Hallstatt Part Two - Electric Boogaloo

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October 30th 2006

Published: October 30th 2006

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irthewalrus

Composerin

This is Alia composing for me.

Hwaet, and we went to the fair hamlet of Hallstatt. And the adventure started early. Between running from Spar to Hütteldorf Bahnhof (if youve been to my place, thats the trainstation you gotta bus to) and then the confusion of why we shouldnt change trains. (ours said 'to salzburg' but they told us not to change to the Salzkammergut, which as it turned out was because they dismantled our train and part went to Salzburg and part went to the Salzkammergut). And... on the train, we had a lot of time on our hands, and I had 2 music majors and an eric at my disposal. So I had them come up with how to transpose real music into a cell phone. (btw, the results of this endeavor can be viewed here

Anyway, when we got to Hallstatt proper, the adventure didn't end, nay, far from it. We bumbled around town trying to find out where a hostel was, since we had heard rumors of one or two being in der Nähe. Unfortunately, the map of the town on display was bizzaro, so we just wandered around and asked around. Some guy helped us and we found the hostel... which,

Wappen

The town coat of arms (Wappen) for Hallstatt on their town centre... thing..

was closed. So we found an address to another one (two hostels is good for a town with a population of under 1000 (source), since Milan, Italy, has one. Anyway, we walked all over looking for it, and finally found it... to be closed. So, we eventually (with the AMAZING HELP OF THERESA FROM THE INFORMATION ZENTRUM THANK YOU OMGLOLWTFBBQ) found a Bed and Breakfast what was really affordable.

Anyway, that was fun and almost worth wasting a huge page about, but now, as you can see, the pictures are spread across the page, rather than just in a big brick below like on the last album.

Hallstatt itself was first settled a bajillion (or 7000) years ago by celts. The findings of these in the 19th century were all the rage, and they made a big deal about it, including calling the celtic civilization that had its height in the 8th century BC the Hallstatt Culture (Hallstattzeit) and because of it, there is a UNESCO world heritage site there, as well as a sweet museum. It was settled because of its salt (salz) mines, which were in use from very early in its settlement, and still today,

Salt Miner

A denkmal for the salt miners of Hallstatt

they sell the salt from here as food and ... wierd things made out of salt.

Modern Hallstatt is an incredibly beautiful piece of real estate, and for these reasons should be visited in late oktober. one, you wont be tempted to do stupid things that distract you. Everything is closed! pretty much everything anyway, and you will just get to go hiking, and see the museum, and play some wicked fun huge chess, and eat food. two, there are fewer tourists, since everything is closed and its not travelling time, and its not skiing time. three, its gorgeous, if you didnt get that from the last album (with the pictures of autumn) and you dont get it from this one, you are probably into modern art and theres no hope for you.

Also of note, was that this one time, we met up with these very very nice people from Saint Louis, Bill and Mary. Bill is a professor at Webster University in Saint Louis, but he is teaching a semester at their campus in Vienna. We had dinner with them, and that was quite nice. PS. Congratulations Bill on the Cardinals' victory in the world series.