Hallstatt: Land of salt, ice and bones

Hallstatt was really a trip I had been looking forward to since I arrived in Vienna. It's an idyllic little village squished between a lake and the Alps. Yes, I finally made it to the Alps. We went there last weekend, first impression follows:

...thanks, Rick Steves

Hallstatt is so small that it doesn't have its own train or bus station. We had to disembark our train in the middle of a forest and take a small ferry across the lake to get to the village. How awesome is that? We hopped off onto a little dock and started to wander through town. Views from the town square:


We stayed at the only hostel in town, which doubles as a bar and restaurant with some excellent pizza. 14 Euro a night too, not too shabby at all. We walked along the waterfront once it got dark, which is incredible since the village literally goes right up to the edge of the water. We passed a waterfront cafe with some really cool lanterns:


It was a little too dark to get any other pictures, but the place looks incredible during the day so I wasn't too disappointed.

Me in a gazebo on a little hill overlooking the village

Waterfall from later on the hike

It isn't possible to take a bad picture of this place

Fisherman out on the lake with a cool castle in the background. Hallstatt is famous for its freshly caught Reinanke, more on that later

View from the side of one of the waterfront restaurants

Two of the major attractions in the Hallstatt area are its ice caves and its salt mine. We went to both, obviously. The ice cave was amazing. We took a bus to a nearby town and took a cable car about 3000m up one of the mountains. It was cold. Really cold. Why didn't anyone warn me that the ice caves over a mile and a half up the Alps would be so cold?

The group in front of the ice caves, looking out into the valley. Trust me, there's a valley back there. The clouds and snow got in the way

Now into the caves...

I still say this is an awesome picture, though it didn't really work as intended. Yeah, that's the four of us

Ah, this was a really cool formation

After our tour inside the ice caves was over, we were a little excited to get back outside and out of the frigid icy blackness. Our hands and feet had long since numbed over. Then our tour guide opened the door outside and we were hit with a blast of frigid wind and snow. It was colder outside than in the CAVES OF ICE. Although I was pretty happy that I was walking around in the Alps getting snowed on in the middle of May.

This is the kind of scenery we were looking at the entire weekend. Linnea also

On the way down we saw a tree trunk that had plumbing installed in it, shooting out fresh, pure Alps spring water. Guess who just had to try it? It was an awesome idea until I realized the bottom half of my face was numb. Such good water though

After we had gotten back from our trek in the mountains, it was time to eat. We decided to try the Hallstatt special, freshly caught and smoked Reinanke

Yes, that is an entire fish on my plate. An entire delicious fish

The next day we went to the salt mines. We took a funicular up to the top of the mountain, which offered its own awesome view:


Then we were given MINERS CLOTHES so we could look AWESOME while touring the mine

Excellent

The entrance to the mine

We were going through a lot of these little tunnels, the smallest one was about 5 feet high and 2 feet wide. Claustrophobically awesome

One of the old buckets in one of the tunnels

There were two big wooden slides that we went down as quick transport to the next tunnels. So much fun. None of my pictures turned out, but we basically just luged down these slides. I got up to about 30km/h

These are seven massive salt crystals being lit internally. The rosy tint comes from iron impurities

We left the salt mine, but we didn't leave empty-handed. My new Hallstatt salt is pink and delicious.

Couldn't help getting a couple more nice pictures while I was leaving:



Our last stop after the salt mine was the Bone Chapel. Background: Hallstatt's cemetery is small. Really small. It quickly became overcrowded, so starting in the late 17th century (I believe) the monks began to carefully exhume the bodies and placed the large bones (mostly skulls and femurs) in their chapel. All of the skulls are lovingly named, dated and painted and placed on a huge altar. A very weird, slightly unsettling, but extremely interesting place.




All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. Cold, but awesome. As much as we hated to leave, the heated train car on the ride home was a necessity. Who knew the Alps would be such a cold place...

