037 - tue 06 jun - halstatt

we awoke early with no idea that what awaited us today was a town of such 'crazy pretty' that it blew away all previous notions of 'crazy pretty'.

but before leaving salzburg we took in the royal gardens in the middle of town, which were pretty. there were more weddings and brides and bridal gowns and photographers. wedding photographs are suspiciously conspicuous in royal gardens and palace gardens, although they aren't really suspicious, i just liked the way 'suspicious' and 'conspicious' went together just there in that sentence.

at the train station we had some trouble boarding a train to halstatt thanks to an unhelpful ticket dude. he caused us to miss our train, so what else were we to do at 10am in the morning, with an hour to kill before the next train to halstatt? we crossed the road from the train station to the pub and had 10am beers.

we arrived in the world heritage listed town of halstatt at 3. halstatt is perched on the side of a lake that is surrounded by big tall mountains. it is beautiful. the train station is on the opposite side of the lake to the town, so to get into town you have to cross the lake by ferry. its the best and most dramatic entrance to the town.

at the local tourist office they helped us find accommodation. we ended up in a guesthouse with a generous double room that opened out onto a balcony with beautiful views of the lake and the town. there are photos to prove it. say no more.

after finding some lunch we took a long walk around the town. it started to drizzle. we found the town's old church, with its gardens and cemetary, and its accompanying bonehaus or bone house. its a modest little room, more like a cave, that is filled with painted human skulls. each human skull is marked with a name, a year of death and patterns or decorations appropriate to the dead person's family or status or occupation. similar to kutna hora near prague, the story goes that as the cemetery ran out of space in halstatt they needed to come up with more creative ways of storing dead bodies. the last person to have their bones stored in the bonehaus died in 1989.

we had dinner at a nice restaurant where we had big pasta and lovely wine. by the time we got back to our room it had become deathly cold outside but it was still beautiful.

click for more photos