Thar's Gold in Them Thar Hills!

Guten Tag,

It's still rainy, so not good for an excursion to the mountains, but I wanted to take a day trip so I got on the bus for Hallein.

Gold, Pil?  Is there gold there?

Weiss Geld.  White Gold--in other words salt.  It was the basis for the prosperity of this region for thousands of years.  Let's start with the Indo Europeans.

Let's not.

They began to disperse from Central Asia and their languages diverged around the third millennium BCE, moving west and south mostly.

What has this got to do with salt, Pil?

Everything!  Because some of those Indo Europeans ended up in this area.  The Halstatt Culture is the first identifiably Celtic Culture in Europe, and they were drawn here by the deposits of salt.  There are the physical remains, but there's also linguistic evidence.  Our salt word derives from the Latin--sal, and it has a common root with the word the Celts and Greeks used for salt--hal.  You can see it in the place names.  Halstatt and the city I visited today Hallein.

I got the bus at the Hauptbahnhof as usual. There was a trainee driver, and he had a frustrating time because we got stuck behind a couple of slow construction vehicles. But we got there, and I hopped off.  It was drizzling but not badly.  I headed for the Alt Stadt figuring that would be the best bet for tourist information and a toilet.  Nope.  What I found was a lot of ripped up streets and construction and no signs.  I retraced my steps and came across a sign for parking for the Keltenmuseum--the very place I wanted to see.

Now the signs were for parking and not the museum itself, but I figured it was worth pursuing so I followed them down the road.  I was beginning to worry when my eyes lit on a welcome sight.  "WC."

It was nice and it was free.  I felt empowered to go on, and then I saw that right across the street was tourist information.

The young woman at the desk graciously provided a map and directions.  It turned out I was two minutes walk from the museum.  I crossed a footbridge and I was there.  They were glad to see me, too, as I was their first visitor of the day.

It's a good museum and worth visiting.  All the really fancy famous stuff is in Vienna, I suppose, but there's still enough for a lot of good and informative exhibits.  The museum is well set up for kids with some interactive stuff, but mercifully today it was free of school parties.  There are weapons and jewelry and tools and explanations of the environment and how the Celts discovered and processed and then traded the salt.  Some of the trade goods--including an Etruscan vase--were also exhibited.

Now if you are visiting Hallein, you can take a bus to Bad Durrnberg and tour an actual salt mine.  I contented myself with the much smaller mock up at the museum, but it did have a salt slide.  The miners reached the deposits by sliding down and down.

I was also able to solve some of my present issues.

After I finished with the museum I walked back to the Alt Stadt, which is indeed very pretty.  It had cleared up a little, and I was able to find some non-torn-up cobbled streets.  The next task was to find where the bus would pick me up because I figured out it would not be where it let me off.  I had to hunt around, but I found it.  I also witnessed an interesting drama.

A bus pulled up, and the door opened.  It was not my bus, so I made no move, but a young man ran up.  The door closed, and the bus pulled away despite the young man pounding on the door.  It was actually a good thing the young man did not get on that bus although I am sure he did not think so, but he wanted to go to Salzburg, and that bus was going in the opposite direction!  My bus came, and I got on and so did he.  I reached my destination.  I am not sure about him.