The first thing that happens is that a young Fräulein hands us a pile of clothes to slip into. More appropriately to slip over our clothes. These look suspiciously like Karate outfits with caps. The men’s consist of black jackets, black pants, black caps and you guessed it – black belts. The women’s are the same black jacket and belt, but the pants are white and the hats have a blue border. We are told these are “traditional” miner’s clothes. All the black seems more appropriate for a coal mine than a salt mine, but what do I know? We all get a big kick out of being dressed up in these costumes, but it’s part of the attraction.
We assemble into groups and before you know it we are sitting on what looks like a Lincoln log with wheels on tracks. After a brief reminder to keep our hands and feet and any other valuable items close to our bodies, the log ride picks up speed and disappears into a small opening in the side of a mountain. The dimly lit corridor is narrow and quickly cools off as we blast nearly a kilometer into the rock. This is definitely not an ordinary ride like you might encounter at Disneyland, because it has the distinct feel of being the real thing. Nonetheless it conjures up the image of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and I can hear “Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, it’s off to work we go” rollicking through my head.
At the end of the ride we hop off the log and meander through some mineshafts until we arrive at the upper floor of a large, two-story room the size of big movie theater. “How do we get to the lower floor,” Kyle wonders. “Over here,” the guide announces, “we do it the old fashioned way”. With that he directs us to the only connecting path between the upper and lower floors – a steeply declined, highly polished wooden slide. Without hesitation we straddle the plank and gravity does the rest of the work. Zip, zip, zip and we’re at the bottom.
The tour guide explains the inner workings of the mine, salt extraction, and everything you wanted to know about salt but were afraid to ask. We zip, zip, zip down another slide to the next level below and a short time later we arrive at another large room. In the half darkness of this underground labyrinth it is hard to judge how big it is, but it appears to be about the size of a basketball court. The other peculiar thing is that the floor seems to be perfectly level and smooth as glass. On closer inspection it becomes obvious that it isn’t a floor at all, but an underground lake. The extra layer of clothes comes in handy, because it is particularly cool now on the edge of the lake. We pile on to a small flat-bottom raft made of more Lincoln logs and our guide whisks us quietly to the far side of the salt-water grotto.
An hour later we emerge from the dark underground world with a new found appreciation of salt and underground mine work. On our way to the parking lot Kyle exclaims, “That was cool. Can we do it again?” It’s hard to believe that touring an old salt mine can be this enjoyable. It’s just one of those you things you have to experience.
© 2002 Hal Streckert
