Sunday Monday Oct 2-3
We left Rothenburg od Tauber early on Sunday, ready for a long leisurely drive through the German countryside…not. The first weekend of Oktoberfest in Munchen and an Allianz soccer match against Dresden (I think) led to a 30 mile back up of traffic around Munich. Our expected peaceful drive took all day and was anything but. We finally got south of Munich and headed up into the foothills of the alps. That means we wound through little valleys with mountainsides that went straight up, with sheep, calves and cows wandering the steep hills – with bells clanging on their necks - under the watchful eyes of their owners’ homes half way up the hill. The beautiful alpen homes look like swallows nests perched on the sides of barn roofs.
Coming through Aptenau we heard an oompah band and saw a town gathering, so of course we stopped. They were all in their lederhosen, felt hats and fancy dirndls; we were in our jeans, sunhats, and orthopedic walking shoes. I am sure they wondered who the hell we were partaking of their beer, wurst and drinking songs. A fun time was had by all – perhaps at our expense. We made it into Hallstatt at around dinner time, stuffed our faces full of goulash, spaetzle, and wiener-shnitzel, all washed down with wunderbar white wines of the region. Then we fell into bed. Mark got up early, got dressed and headed out to explore, only to discover it was 2 a.m.. Guess we went to bed too early! I got up about 4 hours later. After our typical muesli and fruit, ham and cheese breakfast, we hiked off to the new part of town and took the funicular up to the Salt Works – mine. This mine has been worked for 7000 years and salt (“Hall”) has been an important part of history, not only here but for the world. We got to taste the salt rock, red from iron, and twice slide down long wooden bannisters that the miners used to get to the different levels of the mine. We made over 23 km per hour and would have been faster if I hadn’t ended up accidentally dragging my feet when we went double. Fun laser shows on an underground lake and demonstrations of different mining techniques ended with a “train” ride out of the mine. This train, though, was a wooden bench 8”wide which we straddled and then got pulled out of the mine through narrow little tunnels the ceilings of which were low enough to give you a headache if you sat up too high…no litigators here!
Breakfast is always a never-ending source of entertainment, full of characters who don’t know how to keep their voices down. Yesterday morning we shared tea and coffee with one fairly flamboyant gay man, his partner, his mother and a third man (brother?). Each had brought their small dog on the trip with them from Camano Island. After a pleasant sharing of experiences, mom said to her son: “What were you doing last night? It sounded like you were moving furniture!” Stunned silence…We quietly tried to act like we were otherwise involved in a discussion of the menu…
Hallstatt is a tiny OLD town crammed onto a ledge held hostage between the cliff and the lake. Swans circle the long stretch of waterfront threatening you with glares if you fail to throw a little extra spaetzle their way from the terrace restaurant. We didn’t want them to plan a hit on our lives, so they got plenty from us.
The lovely weather continues…70s every day and 50s at night. We understand that will end this week and Vienna will be in the mid 40s. We’ll get to wear the other 75% of our packed clothes then! As you can tell, not much happening these two days. More later!