Wieliczka - Poland with a pinch of salt

It is almost lunchtime and the sky changes hue from bright blue to dull grey. The sun peeps out shyly from the clouds as we get ready for another journey.  We are in Krakow, Poland, and the guide tells us that our next destination is about 300 metres (almost 1,000 feet ) below sea level. I ask him about lunch and he smiles at me and says that we will be climbing down 400 steps to work up an our appetite.  I am heading to a 800-year-old salt mine with nine working floors underground in a little town called Wieliczka.

If someone was to tell me that I could lunch, have conferences, pray in chapels, get married and have a banquet underground, I would probably take it all with a pinch of salt. However, here the entire experience comes with a mine of rock salt.

We descend a flight of 400 wooden steps to reach the first floor of the salt mine, located at a depth of 64 metres (210 feet). As we descend into earth’s abyss, I absorb the mine’s history. Wieliczka’s tryst with salt goes back almost 5,000 years when it was extracted from dried brine springs in the area. It was believed that salt deposits were formed in the region when the waters of the Miocene sea had evaporated and the local people discovered brine wells around the town. The earliest evidence of the same probably goes back to the 12th century when rock salt was discovered.

It is dark and the miners tell us their story as we watch them fight natural and mysterious forces. In a moment I am transported to an entirely different world. I am absolutely awestruck. In the dim light, with shafts of air cooling us, I can see rock salt deposits on the walls of the caves. The guide takes us on a tour of the techniques of the miners, and the hardships they faced. We go past the museum exhibits, my eyes glued to the brilliant art created by these men out of rock salt.

There is astronomer Nicholas Copernicus looking at me and the man of letters, Goethe. Kings and their subjects are carved here in rock salt. Some of the carvings tell you Biblical tales -- the mine is filled with sculptures from the scriptures. It is dark and dingy but the stories fascinate us. The wooden staircase takes us further down. Our eyes get used to the dark chambers. Each one has a tale and a title associated with it. My favourite is one of the legend behind the salt mine. A man kneels before a lady holding a ring. Just before we assume a romantic angle to this salt sculpture from the 17th century in the Janowice Chamber by miner Mieczyslaw Kluzek, my guide tells me the about “The Great Legend.”

It was believed that the legend and the salt travelled all the way from Hungary to Poland with St Kinga, daughter of the Hungarian monarch Bela IV, who is credited with the discovery of salt here.  When she got married to the Polish Duke Boleslaw the Chaste, she was given a salt mine at Marmaros as her dowry. She cast her ring in the mine shaft and when she was on her way to Krakow, she asked her men to dig a well. They not only discovered salt, but Kinga’s engagement ring as well.

Narrating this story, the guide took us to a most beautiful chapel carved underground at 101 metres. St Kinga, to whom the chapel is dedicated, became the patroness of all salt miners. The sculpture carved in this 19th century chapel are breathtaking. Even the  crystals of the chandeliers here are made of rock salt. Sculptors and miners join hands to carve Biblical stories on the walls of this spectacular chapel.

There are several chambers, chapels, and even a cathedral here. My eyes get used to the darkness. And then the guide promises us a beautiful landscape created below the earth. The lights come on as we behold an artificial lake glistening in the darkness. Deep and mysterious, it has its own little secrets.

As my journey ends, I meet the most important man of the mine – the warden. The man who watches over the miners, takes care of them, protects them from the vagaries of nature and warns them of potential dangers. He is the spirit of the mine, standing there cast in rock salt from a chamber of his own.

After a quick meal, we are finally locked in a little door, which is like a small elevator that transports us back from this dark medieval world in the depths of the earth to familiar turf in just 30 seconds.

It was one salty experience underground.