Coal mine turned into heritage park

[Jaga]

here is more info and photos of coal mine Julia museum, but I could not find English version:
www.muzeum.walbrzych.pl/

Coal mine turned into heritage park

The long defunct Julia Colliery in the southwestern city of Wa³brzych has been turned into what is known as the Old Colliery Multicultural Park. The EU provided €35 million (about $46 million) of the 52 million euros required to carry out the project. Visitors will be able to see historic mine equipment while touring the colliery’s corridors which have been turned into a museum. The Julia coal mine ceased operations in the early 1990s.

from Rob Strybel

[Jaga]

here are really interesting photos:
cit.walbrzych.pl/atrakcje-turystyczne/stara-kopalnia

[Jaga]

By the way, all brown coal mining was stopped in Poland in 1990. All 15 existing coal mines in Western Poland (this region belonged to Germany before WW II) was closed and 20 th people lost their jobs.

[Eric]

Is that a real photo? It looks EXCEPTIONALLY clean and orderly for a mine complex!

[gobose]

The mining industry in Poland remains under socialist control.

The Polish Gov't really needs to get their hands out of it and allow the private sector to take over.

"Mining" will never advance Poland. It can be a "cash cow" at best for the Polish economy.

[pieter]

Gobose,

I have to agree with you, because in the seventees even the Dutch Social-democratic government closed down the mines because they weren't profitable. The prime-minister back then was very smart in backing plans for a large chemical company to be erected in the place of that mines, DSM.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM_(company)

Gobose, be patience with Poland, don't forget that Poland had a socialist political system and plan economy for almost (1944–1989) 45 years.

And before that during the Interbellum period (1918–1939) the issue of the nationalization of foreign-owned assets damaged the Polish economical growth, because it blocked foreign investment, which is needed or practical in a healthy Capitalist free market economy in a Free democracy. The government retained control of these because there was insufficient domestic capital to buy them, and because it was easier than determining who should get what. Overall, Poland had a higher degree of state involvement in the economy and less foreign investment than any other nation in eastern Europe. This emphasis on economic centralisation hampered Poland's development.

Polish agriculture suffered from the usual handicaps of Eastern European nations: technological backwardness, low productivity, and lack of capital and access to markets. The former German areas in the west had better rainfall and soil quality and were the most productive, while the former Russian and Austrian areas were below-average. As everywhere, the Polish peasantry believed that land reform would solve all their problems, which in practice it could not due to the above-mentioned factors. Land reforms were predictably oriented along ethnic lines. In the west, Germans who had been made foreigners in 1919 quickly lost their property. In the east by contrast, Ukrainian and Belorussian peasants tilled for Polish landowners and no serious moves toward land redistribution were taken.

Cheers,
Pieter