BUCKETING RAIN - Phil & Jill

All night the rain poured, the misty cloud came down enveloping the valley outside our room. The Salt Mountain just disappeared.

It is not so bad to have a half day of rain when you have done all you wanted in better weather. It gave us a chance to rest a little and catch up on paper work.

As the rain stopped just after midday, we decided to go for a walk in the village and to the Hallstatt museum. The main street was chocka block mainly with people from various parts of Asia. We have learned that the Korean tourists dress immaculately and love over the top posing. They obviously know all the moves and places where they should be seen to be photographed. It is a real study in itself and a lot of the women are really beautiful. However at certain times you might say Hallstatt is on the edge of being over-touristed. The village administration is benefitting though as a worker approaches every bus that pulls in for a parking fee as soon as they pull into the bus bay. Once their passengers have alighted the buses have to move off to a long term parking bay in a paddock at the back of the village, which allows acess to more buses. They are timed to return to pick up their passengers.

We made our way to the Hallstatt museum located in a traditional house with exhibits starting in the basement and moving up 5 stages. The museum's interpretation of 7,000 years of civilisation was very interesting. Commencing with the use of film it told us that there was a Hallstatt before there was a Rome. It was found out by accident when the skeleton of a miner was found when excavations were done by archeologists from the Vienna Natural History Museum. The manager of the Mine, Ramsauer, knew that they had found something special, especially when on further investigation they found a necropolis with 1,000 bodies in it. It was realised then that the area had been used as a mass burial ground. It was highly unlikely that coffins had ever been used, but the bodies were wrapped in cloth like mummies and the salt in the rock had preserved them. Carbon dating some fragments of cloth and timber enabled scientists to tell how long people had lived in this area. Ramsauer was particularly careful and drew everything before anything was touched. It was such a significant archeological find that it is now called "the Hallstatt Era" and used as a marker today. It is from Neolithic man, bronze and iron ages

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Exhibits of jewellery, carved bowls, a sword with etching on the blade and musical instruments were simple but very well displayed with film excerpts along the way in English which were a wonderful mode to understand Hallstatt of former days.

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It took us a couple of hours to fully absorb the information from the museum. On leaving the museum building we saw a sign to a scenic walk which we hadn't seen before. The path was too steep for Phil but I went ahead to take photos as the streaky clouds were making great vision.

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The path led to the Catholic church. The area is still predominantly Catholic although the Lutherans did make an inroad. The church also had a winged alter of the Baroque time but the paintings to my eye were not as fine as the Pacher ones in St Wolfgang.

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The houses on the pathway were so attractive. There is something at every corner.

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How's this for free advertising.

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As evening was coming on as we decided to sit at the lakeside edge in the Simony restaurant and have a bowl of creamy potato soup and bread - Austrian style. It was delicious. We left our raincoats on though, as it was only about 19 degrees, which is much chillier than what we have been used to at night. Another idyllic location looking over the lake with two parent white swans and their two grey cygnets floating by.