Hallstatt

 We arrived in Hallstatt on Wednesday afternoon, taking the train from Salzburg to Attnang-Puchheim, then changing to a regional train that took  us through a valley to the Hallstatt train station.  The Hallstatt station is across the lake from the town itself, so a ferry meets you at the dock and for 7 euros RT you take the ferry over to town.

View of Hallstatt in the early evening

Waiting for the ferry

It was snizzling (rain and snow drizzle) when we arrived.  We are staying at the Heritage Hotel.  The main hotel is right next to the ferry dock, but it turns out that the hotel lhas several buildings.  To get to ours, a staff person loaded our suitcases onto a mechanical cart and led us up cobbled icy streets to our building.  The room is quite nice though and has a lovely view of the lake.  And if the weather were nice, a little balcony with 2 chairs. 

Since we hadn't had lunch, the first thing to do was to find a cafe for a sandwich and cup of hot tea.  After that, we strolled around town.  The most historic part of town is bracketed by gates to control traffic.  Above town is a bypass that goes through a tunnel.

Although it seems like there are a fair number of tourists in town, it is clearly not nearly as many as will come on the weekend or in summer months.  A lot of the restaurants are closed and the stores seem to have fairly short hours.  We ended up eating dinner at our hotel's restaurant after not finding any other place open except for another big hotel.  We were amused by watching two young Asian women photographing themselves and every course of their meal, switching seats for the best lighting or backdrop.  Another large tour group from Thailand was seated nearby.  I often wonder how people from different countries end up going to relatively small places like Hallstatt (or Santa Fe in the US).  How do they end up being on the tour itinerary?  There also seem to be quite a few young Asian women traveling by themselves or in small groups in Germany and Austria.  Has it become a thing like the "European Tour" of the early 1900s?

I got a very good whole trout for dinner, served with a salad and parslied potatos.  Apparently trout and pike or perch can be caught in the lake.

Our hotel includes breakfast.  The typical German breakfast buffet is quite impressive - ham, cheese, rolls and bread, croissants and some sort of cake or small pastries, smoked fish, pickles, yogurts, cereals, and yogurt toppings, fresh fruit, and eggs and sausages.  Today's also included "steamed sweet dumplings" which turned out to be filled with nutella, and shredded fluffy pancakes.  We have found that eating such breakfasts means you can eat a very late lunch unless you have more willpower than we do!

After breakfast, with the skies clearing and sun appearing, we went to the Salzwerks, or salt works.  A funicular takes you up to the top of the hill over town and offers beautiful views.  You can download an audioguide to your phone and we listened to about 10 stops as you make your way uphill to the start of the salt mine tour.  The mine tour takes at least 90 minutes.  Our guide spoke German and English and there were about 20 of us on the tour.  Apparently they can accommodate 70/tour!  You walk a long ways into the mine and they have various places to stop and sit to listen to the guide or to several videos/light shows.  You also get to go on two miner's slides (see photo) and at the end you leave on a miner's "taxi" pulled by a small train car.

The funicular track

View from the Salzwerks

layers of salt

A video that showed the formation of the salt layers

The miner's slide

Saltworks buildings

People have been mining salt here for at least 7000 years and an immense amount of salt is still sent as brine through a pipeline to the town of Ebersee to be processed into salt.  Although some is used for seasoning food, apparently much of it is used as road salt and for industrial uses.  The salt deposits were formed when an inland sea dried up that became surrounded by clay deposits that didn't allow the salt to leach out.  This happened before the Alps formed.  There is also a burial ground from the Iron Age that has yielded many interesting artifacts and information about how people might have lived in that era.

We had a late lunch at the restaurant at the top of the funicular, but the main dining area was seating by reservation only and the small downstairs area had one waiter who seemed rushed off his feet. There is a skywalk just outside the restaurant, but unless you really want someone to take your photo at the end of it, it didn't seem worth it to pay the fee to use it when the views were so good from everywhere.

the skywalk

Back in town we stopped at a cafe for small piece of cake and a cup of tea.  We ended up sharing a table with a couple from Michigan, a retired librarian and her husband whose birthday was today.  They had basically just gotten to Hallstatt after their bus broke down on the way here from Vienna, but they would still have time to do a brief tour of the town before the bus left.  The town is getting set up for its weekend Christmas market, but we will be off to Vienna in the morning.