I finally left Germany. Sad times. Anyways I took a train east into the far, far away country of Austria to finish off my trip abroad. Annoyingly for some unannounced reason there was a problem or something with the tracks, and we all had to get off early. Then I had to take a bus the rest of the way! It was like a whole 10 minute bus ride away! Because the train broke or something only 1 stop shy of my intended destination – Hallstatt, China… I mean Hallstatt Austria. It’s kind of annoying because to get there you have to take a train north to Salzburg, then go far for to the northeast, and then back down southwest a long ways. It’s nearly a 4 hour ride with 3 trains which is easy enough. But if you could just go straight there from Salzburg  or Berchtesgaden it’d really only be a 1 hour ride maybe.

Anyways it’s an incredibly beautiful town on the Hallstätter See. (See in this context means Lake, but See is also the German word for Ocean/Sea. You have to just listen for context/grammar to determine which). I joked about Hallstatt being in China because when I got here… wow. There’s thousands of tourists around the city. Probably about 75% are Asian. And what a place it is to see.

I didn’t have enough time to do much except just get a glimpse of the town and visit the eerie Hallstatt Charnel House. (If you don’t know what a Charnel House is, look it up then you may continue.)

It’s a small chamber carved partly into a cliff face next to the Catholic church: Pfarrkirche Maria am Berg Hallstatt. It’s full of bones, lots of bones, piled up bones, thousands of bones. Skulls are definitely a theme of this church. Anyways the town is cool. That’s about it.

Images Here! (Skulls included – may be a bit creepy.)

I also got to add several images to my first post in Berchtesgaden. See here.