Lake Country, Salt Mine, and Toboggan!!!

Today was an absolutely epic day. We woke up this morning after a looonnnngggg night of dancing which I will leave at that. A big blue charter bus took us about an hour away from Salzburg to a place that resembles almost any rural european post card, Hallstatt, Austria. This is one of the oldest towns in Europe because of the large salt deposits in the mountains. The history goes back 7000 years when the mine was first being worked on! We toured the salt mine, still in use today, and were told the story of the salt mine itself and how it formed, and the story of the people who first mined it. We got to see tools used over 3000 years ago and SLIDE down the miner's "fireman's pole" which are wooden slides they used to get to the different levels. It was an amazing place.

After that we walked around the town in awe at its preserved beauty and peacefulness. We ate lunch at a local eatery and ordered some traditional Austria an food, including their famous apple strudel. Delicious. Hallstatt was easily the most beautiful location I have ever been. I still can't believe we were just there. The city was built strait into the mountain, without ruining any of the natural mountain land. Most of the buildings were just built into the rocks, with much of the mountain protruding from walls. Europe seems to have the whole natural preservation of land and eco thing down much better than we do. Well they just practice clean building and minimize reduction of land without all the trendiness behind the "green".

After that we stopped at a toboggan place on the way back. We all bought two rides and grabbed a little plastic sled, were hooked up to a ski lift, towed 10 minutes up a mountain, and had a 3 minute ride of craziness down the mountain overlooking the amazing lake country. However this thing would not fly in the US. We didn't sign and liability forms, we were barely told how to operate the dam things. It was amazing. I was confident in my toboggan skills because I have been on a similar (but much smaller) one at Mt. Hood....but apparently I wasn't skilled enough. I feel off the ride half way down my second run. Sketchy huh? About 5 people fell off, and nothing was done to stop the other from coming behind. The whole ordeal was just sketchy, but I loved it.

Hitler's Eagle's Nest tomorrow.