To Travel is to Possess the World: A Little Bit of Sunshine

If you are thinking about traveling to Europe, I strongly urge you to consider taking a trip to Hallstatt, Austria.

This is not my picture. Mine is coming up soon :)
Hallstatt is located directly on Hallstätersee.The town was built centuries ago for the purpose of mining the salt that is contained in the mountains. Obviously it was small then (how big could a town built into a mountain get?) and is still pretty small now. I remember hearing that there are less than 1000 inhabitants total...
In my opinion, we could not have gone at a better time than we did. Bre and I woke up to rain and deliberated on bringing heavy coats, and let me tell you, I was SO glad I brought it. Out of the approximate 36 hours we were there, it probably rained 30 of them.. I was almost properly dressed. However, thinking that I would buy boots in Austria the first week I was here, I didn't pack any. So, the warmest shoes I had were my leather Sperry Top Siders. I'm sure you know what happens to leather when it gets wet.... Within the first fifteen minutes, my shoes were soaked and I had no hope of dry and toasty toes until we got to our hotel that night. Despite my wet feet, nothing could dampen my spirits. I mean, I was In Hallstatt! The most picturesque village in all of Europe, I'm convinced.

Soaking in the town. Literally.

How beautiful is the fog??
Since this wasn't technically a group trip, we were left to our own devices to find where we were staying for the night. After a few wrong turns and waiting in the rain, we finally found it. The picture above is overlooking the valley from our balcony. And this is our bed and breakfast:

After we found our beds for later that night, Lyndsi, Heidi, Ali, Becca and I set out to explore the town. I decided to play photographer because I have my camera around my neck constantly anyway, might as well take in the beauty! I took about 400 pictures in Hallstatt and chose my favorites:

I loved the rain!

Cute cafe by the lake. Europeans love being outside.

My friend, the swan :)

Self explanatory, I hope.

What I assume to be the town square..

Finally, MY classic Hallstatt shot.

Hallstatt is home to a very interesting church... I guess there are a few around Europe, but for those of us in the U.S. it is a whole new concept: bone houses. In early Christianity, cremation was against the law. With very little space and no way to expand, the graves in the cemetery were dug up every fifteen to twenty years to make way for new inhabitants. The bones from the previous occupant would be dug up, washed off, and set in the sun/moonlight for a few weeks. This process would bleach the bones an ivory color, then a family member would take the remains and paint them, usually with flowers of some sort- the same reason you put flowers on a loved ones grave. When painting was finished, you put the bones in this:

Kinda creepy, huh?

It's almost too creepy to even look at!
Along with several hundred other people's bones. (wouldn't it be cool to be there during the 2nd coming?? I imagine it would be a little crowded............)
Luckily, they do not put anyone in there anymore, except on request. Cremation became, once again, legal and is used as the primary form of burial now. There is a lady that requested to be in there, so the last skull was placed there in1995 (she is the only one with a gold tooth!)

It got dark early, and since it was raining and cold we just went back to our room and watched The Chronicles of Narnia - four of us on a twin bed with mounds of pillows and down comforters. The only thing we were missing was the hot chocolate!

Usually any hotel you stay in that is European feeds you breakfast. I am going to have a hard time adjusting to continental breakfasts after being here because even though the breakfasts are simple, they are absolutely divine. We had a sweet lady named Edith that brought out about four pitchers of hot milk at breakfast because the five of us simultaneously decided that hot cocoa was the best thing in the world (which it is when you heat up whole milk on the stove and pour it onto real Swiss chocolate mix... I will never be the same).

Hallstatt is a relatively small town. I mentioned the number of inhabitants, but you could probably walk all of the streets of the inner part of town within an hour. There is also not a whole lot going on in the beginnings of fall because tourist season starts to slow down. In fact, the only other tourists the were Chinese. Apparently, they like Hallstatt so much, they want to replicate it EXACTLY somewhere in China. I guess this isn't the first time they've done it though. China has erected exact replicas of a German town, a corner of London, and smaller scale versions of Barcelona, Venice and Dorchester England... Weird, huh?
Anyway, since we walked the entirety of the town the day before, we decided to wander more into the canyon to burn some time before we went to the salt mines.

Looking into the canyon

Colors! I love fall.

How far we walked. It was a private property, so we didn't go too far.

Pferde (horses) in the mountains

The oldest salt mine in the world is in Hallstatt. Its over 7000 years old and twenty men still work in the mines every day. I was a little hesitant about the cost at first, but it was so worth it! We strapped up in these funny suits that looked like inmate outfits with leather behinds, and started the tour. We walked through (what I felt like) a lot of the mine, slid down some really fun slides, watched two movie presentations and rode a miners train out of the mine. I had an absolute blast! There's a really cool story about the mine. It blew my mind that it was actually real! So in the 1700s, some miners found this body of a man that had died in the mine. They originally thought it was 150 years old, but it turns out that this body is over 3000 years old and was preserved by the salt! Since he dated back before catholicism, they had to bury him outside of the cemetery because only Catholics were allowed to be buried in the cemetery. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures inside the mine because I didn't want to bring a three pound camera, but I do have some pictures of the view from the top.

It stopped raining!! At least it did long enough for me to take this picture :)

Looking to the other side of the lake.

Glück Auf basically means "Take Luck"

Overlooking Hallstatt from the salt mine tram.

Our experience in Hallstatt turned out to be perfect, even with the rain. The sun came out for an hour or so right before we left, and it was absolutely gorgeous - not that it wasn't in the rain, but who doesn't like a little bit of sunshine?