First thing first, Wieliczka is a unique site well worth the visit. The artistry at display and how the miners transformed a mundane, industrial mine into architecture and art is astonishing. Having seen my fair share of mines hunting world heritage sites, I have not encountered anything like it. To me, discounting the darkness of Auschwitz, Wieliczka is the most unique site of Poland, a site truely eminating OUV.

With that in mind, I found myself with a spare day in Cracow. I was considering visiting yet another wooden church (which I love!). But then I figured by triangulation, that if Wieliczka is great and Bochnia is an extension of Wielizcka, then Bochnia, even if it's a lesser version of Wieliczka, should be pretty great, too. So instead of taking a bus to Dębno, I opted for a train ride to Bochnia.

First shock came when I reached the ticket booth: They only had a 3h tour and a 4h tour with an extra boat ride on offer. 3h in a mine... how?! why?! Spending long time underground is not really popular with me and it was messing with my schedule as I still had to get to Katowice the same day. Last but not least, the tours are fairly expensive (~ 15EUR).

Okay, I thought, 3h means that we go deep into the mine and explore some hidden parts. Alas, we did not. You mostly move along one long passage, probably the August Passage. Hubert already hinted at it, the mine is stuffed with multimedia exhibits. The tour moves along the passage from one exhibit to the next and then you stand for 10min each. The exhibits are all in Polish. No English guide is available, so I found myself pretty bored, so much so that I turned on a podcast to keep me entertained.

The end point was a visit to the underground restaurant featuring a basketball court and playground. Technically, they could have ended the tour then and there as nothing followed, but instead they forced everyone to hang around the restaurant for another 30min underground.

You could have done the whole tour in an hour and you would not have been stressed. Nothing I saw came close to Wieliczka. This is a mundane, industrial salt mine and I have seen better ones at that (Goslar). Frankly, the extension was an error as it dliutes the OUV. If I was to rate Bochnia on it's own, this would be a below average site.

On my way back to the train station, I took a short stroll through the town. The town square and the church were nice.

Getting There

Bochnia has a train station with connections to Cracow. From the train station, it's still quite a walk to get to the entry.

Wieliczka has regular bus connections to Cracow.