Though we had experienced a lot of Hallstatt's history the day before, we had not yet seen the thing that made it famous--the salt mines. The salt from these mines, used to preserve meat, was like white gold to the Celts thousands of years ago. So we thought it would be interesting to fork over a little bit of `our' gold to see them on the only real tourist trap in Hallstatt, the Salt Mine Tour.

But first we needed to prepare for our day in the mountains. After our yummy breakfast[73], we went to the local store and did the usual picnic route[74]. We also needed some more toothpaste, floss, and shaving cream, but forgot our German dictionary, so Doug made up for it with silly, albeit effective pantomimes. "Wo ist (forefinger of each hand sawing back and forth between his teeth)?" The people there enjoyed our humility[75]. In fact, the lady at the checkout laughed when we had to come back in to get the toothpaste after already paying for our sandwiches and stuff. "Wir haben vergessen," I said, and she replied: "Ja! Ich vergesse IMMER!"[76]

We then followed the little signs to the bottom of the funicular....make that the highest funicular I'd ever seen. Luckily our hotel guest card, which showed that we were overnight guests and not just passing through, gave us a discount for the funicular and the tour[77]. Once we had collected enough people for the tour (about 20-30, many of them Austrian boys), they had us change into `miner's clothes.' Boy, that was an experience. One person put on their pants and exclaimed: "Neun Monaten!"[78] I instead, said, "Looks like I'm being very 90s, what with the crotch of these pants... down to my knees!"

I don't know what happened to Doug and Tracia...all we found were these two miners

Back when these mines were founded, they retrieved the salt by digging and picking. But centuries later they would retrieve the salt by drilling/digging a long trench downward into the mountain, looking much like an upside down lollipop when viewed in cross-section. They would then flush water into the well, causing the salt to dissolve in the water, but the other junk to settle to the bottom. That way, the water that was taken out had nothing but salt in it. Eventually, the other `junk' would start filling the trench until it was completely filled, but this process would take 15 years or so, yielding some 54,000+ tons of salt. Of course, now they can do this mechanically, yielding 2400 tons an hour.

We got to sea one of these older-style trenches that had been filled to capacity. But to get there, we had to slide down several of the miner-style wooden rails. WHAT FUN! I screamed the whole way--better than `Pirates of the Caribbean' in Disneyland! And that room was so interesting--8° C cold [80], and with a pool of water about the size of a football field. The water there was so reflective that it was a literal mirror--it was amazing to see that what looked like the floor was actually just a reflection of the ceiling! The water that was left was nine times the concentration of the ocean and, like the Dead Sea, you would not drown there in you fell in[81]--maybe just freeze to death. We sure dissolved a lot of this information, don't you think?

Course, we found out most of this information through osmosis. The tour was conducted in German...until we started asking a lot of questions to our guide after each of his little spiels only (we didn't want to insalt him[82]). Luckily, there were also two other people on the tour who spoke English, so they often translated for us directly. We tended to be lucky like this throughout our travels.

After the 1 1/2 hour tour, we came out of the cold and darkness into one of the most beautiful days we'd seen on our trip[83]. It wasn't going to be hard to find a beautiful picnic spot up here. But first, we had a nice conversation with one of our nice interpreters--a family who lives in Oregon but the man was Danish and spoke fluent German and English. We then parted, saying we were to eat our lunch. But the words for that are not "Auf Wiedersehen" but "Mahlzeit"[84], which is for greeting people, especially on trails or picnics. The things you learn. Anyway, that picnic was truly spectacular, as was our walk through the woods. We then had to wait about ten minutes for the funicular back down, though, so we sat inside, singing again, looking out over the wonderful forested mountains. That was dessert.

It was only about 13:00 when we were all done with our exploration up the mountain. As we walked back to our hotel room, we stopped in the glass shop we had been admiring on our walk the night before. We ended up buying two very corny but pretty items: a glass beer stein and a `aperitif glass for two'[85]. As a woman corrected the German on the glass[86], we asked him to engrave `Barbieri' on the stein and `Doug' and `Tracia' on the romantic glasses. Not the best choice of souvenirs for a soft-side-backpack-carrying, two-more-countries-and-two-weeks-to-go tour[87], but, well, we still really enjoy them. And yes, they are fortunate to still be in one piece[88].

Captain Doug takes me on a one-hour tour of Hallstatt Lake!

I don't really remember what else we did for the rest of the afternoon. Time has no real meaning in Hallstatt. I know that when we returned to our hotel, we tried to go into the door we had gone out that morning, to find that it had turned into a double-pained window--what a shock that was! I know we cleaned off in the `schizophrenic shower'[90], and noticed that, like the window, the cafe downstairs was closing up for winter today[91]. We remember going into an in-depth discussion with our hostess[92] about how she felt `electronic' music has meant the slow death of art and expression. And most importantly, I remember going to the town's only pizza joint[93] and enjoying our unique but very tasty garlic pizza, expensive salad[94], and cheap, delicious beer[95]. I think that evening's meal ended up being the same cost as just one Pizza at Steve's Place back home[96]--only much better!

We ended the evening by once again quietly nursing pear brandy and rum and coke from our balcony. We were going to leave for Vienna the next morning and, though we were prepared and anxious for excitement and tourism again, we figured that we would never again be as relaxed on this trip as we were at that moment.