Bonjour de la Suisse: The Hills are Alive

Another year has passed since our wedding and another anniversary was upon us (still hard to believe it has been two whole years!) The traditional two year wedding anniversary gift is cotton, but I got G paper instead... paper tickets! I wanted to surprise him, and since we had a four day weekend (I think it was ascension weekend), we had the time to head out of town for a few days. He had no idea where we were off to, although he narrowed the possibilities down to the Nordics, Budapest, Normandy, or Austria. I took him to the train station pretending to be catching a train to the airport, but when we got on a train headed east (and away from the airport), he realized we were headed to the land of Mozart and tasty strudel.

Gary had been keen on going to Austria for some time now. His brother and his wife visited here a few years ago and raved about the little Austrian village of Hallstatt and G has been asking me when we are going for months. I wanted to wait for good weather and I figured why not surprise him? The plan was to spend a couple days in Salzburg and then head to Hallstatt for the remaining of our long weekend.

We arrived in Salzburg to pouring rain! So much for planning for the good weather. We sloshed around town and I ended up eating a dinner of too-raw pork which I started to worry about when we got back to the hotel... what are the signs of trichinosis anyway?!? Needless to say, our romantic holiday weekend could have started off a bit better, but the weekend was still young.

The next day the sun came out and we took advantage of all the fun things to do in the nearby Salzburger Land. We spent the morning at the Berchtesgaden salt mines where we put on traditional miner's outfits, hopped on an underground train and zipped deep into the mountain. We sped down long wooden slides and cruised an underground lake. The tour was very cool, but we were gearing up for even more excitement. In the afternoon we went to The Zinkenlifte Bad Dürrnberg luge ride, which is the longest luge in Austria. It was great... speeding down the mountain on a little sled attached to a long track. It was too bad we only had time for one ride (which lasted about 15 minutes), we had to get back to Salzburg to catch the train to Hallstatt.

It was about 4:30 when I approached the ticket window at the Salzburg train station, still pretty early in the day I thought. But I was informed that we were too late to go to Hallstatt! It turns out that the Hallstatt train station is across the lake from the town and the last boat runs at 6pm which we had already missed! Unbelievable!! We had hotel reservations and I wasn't about to let this little snag hold us up. I ran out to the bus terminal and got us tickets to Bad Ischl, about 10 miles away from our destination. From there we took the last train to the village of Obertraun, just across the lake from Hallstatt, but still about a 6km walk. We arranged to get a ride from the only taxi in town, just in time to eat dinner at our amazing, old, waterfront hotel, Bräugasthof, which used to be a brewery. Dinner was scrumptious, but I think a big part of that was just the relief that we had made it to town!

The charming village of Hallstatt did not disappoint! Nestled in Austria's Lake District, we were surrounded by forested mountains, pristine views, and one of the most beautiful lakes I have ever seen. It is the perfect place to slow down, relax and just take it all in. No one is in a rush, there are cute shops and cozy little places to grab a bite to eat or relax with a refreshing drink. We were blessed with beautiful weather too, which made the gray of Salzburg seem like a million miles away.

One of the unique sights of the area are the Eishöhle Ice Caves across the lake. We took the Dachstein Mountain Cable Car which took us up the Salzkammergut Mountain where we hiked up to the mouth of the ice caves. It was really amazing. The subterranean ice fills the mountain and stays frozen all year, creating huge caverns carved from the ice and water that flows here. The hour-long tour was chilly, but it was one of the coolest (no pun intended) sights I have ever seen. We walked the 6km back to our side of the lake which warmed us right up!

I was surprised to learn of the town’s ancient history, it was founded long before Rome. Archeological finds date back as old as 5000 BC. Ancient miners were drawn here for the rich salt mines. The period of history from 1000 BC to 500 BC is actually referred to as the 'Hallstatt Period'. With all this history, we decided to explore the local mine. Yes, another salt mine tour, but this one was supposed to be better... and it was!

But the best part of the trip for me was the relaxed atmosphere and friendly people we met. Each morning everyone we saw would greet us with a cheery "Morgen!" to start the day. I loved this! We ate traditional meals right on the banks of the lake, sipping beer and enjoying each other's company. It was good we didn't know what we were in for trying to get home the next day!

Things started out fine, we caught our first train (the first of 4 trains we would have to catch back to Geneva), but things soon turned for the worse. We were forced to get off the train early due to work being done on the tracks. We were told to get on a bus, but we had no idea which bus, or where to, or even where we were! No one spoke English in the little village we were stuck in, and we narrowly got on the wrong bus a couple different times. After over an hour, a nice bilingual guy heading to Zurich helped us (and a couple of other lost mono-lingual tourists) out. We had to run to catch almost every connection and we narrowly made the last train back to Geneva. It was a bit stressful, but I would do it all over again to get back to that little piece of paradise in the Austrian hills.