Food Feature: Salt of the earth

Poland’s ancient Wieliczka salt mine

“Don’t lick the dog’s head,” warned our tour guide in her charming Polish accent. “Its face is already gone from children licking it in the past two centuries.”

Surprisingly, this statement wasn’t the result of a poor grasp of English or too many vodka shots. More than 20 stories below ground in the vast depths of Europe’s oldest — and undoubtedly strangest — working mine, it actually seemed a reasonable enough request.

The faceless dog is among the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of life-sized statues carved out of salt that populate the endless caverns and tunnels of the Wieliczka salt mine outside Krakow. Also rendered here in sodium-chloride splendor are various kings, queens, knights, monks, dwarves and a statue of holy homeboy John Paul II. The saline pontiff stands at the foot of a grand salt stairway that leads into the Chapel of the Blessed Kinga, a huge, awe-inspiring chamber carved entirely from ... well, you get the idea.

Although it’s considered to rank among the great European cultural treasures, don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of the Wieliczka salt mine. Most Westerners who venture into Poland come for a far more notorious Krakow-area attraction: the Auschwitz death camp. To then visit a deep, dark hole that sounds like someplace Stalin would have sent the local refuseniks is probably too depressing to contemplate.

On our second trip to the stunning medieval city of Krakow, however, my wife and I were determined not to miss the surreal subterranean wonderland we’d discovered on the ever-reliable list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Although we’d planned to ride a train to the nearby village of Wieliczka, we discovered a handful of private, “gray-market” shuttle buses outside the train station waiting to take visitors to the mine for about 50 cents — assuming they don’t mind pausing at nearly every bus stop along the way. Tickets for the mine tour are approximately $9, a princely sum for Eastern Europe, but you can get in for less if you don’t mind having a guide who speaks only Polski.

Dating to the 13th century, when salt was still being traded as currency (hence the word “salary”), the Wieliczka mine once was Poland’s leading industrial site, visited by such luminaries as Goethe and Copernicus. Over the centuries, the mine grew to include 120 miles of corridors and nine levels that ultimately sink 1,000 feet underground.

Because it took several hours to reach their work site, early miners would live most of the year in the mine, giving them plenty of free time to spend carving elaborate sculptures, shrines and chapels.

The tour is not for the weak-kneed, starting off as it does with a 378-step descent that takes you more than 150 feet down to the mine’s first level. Stairways and passageways are lined with heavy timbers, but veins of white crystals criss-cross the ceilings.

Some of the chambers plunge dozens of feet down into deep, briny lakes. Others are cut diagonally, with steep, narrow, railing-less staircases up which miners would’ve carried baskets of salt by torchlight in the days before OSHA and worker’s comp claims.

The Kinga chapel — named for the Hungarian princess who, according to legend, miraculously discovered the salty lode — boasts a high-sodium, bas-relief version of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” an impressive altar and five ornate chandeliers strung with hundreds of hand-cut salt crystals.

The two-and-a-half-hour tour ends on the third level, where a series of huge halls holds a cafeteria and bar, a biergarten with a dance floor, a small post office and — in a nod to Western-style capitalism — a gauntlet of booths selling postcards, jewelry and, of course, a variety of salt products.

A final tip: It’s helpful to order a couple of shots of the local honey liquor to give you courage before wedging with five other people into the old, cramped elevator cages that rocket you in near-total darkness back to the surface.

scott.henry@creativeloafing.com


Wieliczka Salt Mine is situated 10 kilometers east of Krakow, on the E 40 route. It’s open daily April 1-Oct. 31, 7:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m. and Nov. 2-March 31, 8 a.m.-4 p.m. +48 12 278 73 75. www.kopalnia-wieliczka.pl/english/.






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