Station 3 ‘The tunnel’

Look, that hole in the mountain... that's the tunnel where we used to get the gemstones out of the mountain before the big people came. But everything was much smaller then, we dwarves don't need that much space. Sometimes you can still find quartz on the paths, the mountain used to be full of it. Over there in the guest house there are also glass boxes with stones inside that you can look at - all found here in the Harz Mountains... we dwarves thought the stones were so beautiful that we were very careful with them and only took the most beautiful ones for ourselves... we brought many of them to the dwarf king, who decorated his large grotto with them. The big people didn't pay much attention to the colourful stones, they wanted the minerals of the mountain and here in Bad Lauterberg they found a lot of barite (barytes)... look, there it is at the entrance to the tunnel. They ground barite flour from it, which is needed to make glass or colours, for example. Well, that's how we dwarves fell into oblivion. But sometimes, when you're walking around in the forest, you might find a shimmering stone... I've put it there especially for you to make you happy. Have fun looking for it!