Sunday 26th May

We set out for Turda to see a salt mine. The Romans quarried salt here but abandoned it due to the collapse of the walls. Since the 13th century the salt was mined until 1932 & more recently the mine has become a tourist attraction.

We entered the mine from a stairway which took us down to one of the old passages about 4m by 4m leading to various chambers a huge one housing the 'Crivac', a giant windlass installed in 1881 to haul up the salt chunks. The machine is quite awesome with 4 huge beams which were pulled by horses turning a vertical shaft with a huge pulley above pulling the heavy hawsers. As one load rose the other fell to be re loaded with salt. The tragic part was that the horses were in a badly lit area & so became blind in about 6 months.

Moving down the tunnel we came to a viewing balcony to look down to the floor of the Joseph mine before moving further to another balcony of the far bigger, Theresa mine. The scale of the cavern created was breathtaking with the lowest level, a lake being at about 100m below. To reach this we took a lift to a huge rectangular gallery which housed amusements including: 6 Table tennis tables, 2 Bowling Alleys, 4 Pool tables, a small theatre & a Ferris wheel of 30m diameter. To get down to the ornamental lake we descended another 100m & walked across a fine bridge on to an island which had small rowing boats for hire. The whole place was quite bizarre but very effective.

On our return to the surface we passed a medical centre, where people can go for the therapeutically experience the salty, humid atmosphere of the place, which is kept at about 10°C.

We came out quite stunned at such a strange place but impressed with the effort to make it a tourist centre.

After lunch we drove south to Alba Julia, a great 18th century fortress built on the site of a Roman fort. The star shaped brick walls are huge & inside walls are several major buildings including the Catholic cathedral & the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral built for the wedding of one Romanian King in 1922.

The Roman fort has hardly been explored as it lies under so many buildings.

Finally, we moved on to Sibiu the Saxon capital of Transylvania which so reminded us of cities in Germany like Regensburg. After a meal we walked around admiring the fine buildings before turning in.