Fun In Austria!

I love to laugh at the Germans!  In a good way being as I'm one of them... :)  I love their words like Ausfahrt -- hahaha.... and all their "Bad ....." cities (Bad Aussee and Bad Ischl being ones that were by us.....) And then the signs below..... I don't know what it means, but I kind of wonder if it has to do with tourists?.... :)

Saturday we decided to spend some time up in the mountains in the salt mine.  Its apparently the oldest salt mine in the world?  Its actually still active as well, unlike the salt mine I visited in Krakow, Poland a few years ago.  Anyways - we had to take a funicular up the mountain and then hike up to the entrance where we then had to don "miners" outfits that completely covered our clothes.  They actually felt a little like the scrubs I have to wear in hospitals so it was quite familiar putting them on!

Apparently these are Germanic people from hundreds of years ago.  I thought it uncanny, the family resemblance that was between us.

So once we were in the mine, we had to go to different levels and the way the miners get to these levels is by slides.  You have to put your legs on either side, hold your knees and then lean back and go sailing down.  It actually went from terrifying to thrilling.... there was a small point where my stomach flew up in my mouth and I thought "I don't know if I'm actually going to stop..." but then I sailed down and all was fine so the next slide we had to go down was just dandy....

A fuzzy picture of the end of the tour when we had to straddle this little cart thing and zoom through this tiny tunnel of salt.  Thank goodness I wasn't too tall and I would have had to duck for most of the 3 -5 minute trip.

We took a hike down the mountain to a little restaurant and chatted with some sheep along the way.

The alternate path we wanted to take back down to the town, rather than riding the funicular back down, was apparently closed.....

Map of where we were in Hallstatt.

View from the restaurant at the top of the mountain.  Looking down on Hallstatt.

Looking down at our house - the one on the left side of the river inlet.

 Looking at renting a "boote"?

The marketplatz - the city center...

We loved these trees that they had trained to grow up the side of the houses - have NO clue how they do it, but they're awesome!

Its the "Beinhaus"...

We rented an electric motorboat for an hour and drove around the lake... It took forever as there was "1" speed and "2" speed....

This castle-house across the lake from Hallstatt.

We ate dinner at this great restaurant in the marketplatz.  It was great food and the staff was extremely kind and great with English.  If you travel in German speaking countries, you find that they do not go out of their way to speak English or even act like they know English....

Michelle and Jodi split the venison platter...
Before.....

After......

Smoked local fish, Reinenke..... delicious!

Before.....

After.....

We just got back to Budapest a few hours ago,  Its bittersweet because I leave tomorrow early afternoon.  I'm meeting Flora first thing in the morning.