Deutsche Salzmuseum (The German Salt Museum)

Ok, I'll just go ahead and say it:  the Salt Museum in Luneberg is downright creepy.  What is it with the need to keep a museum dark?  I thought it was just a Swedish thing.  From the Pippi Museum (really mostly play areas with nothing needing protection from light) to the Nobel Museum, we've spent a lot of time peering through the darkness trying to make our eyes adjust and trying to translate signs so that we can understand what it is that we are visiting.

The Salt Museum was especially dark.  The signs were only in German but the woman at the front desk gave me a thick stack of well-worn typed copy paper that turned out to be information about the museum translated into English.  Between the darkness and the fact that I was corralling two little people, though, I managed to get very little from this guide.

Meanwhile, the girls were both freaked out about the darkness.  At first I was gently nudging them along... come on girls, the next room will be better.  But as we wound our way down small corridors further into the bowels of the museum it became clear there were no other visitors, aside from one man touring by himself.  Somehow the quietness and the darkness and the aimlessly wandering corridors all upped the creep-factor.  By the time the man suddenly bolted back through the hallways in the direction of the (now far-away) front desk even *I* became a little spooked.  

E checks out a model of the city from "the olden days" ...before we got spooked. 

Largest grain of salt I've ever seen. 

This platform could have used some explanation.  A voice from somewhere was saying the word "salt" in various languages.  The blue spot light was shining and on the barrel to the left there was a pile of signs, each with the word for salt written in a language.  We couldn't figure out what to do, but at least this room was lit up a little so we could see what we were (not) doing.

This table was kind of fun.  It shows a map of the world with salt blocks marking where some of the earth's largest salt deposits are.  When E touched a salt block it melted into a photo of that site with an explanation of the location.

Halfway through the museum we came across figures set up to look like they were doing the work the salt mine employees would have done centuries ago.  That's a great idea, you know, to have mannequins demonstrate how the work was done.  But not when you make the mannequins look like zombies.  Was that on purpose? It had to be on purpose, no one would make them look like that without meaning too.  And not when you place them in a spot sure to get a reaction out of your visitor.

After steadily going deeper and deeper into the darkness, we finally spotted daylight up a tiny rickety spiral staircase so we made our way up that only to be startled by zombie mannequins staring threateningly down at us from above.  Yikes!  

And that was it.  The three of us high-tailed it through the rest of the museum.  Forget learning about the chemical properties of all the minerals that are similar to salt, forget appreciating salt's impact on humans and trade over the centuries, forget the extensive display on cute and arty salt and pepper shakers, we wanted OUT OF THERE.  At one point we were all running - we were giggling, yes, but we were really running!!

Naturally all this spookiness this didn't stop the unavoidable begging at the tiny gift shop at the end.  "Mama, can I have this? or this?  or this?"  Um, hello, you just toured a museum that will give you nightmares for days and you want a memento??

"Mama, can we buy a bag of salt?"
*shudder*