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This journal entry is for my first day in Hallstatt. I have a second day (today, actually) which I won’t write an entry for until it’s finished, as I still plan to do stuff today but the internet place closes at 5, so…
Anyways Halstatt is great. Another place built up against water like Cinque Terre but this place is a lot calmer and less touristy. And it’s next to a lake, not the ocean. And it’s not as hard to get around, etc.
The city itself is colorful, but the nice part is the people here seem to be legitimate, life-long locals. I was able to find a nice guest house with a single room and huge bed (a very welcome change as I’m sure you can imagine) for only 35euro. Whee. I then went to the local tourist office and got info on hiking and the surrounding area.
I walked around town for a bit, and there are a lot of charming shops and guesthouses around here (many houses advertise private rooms for let as well). Including one that sells real non-supermarket coffee which I will have to peruse later. This definitively qualifies as a “one-traffic
light” town, as there is literally one major crossroad and thus one traffic light. I ate dinner on the water—the restaurant was part of my guesthouse, actually. Good ol’ genuine sauerkraut n’ pork n’ bread dumpling n’ soup n’ apple pastry. I also saw some interesting floating statues that each represent different things about the town. One with a floating dining table representing flooding and showing dates at different heights showing the highest floods on record. Another with a purple-striped “guardian angel” representing the successful effort to keep freeways from going through the town. Another with a green swirly shape representing local dance. Yet another showing a blue goddess-type figure that represented an Austrian queen who frequented Hallstatt. And the last showing an uncomfortably-speared yellow figure on a disk with a digital clock on the spear representing the uselessness of sundials in the town due to its being surrounded by mountains and fog. I also saw people paddle-boating the lake which looks like great fun. I’ll have to try that tomorrow.
I then decided I had enough time left to hike the supposedly one-and-a-half-hour trail up to the waterfall. I said supposedly because that’s a big fat lie. Or
at least it was for me.
The hike started off well enough, took me long enough to find the start of the trail but finally another tourist told me just to follow the river, because duh that’s where the water leads to the waterfall. I wanted to follow a path given to me by the tourism officer which should have taken me to the site of 10 “famous” nature paintings, including the waterfall. I was marveling at how well-paved the path was. Should have tipped me off. I kept following the paved path, and saw 2 of the landmarks listed on the brochure. Continuing on took me to a few waterfalls that were not the main one but were nice enough. They let off a chill that was a good 30 degrees colder than the air elsewhere, which was also kind of cool. Plus I could see the big one up ahead so I must have been going in the right direction, right? There were marked signs which I couldn’t really read but which I’m pretty sure just had names you were supposed to track on some real hiking map which apparently I didn’t have because the brochure I
was given only had the one path.
Anyways, I keep going until I see what I was certain had to be the main waterfall. But, I could only see the very top of it, so I figured the way back down had to loop around to the bottom eventually. I kept going. And going. After about anther 30 minutes, the fact that I was still going UP so much (so tired of up by this point in the trip) plus the fact that I was still making left turns when the way back to town was right made me realize that I must have gone the wrong way at some point. But the only fork I can remember was some sketchy sign to a non-path that said “For experienced only”. What happened is that I took the wrong direction way back at the start. I took the stupid biking path instead of the walking path. No wonder it was so well paved. Plus the biking path was much longer as it went higher and further around. And if I had followed that path to completion it would’ve gone all the way to Salzburg (a LONG ways away). And it
was getting late (I started at 5:30 thinking it would take 2 hours. It was after 8 by now. Ergo I decided to backtrack and take the “for experienced only” path, which said it went to Hallstatt.
This path was steep and not very well engineered (like the Cinque Terre paths were). It even had a rope on the mountainside to hold on to and some sketchy rails on the other side. I was not ideally equipped for this, which my worn Wal-Mart shoes, my pants and shirt which were far too long for hiking (the pantlegs kept going under my shoes, my bag that put me slightly off-balance and my wonderful blisters. Let’s just say I took it slow.
When I finally reached the bottom of the Path of Imminent Demise™ I saw the path I was supposed to have been taking all along—right next to the river. Great. I decided it was worth the backtrack to see the waterfall bottom, where I took some photos (and a quite sarcastic video which you can hopefully see later). I then decided to hurry on instead of trying to see the other stuff in the brochure seeing as it
was already after 9 and light was fading too quickly for photos to be likely anyways. It was still a decent hike back to town, especially in the dark, and I made it back (alive in case you were wondering) around 10:30. Let’s just say that the awesome bed here was greatly appreciated.
One more day in Hallstatt (today, technically, which I’ll try to write about tomorrow) and then on to Munich for a couple days.
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