The Berchtesgaden Salt Mine Tour

Despite Salzburg wining an award for one of the best places to visit for 2020 if you are a very active travel group, like my family, after 48 hours you will be searching for things to do.  Thankfully I had done my research before we arrived in Austria and realized since  we were  planning on spending more than few days and as it was not my parents first visit, we would likely need to leave the city proper.  And this search was how I came across the Berchtesgaden Salt Mine Tour, which is actually in Germany, not Austria! 

Visiting the salt mines is only a half day trip from Salzburg and even though I now live in Europe it is still baffling to me how close the countries are sometimes and how easy it is to cross borders.  Proof of this? This tour was actually in Germany!  Berchtesgaden is an actual working salt mine and on this four hour round trip we took a van from Salzburg an hour drive through the Bavarian Alps crossing the boarder from Austria to Germany.   When we arrived we stowed our belongings in lockers and donned quite unflattering jumpsuits.

Once in these traditional miners outfits (where phones were not allowed, which I only minority disregarded) we sat astride a miners train and headed deep into the mountain and the depths of this 500 year old salt mine. We went into quite a deep subterranean landscape, down a few slides, and crossed a brackish salt lake via underground boat.  I learned a ton about salt, salt production, and why for centuries it was called “white gold”.  If you are going to do the tour though, I would heed the advice of the website and make sure you wear warm clothes under your miners jumpsuit as it is quite chilly down in the silt mine!

Would you want to visit the Berchtesgaden Salt Mine Tour?