Underground Life .:. Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow, Poland

Whenever I check out my folder with images, I see how many subfolders with different names I have, and most of them are waiting there to be published on HIVE one day! Every time I see that, I say to myself that I'm a lazy bum, but the truth is that I have added so many other things to do lately, that I just can't find time for these "travel posts"... If you check out my profile and scroll back to the past, you will find a lot more of content from my travels, or walks in nature, etc. Lately, most of my content is about HIVE, which isn't bad at all, but I would like to mix things up and put some of my life experiences on the chain, to keep a memory of great times forever!!!

The #HiveBeeCon was one of those events from which I have some awesome memories! I did a couple of posts after the event (after checking, it was literally just two posts... 🤦‍ You can check them here and here), but I still have material for at least 3-4 posts from that Poland trip!

#HiveFest is around the corner, and I suppose because of that, I felt nostalgia and pulled out these photos from the Wieliczka Salt Mine and decided to "re-live" the experience for that small side-trip that we took during the #HiveBeeCon...

To be honest, I forgot most of the things that our guide told us during the visit, but I do remember that these never-ending stairs looked exactly as you can see in the photo above... Like infinite stairs... "stairway to hell" 🤣 I forgot the exact number of stairs, but we went down 64 meters by stairs!!!

Btw. that doesn't mean that the mine is 64 meters under the ground as during our walk through tunnels, we were still going up and down... According to Wikipedia, the deepest level of the mine is 327 meters under the ground, and the total length of passages and chambers is over 287 kilometers!!! When I think about that mine, I imagine cartoons when they draw a labyrinth of underground tunnels or anthill!

At the moment, the mine is open as a tourist attraction, and UNESCO protects it as a World Heritage Site... But, back in the day, as those passages are so long, miners were staying under the ground for weeks and months! Because of that, you can find a lot of "content" under the ground...

Also, some famous artists were visiting the mines, and afterward, some other artists created sculptures to mark those visits... That's how this sculpture of Nicolaus Copernicus found its place in the mines...

The walls in the mine aren't white as people would think when we are talking about salt, but they are rather in granite (grey) color... What you can see in the image above is salt condensate, which has to be removed every couple of months... If not, it would cover the whole chamber!

There are many small chambers where you can "follow the story" from some part of the history... The one that you can see above is the story about the Hungarian princess, but you can find more about it in that Wikipedia link above...

These "dolls" aren't as old as sculptures craved in stones, but they do show how was everyday life underground... As you can see, in a later stage, they had animals who helped with salt extraction, like horses and donkeys...

I have no idea why, this small scene got stuck in my memory and the story about it... It shows 7 dwarfs working in the mine, and 1 additional dwarf, which isn't a dwarf... :) The story says that in the old days, it was forbidden for women to enter the mines, but Snowhite decided to trick others and she went there, camouflaged as a dwarf... 😃 So, you can find 7 dwarfs, and 1 that sticks out as it doesn't have a beard! 😃

As I said, because miners were spending a lot of time underground, they created numerous small chapels (chambers) bringing religious objects too...

The biggest one is St. Kinga's Chapel which you can see in the next few photos... It is amazing how it looks and how big it is! It is still used for certain ceremonies, and I think that the guide mentioned that some famous royal marriage ceremonies took place there!

These things are craved IN THE STONE! Amazing!

One of the visitors of the mine was Pope John Paul II, and he also got his place in this magnificent chapel!

Another big "attraction" was this underground salt lake! There was a legend about it too, and during our visit, we were attending the audio-visual performance...

We had a small break in this underground cafe, which unfortunately was under reconstruction during our visit and didn't work... I used that moment to take a photo of some underground Hivers... 😃

When we continued the walk, our Hiver group took a small break at the next sculpture, where I tried to catch all Hivians in this photo... Tag those who are you missing the most in the comment section... 😛

Not that long time ago, there were organized boat/kayak routes in these underground water passages... Unfortunately, there was an incident where some people lost their lives and those routes were canceled...

As I said at the beginning, we went down 64 meters by those stairs, but as we were closing to the end of our underground visit, we reached 130 meters deep!

When we reached this underground train station, we were close to elevators that took us to the top, or better said, to the ground level... 😃 Luckily, we didn't have to go back by those stairs as I was dizzy from going down... and going up would be even worse... 😃

Btw. those elevators weren't something that you can see in modern buildings or such... They were like metal cages that took us to the surface in 30 seconds! Btw, the tourist route is "only" 2.2km, and I think that we took a shortcut and did even less... 😂

Anyway, that was our visit to the Wieliczka Salt Mine which was very well worth seeing and if you are in that area, don't forget to pay the visit!! Of course, the whole experience was on a completely different level as we did the visit with other Hivians to make it more spicy! 😃

I miss you guys and I hope that we will meet again in the upcoming #HiveFest, and maybe some other #Buzzparty!

Thank you for your time.

--ph--

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