Salzburg

Due to all the rain and cold weather in Hallstatt, Paul suggested we leave a day early and spend some time in Salzburg instead.  Our hotel was nice enough to let us skip out early with no penalty, so that's what we did.

While taking Rick Steves' walking tour of Salzburg, Paul got pretty thirsty and tried to drink from a fountain:

We also saw a neat cemetery.  Bills for the graves are sent on a regular basis until someone doesn't pay, and then the body is removed.  What this means is that the graves are kept very nicely decorated with plants because the relatives are still alive and paying for the space.  Graves with a rectangular area for plants exist in the Homewood Cemetery near our house in Pittsburgh, but they are either weeds or pachysandra now - none of them seem to be maintained.  The cemeteries in Europe are much prettier in that regard:

We also checked out some art deco fifties schmuck:

Okay, we didn't actually go inside, but I find the word schmuck amusing.  Apparently, it means jewelry in German.

Paul was intrigued by a sun dial that showed the time and the date... if the vendors hadn't set up shop right on top of it (the sun dial pole is to the left of the dude in the center of the photo, the sun dial markings are on the pavement under the shop and beyond):

Then there was this street with its fancy brass signs and loads of people:

where we stopped for an elderflower liquor (although I think we may have been given pear instead...):

We also toured the Hohensalzburg Fortress:

I got confused and tried to play Caracassonne again:

We topped off the evening with a Mozart Dinner Concert, which entertained as well as fed us:

For one of the props of the evening, the male opera singer borrowed a Rubik's cube from one of the attendees, which was pretty amusing.  All in all, the performers were great.  I would have liked a few more instrumental pieces, and it would have been nice not to have been charged 6 Euro for a bottle of water on top of the 108 Euro we had already paid for the dinner and music.  Pah.  I dislike paying for water in general, but that was probably the most expensive bottle yet.  And it was most likely just tap water poured into a reusable glass bottle.

Mining for Salt

We went on the salt mine tour in Hallstatt, which included truly authentic miners' garb:

Although brimming with hokey-ness, the tour really was quite cool.  It started out with a long walk through tiny tunnels:

We got to slide down two sets of wooden slides, which may have been the highlight:

We learned all about salt, how it formed into the pockets found in Hallstatt, as well as how it was mined.  Some pretty glowing salt blocks:

At the very end of the tour, the whole tour group rides a long mine cart through a tiny tunnel for what feels like ages until it emerges out into the sunlight.  Well, not sunlight in Hallstatt - more like out into the cloudy rainy afternoon.  Paul got a pretty good video of it (by the way, if you are getting these blog posts through email, you will have to visit the blog website to view the videos):

Three Trains, a Bus, and a Boat

That's what it took us to get to Hallstatt.  Normally, it would be two trains and a boat, but flooding has caused some problems in the area.  The train tracks from Stainach Irdning to Hallstatt aren't doing so well, so the train stops, you board a bus, travel past Hallstatt, and then get on a train to go back to Hallstatt.  Then, you take a boat (the Stefanie) across the water to Hallstatt itself.

Additionally, a river that runs through town decided to change directions the week before our arrival.  Switzerland responded by sending in the army to help sort things out.  The river was back to its usual course by the time we got there, but crews were still working on cleanup and repair.  Also, we discovered that a bridge had washed downriver into the lake:

Sorry, taken from a bus. That bridge belongs quite a ways upstream and not in the lake

So, what did we do in rainy, cold (50 degrees or so) Hallstatt?  A fair amount of hiding in our hotel, which was quite nice:

We took the short Rick Steves walking tour around town and were impressed by the trees growing along the buildings:

We visited the ice caves and saw... ice!

Along with about 30 eight-year-old Austrian schoolchildren.  Awesome.  The English speakers got to stay at the head of the group so the tour guide could tell us about the place before everyone else caught up.  Then she repeated the spiel in German.

We also toured the charnel house in Hallstatt, and by that, I mean we walked in and stared at all the skulls in this tiny room:

I felt kind of bad taking a picture (although the above is actually one that Paul took).  These are real skulls.  In Hallstatt, due to limited space, bodies stay in graves for only about 10-15 years, and then they are removed.  Previously, it was a practice to bleach the skulls in the sunlight for quite some time and then paint them with the person's name as well as with flowers, laurel leaves, or similar.  This practice has pretty much stopped, although I think people can still request it if they want.  The last person to do so was in about 1995.

We also went on a nice long walk on the day it didn't rain very much.  Austria really takes its walking paths seriously:

We enjoyed some lovely views:

That's Hallstatt nestled at the base of that hill.