There will be no photos of me wearing the miner’s outfit I donned for the salt mine tour in Berchtesgaden, Germany, as the ensemble is not exactly befitting the royal status of your Weekend Duchess. However, sliding down the shafts well beneath the surface of the earth with a crowd of German family tourists was easily one of my favorite travel experiences, unglamorous as it was. Sometimes your duchess weekends at Lake Como searching for George Clooney, but sometimes she needs to tunnel into the salt mines, too!
Berchtesgaden is a few hours outside of Munich, easily reached by the super-efficient German train system. The Bavarian countryside makes for a beautiful morning of travel, so I sat myself by the window and enjoyed the ride. In general, German systems of transportation are remarkably clear and user-friendly, especially compared to our own systems (I’m talking to you, New York subway announcers!).
The town of Berchtesgaden itself is serenely pretty, and if you have time, you can also squeeze in a visit to the nearby Eagle’s Nest for a bit of history with a view. I took some time in the afternoon to walk around the hills and stopped for an indulgent ice cream by the river in a local cafe. The main event of the day, however, was the salt mines tour.
Upon arriving at the salt mines, you are given a miner’s jumpsuit, black with reflective white stripes, to wear over your clothes for the duration of the tour. It does get pretty chilly underground, and there is a bit of sliding on surfaces which may or may not be clean, so you’ll be glad of the suit, even as you ban your friends from taking unflattering photos.
I was the only non-German speaker on my tour, so I was given a headset with the tour in English, while everyone else listened to the guide. I became suspicious that there might be a “throw the American into the river” portion of the tour when everyone around me seemed to be laughing at the guide’s chatter, while my English tour was light on jokes. But perhaps it was just that famous German sense of humor.
The tour lasts over an hour, and contains a ride on a mine train through the mysteriously beautiful salt cathedral, several free-wheeling slides between floors in the mines, and an eerie, haunting boat ride on the underground salt lake. As I found myself following German families in flailing down shafts of a mine, I knew that whatever choices I had made to bring me to that pass were absolutely the rights ones for me.