Posted by I recently attended a medical convention to keep me updated in the current trends of my specialty practice. Over the years, these conventions has brought me to several cities here in the US, like Honolulu, San Francisco, Salt Lake, Denver, Philadelphia, Boston, and Orlando. This time I wanted to see what our European colleagues are doing, so that brought me to their convention in Vienna, Austria.
You may think that I just went to tour Austria, rather than really sit in a conference. Well, I have a photo (see below) to prove that I went to the convention.
But of course I went beyond the Convention Center and visited other places in Vienna, and even places outside Vienna. What’s the point of a trip to Austria, if we’re not going to tour around, right? I brought my wife and my daughter, who was very interested on this trip as she was trained in classical music, and Vienna is the hub of classical music even up to this day, which I will blog maybe some other time.
Today I would like to feature a fairytale-like village called Hallstatt.
Our journey to Hallstatt started with a serene boat ride across a lake. Though the lake is calm, it really runs deep, as the maximum depth of this lake is 125 meters deep. After about 15 minutes in the boat, we finally docked at this mystical town.
Hallstatt is home to about 800 residents, but is visited by 3 million tourists every year. I know we tourist disturb their quiet existence quite a bit. Hallstatt is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its old houses on the shores of an Alpine lake, surrounded by mountains. Hallstatt has been producing salt since prehistoric times. The world’s first known salt mine, Salzwelten, is located above downtown Hallstatt. Nowadays the town’s economy depends on tourism, so tourists like us may not be a bother to them at all.
Since the houses are next to each other, there’s not much space for trees between them. So some homes have cultivated their fruit trees to be “espalier” trees. Espalier is the art, or process, of controlling plant growth in a flat plane, usually against a wall or fence. See this photo of a pear tree below.
How would you like to wake up to this amazing view every morning? They say that winter here is even more magical. I read that some consider Hallstatt as the real-life inspiration for the fictional kingdom of Arendelle in the Disney movie “Frozen.”
We walked around this enchanting village, and somehow I felt I was in the movie Frozen, albeit without the snow, Olaf, and the freezing cold air.
Below is the center of the village. In the centre of the square stands the mighty Holy Trinity statue. This place has plenty of spots to sit and enjoy conversation or scenery with fellow travelers or locals, or for quiet reflection. For me, I have to make my distinctive “Pinoytransplant pose” here.
If you look up the mountain, there is a waterfalls that flows into this village. You can hike up to this waterfall, but we did not do it, as we have more interesting places to go. So we “let it go, let it go!” Get it?
Around the village are some water fountains. Photo below is the one in the town square. The water is cool and refreshing and they say it is safe to drink. And I did drink it. I did not experience any abdominal discomfort nor diarrhea, and I am still alive, so it must be really safe.
We also tried the Austrian apple strudel from one of their bakeries, and also enjoyed a scoop of ice cream from one of their ice cream shops. It was delicious!
I would like to explore this place more, but our time here was limited, as we are going to our next stop which is Salzburg, the place where some scenes from the movie “Sound of Music” was filmed. But that will be for another blog.
From the charming village of Hallstatt, Austria,
Pinoytransplant.
(*all photos taken with an iPhone)
Lovely place!
Yes indeed.