Tuesday, 6 October 2026 – Mining in the past and today: the groups visited the last active gold mine in Slovakia, went into a historic mine, looked for gold themselves and explored Banská Štiavnica, a UNESCO World Heritage town.
After a one-hour bus journey, the groups arrived in Hodruša-Hámre in the Štiavnica Mountains. Their first stop was the waste heap of the last active gold mine in Slovakia. Here, they learned how mining affects the environment. The students watched a pipe carry water mixed with rock, which had been crushed into fine sand, onto the huge heap. «It was impressive and scary at the same time,» the reporters write.
The numbers were even more surprising. More than 98 percent of the rock that is taken out of the mountain is waste. It has to be crushed into fine sand and stored forever. A tonne of rock contains only a few grams of gold. This means that people move whole mountains to get a few grams of this precious metal.
In the centre of Hodruša-Hámre, the students were divided into two groups. One group went into a historic mine with a guide. They looked for minerals, were amazed by the long tunnels and found out how hard it is to work in the dark. The other group visited an exhibition about the lives of miners at the time of Thurzo and Jakob Fugger. They saw rocks and minerals from the mine and the tools the miners used. Then the groups changed places, so everyone could see both.
The best part of the morning was a gold panning competition. Everyone who wanted to take part got a pan with sand, small stones and a few tiny pieces of gold. The guide showed them how to do it, and then they started. Many students and teachers really found gold and were allowed to keep it – «so we could have something to remind us of that amazing day.»
In the afternoon, the groups went to Banská Štiavnica. It is the oldest mining town in Slovakia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After a traditional Slovak lunch, they visited the interactive exhibition «Journey Through Time». The first part is about the time of Jakob Fugger and the mining discoveries of the 16th century.
In the second part, the students could experience history themselves with virtual reality (VR) headsets. There were also activities to try out: they guessed how heavy a gold bar was and tried to pull a gold bar out of a box to win a prize.
«The exhibition combined a traditional museum with modern technology like VR headsets and interactive activities,» one student says. «This made learning about history much more fun and exciting.» At the end, the groups walked around the main square of the beautiful old town, and some of them bought ice cream. In the evening, they took the bus back to Banská Bystrica.
