As you might have guessed, New Year's holidays have brought me a lot of unexpected commitments. I did not finish the advertised text about Rila National Park in time for the announced term. Since it is a bit longer text, it will wait for some quieter days.
In the meantime, I want to show you one amazing site that doesn't require too many words. You will see Lake Hallstatt Austria the way I saw it for the first time in my life.
The production of salt at this place began 7,000 years ago! Here on the Hallstatt is the oldest salt mine in the world, which visitors can see today.
I had a good reason to visit Austria back in 2017. Also, I had a couple of unused free days so, naturally, I created a plan! I will explore Austria for a few weeks. After some thinking, the decision was made - I will visit Upper Austria and ride the legendary Salzkammergut route. That route is 350 kilometers of cycling paradise around some of the most beautiful lakes in the Salzburg area. Easy enough to enjoy, and hard enough not to be confused with walking in the park - the Salzkammergut route was perfect.
I found excellent and very affordable accommodation in the area, and somewhere at the end of April, I arrived in Upper Austria. The day was beautiful, the smell of spring was in the air, the temperature was around 15 Celsius degrees, all the fields were green and my morale was very high. While tasting local schnapps with my hosts, he said: 'It smells like snow'. But, I was sure that this was some strange Austrian joke and went to bed full of energy and dedication to start the next day early in the morning with one long ride.
In the morning, my hosts had the opportunity to learn a couple of very bad Serbian words, while I was helping them to clean the snow that somewhat materialized from thin air during the night.
Since I really didn't want to ride on snow, after a very strong breakfast, I decided to hike a little. The Legendary Hallstatt was only 10 - 15 km away, depending on the route, and my idea was to hike some distance, at least to the lake.
There are two identical places named Hallstatt – one in Austria and one in Luoyang, Boluo County, China! The Chinese one is actually a replica and a part of a high-end residential project. It opened doors back in 2012.
After a few hours of hiking, I reached the shores of this beautiful lake. These photos were taken literally at that same moment. This is the Hallstatt scene I saw for the first time.
Later, I visited this lake several times, but these scenes somehow remained deeply engraved in my memory as Hallstatt's proper look. Even today when I talk to people about places we visit and when someone mentions Hallstatt I ask him if it was in the snow? If the answer is no, my most common comment is: Nah, you should go there during the snow, it's much nicer. Believe me, it is!
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