Hallstatt is a place of fairy tales. A beautiful hamlet tucked into the side of a cliff along along a high alpine lake in upper Austria. The train doesn’t go to the town... it can’t... you get off across the lake and then take a boat across to the town... I’ve wanted to go here since college when my good friends Brandon and Tomas visited... it seemed like such a magical place. So I split Salzburg and headed on up, arriving at about 8:00 at night. I caught the boat over with a few other tourists as the light disappeared...

Found a bed in a guesthaus for fifteen Euro. There were six bunks, but I had it all to myself... benefit of traveling off season. Met up for a dinner with an American couple I met on the train, then we proceeded to put down a whole lot of wine. A little bit of a slow start the next day, but not too bad. I was wandering the village by 8:00 and at 9:30 was heading up to the salt mines above the town.

Hallstatt has been a major salt exporter for many centuries. Through the stone age, the bronze age and the iron age, the salt industry has brought great fortune to the area, and it continues today. There are over thirty-five kilometers of tunnels running into the mountains mining salt.

The tour was great. Everyone puts on these colorful jumpers and enters the side of the mountain. There are all kinds of slides, chutes and tunnels. On one of the old wooden slides used to get from one mine to the other, I think I clocked 40km/hr... Afterwards I headed back down to town, took in a tour of the big catholic church and the bone room, called the Churnel. The graveyard was very small and there wasn’t room to bury everyone, so the bones were either exhumed, or the bodies were left to decay, and all of the bones were put in this cavernous room.

Hallstatt is not a very big place, so I think I caught most of it before catching the 2:15 boat across the lake to begin the journey to Durnstein, on the Danube, for the Friday night reception with Flo and Verena... And if I didn't, I am sure I can hit up the exact replica of the village that was built in China....

I thought three an a half hours would be plenty of time to get from Hallstatt to Durnstein, I was a bit off... I’ve kind of been flying blind through Austria, as I didn’t want to bring yet another guide book. So I’ve not been fully understanding where things are in relationship to one another... I have a general sense, but no specifics. So the trip involved a small train from Bad Ischl into... shit, I can't remember, where I then caught a (very crowded) inner-city train through Linz to St. Pollten. From there I caught a tiny train north the Krems and then a bus 12km west to Durnstein... I wandered up at 7:30 (the event started at 6:00) to find Flo outside writing me “Where are you???”... The party was about to get started!