Beautiful České Budějovice

Last weekend a couple of us ventured into the Czech Republic looking for cheap alcohol. The trip can be accurately summarized by the following quote from one of the great masterpieces of our time, Eurotrip (skip to 2:05):



But I'm getting ahead of myself. This trip started as a quick, last-minute idea because our Team IKI time on Friday made it difficult to go on a big weekend trip. So we decided a booze run to our friendly neighbor to the north was in order. With our unlimited train passes, we weren't exactly worried about the trip. Related note: Just because you CAN frivolously board any train at will does not necessarily make it a good idea. Although it did lead to this masterpiece:

Yes, that is me drinking a Czech beer on a Czech train cruising at high speeds through the Czech countryside. Life is hard sometimes.

Anyway, the train ride was pretty fun. Aside from the fact that there were no electrical outlets to speak of and we REALLY didn't want to do homework, it was comfortable and the drive by service was good. Plus we went through some very nice countryside:


So yeah, the ride was all well and good. Well the ride THERE was good, but again I'm getting ahead of myself. Things started to go a little south when we had crossed the border and still hadn't seen much in the way of... well, civilization. This was one of the largest train stations we stopped at on the way:

I neglected to include in the picture the part of the facade of the building on the right that showed that it was basically a brick building covered by an inch of plaster. And yes, that is an abandoned barn. This was the biggest, most modern train station we stopped at.

Needless to say, we were feeling less and less sure about this whole Czech booze run thing. These worries were compounded once we actually got to České Budějovice and saw nothing but huge concrete buildings and absolutely no people. At all. I have to say though, their train station is pretty cool (well, on the outside anyway:


It was when we realized that this city is not in the slightest tourist-friendly, combined with the fact that we were dragging rolling suitcases, where we started to think we maybe should have researched this trip a little more.

"WHAT THE CHRIST HAVE WE DONE"

Ahem. So we did end up getting our alcohol, but it was in a more rushed, panicky tone than we were hoping. And it was pretty cheap. We then, of course, were forced to look around while we waited for our train back to Vienna.

Minor construction project

This was the least shady place we found to eat:


We ate at McDonalds instead. I'm not proud of it, but it was necessary. Then we finally got on the train back to Vienna! We would be back shortly after nightfall.

Or so we thought.

Turns out that in the Czech Republic, it is rather common to flat out lie when explaining your train route. We boarded a train to Salzburg that was stopping in Linz, which is a very common and easy place to catch a connecting train to Vienna. Unfortunately, once we crossed into Austria we were forced to get off the train. Confused, we asked why, since we were told we were going to Linz. "You take bus", explained the extremely helpful train staff. Yes, we had to take a 45km bus ride in order to get to Linz. For the record, buses do not travel as quickly as trains. I know you are stunned.

Because of this slower-than-desired route we got to Linz just in time to miss the last train to Vienna. Excellent. What to do now? Well, we had just been in Salzburg the previous weekend and I knew of an excellent hostel. Train leaving for Salzburg in 15 minutes? Excellent. On the train we met some drunk Austrians who had boarded the wrong train after watching their football match. I could empathize.

We got to Salzburg finally around 12:30am, but we decided that instead of getting a hostel it would be cheaper and faster to wait until the 2:15am train to Vienna. Sounded ok to me. Hung out at another McDonalds and the train station in the rain until it was time to board. I may have gotten an hour or two of not-terrible sleep on the train (better than the Mallorca Airport, I can tell you that for DAMN sure) and we rolled into Vienna around 5:30am. And promptly passed out.

Research is important, kids. Always remember that. At least I got a really nice port out of it.


Side note: Totally got 2nd place at a foreign quiz night. We will get 1st soon. That round of drink and bottle of Jameson are practically ours...

The Rolling Hills of Salzburg

A few friends and I took a trip to Salzburg this past weekend, which turned out to be the best time I've had so far on this trip abroad. Of course, in order to prep for this little excursion, we watched The Sound of Music on Thursday. I forgot how awesome that movie was. Anywho, we jumped on a train right after class on Friday and made the journey through Austria's countryside.

Arriving in Salzburg, we dropped off our stuff at the Hostel (the Yoho if you're ever in Salzburg, it's an excellent place that's cheap, clean and very safe) and set off to wander around the city. And of course what's the first thing I do? Climb a tree of course.


Well now that that's out of the way, back to the city. How many scenes from The Sound of Music can you identify in this picture?


If you guessed 3, you're right! I think, unless I'm forgetting something. I probably am. The stairs in the foreground are where Maria and the kids were singing the Do Re Mi song and jumping up and down the stairs. The fountain in the middle is where they were running around in a circle, and in the back you can see the little tunnel the kids were running through at one point. Really pretty gardens too.

Life is good.

Continuing on, we meandered on over to the river and saw a great cityscape. Salzburg is everything I was expecting from this trip, a semi-small city with lots of character and history. You can walk across the entire city (the main part) in a little under an hour (we did, more than once).


As dusk settled in, we went to the foot of one of the two of Salzburg's "mountains" (I'm sorry Salzburg, but 650m does not make a mountain) and searched for Salzburg's famed Augustiner Bräu brewery and beer garden. A good idea, as it turned out to be heaven on earth.


Entire liters of really, really good beer as well as some extremely good food. My meal consisted of a mug and half of a grilled hen. On the way home when it was pretty late and very dark, we were treated to a lightning storm off in the distance. Warm, breezy night, no rain and a far off storm made for some great memories and awesome pictures.


Now on to the highlight of the trip: The Sound of Music bike tour. 3.5 hours through the city and outskirts of Salzburg, noting important locales and enjoying the unbelievable scenery.

Starting off

Some horse murals behind a fountain, there is a scene where Maria is leading the children through the city featuring this location

This is the graveyard that inspired the graveyard scene near the end of the movie where the von Trapps are hiding from the Nazis. Unfortunately they weren't allowed to film in this cemetery so they had to create a new one in a studio. Unfortunate, because the real one is really, really cool.

Now this is one of my favorite pictures I took on this trip. This, combined with the one with the field that I'll get to in a second, is why Salzburg is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

Amazing.

Linnea at the gate of the Monastery where Maria was staying in the movie

Me, Linnea, Nancy, Robert. Dream Team.

The field picture I mentioned earlier. Amazing

Our whole bike tour group

You may recognize this as the back of the von Trapp house. This was where Maria and the kids fell into the lake from the canoe, while the Captain and Baroness looked on from the patio

Munching on a pear

The famous gazebo. Closed now because too many stupid people tried to recreate the dancing scene with Liesl and Rolfe and ended up breaking their legs. Yeah.

And that concludes the bike tour. So much fun. But fear not! There is still plenty of Salzburg to see. But first, some down time resting at the hostel.


Then a little play time with the horse statue where Maria splashes water back at the fountain on her way to the von Trapp's.

Town square with a view of the fortress, our next destination

Halfway up, taking a break on the wall overlooking the city

Top of the fortress, looking out over the city and countryside

Unfortunately we didn't get much time up at the fortress. We saw a storm brewing on the horizon that sped toward us at a ridiculous speed, so we got out of there quick. Where to go to wait out the storm? Better go back to the beer garden!

My kind of place

The next day we decided to climb one of the mountains in the city. We wandered through the back roads rarely explored by tourists and saw some really nice houses. Where I will be moving someday. Also found this excellent car, very reminiscent of some of the cars in the movie:

View from the top of the mountain

Cafe at the top of the mountain, definitely beer time

Reminiscent of the picture I took while viewing the Alhambra so long ago...

I have no idea why I found this so interesting, but it's a cool picture regardless

Exploring the forests on the way down the mountain

Lilacs in bloom. Shut up.

That's Salzburg. Amazing trip, and I can't wait to go back. Made some great memories and got some awesome pictures. And a sweet souvenir of course: