Salzburg and a salt mine
In Austria we visited a salt mine in the Alps. The mines are over fifteen and a half miles long. We rode on a train type thing into the mine where we learned how the salt was mined. First the miners would make a cavern and fill it with water. Then they wait 27 days. The water at this point is considered brine, ten times saltier than sea water. It is then pumped out and boiled down to remove the water and leave the salt behind. The first people to discover the deposits were Celtic. They mined until the dark ages when the mine was abandoned. Near the end of the Middle ages the mine was rediscovered and the salt mining began again. Not all that long ago some miners discovered bodies perfectly preserved in the salt being mined. The bodies were of Celtic miners killed in a mine collapse. Unfortunately the bodies were brought to the surface and there they started to decompose and rot and were lost that way. Below is a pic of a reproduction they made, just for fun, of the bodies found in the salt. The way to get from level to level in the mine was wooden slides. Luckily i didn't get any splinters. The slide was like a chute that you straddled and slid down. Within the last fifty years the mine stopped functioning except as a museum.
From there we drove straight to Salzburg, except for a brief stop to get lunch. In Salzburg we went to a toy museum. There were a lot of old toys on display as well as many things to play with.
We went to a Christmas market. A Christmasmarkt is a big outdoor group of vendors selling all sorts of things. Ornaments, food, clothing; any kind of Christmas decor you can think of. We browsed the market for a while, bought a huge cinnamon pretzel and later a pizza pretzel; both were tasty. On our way home we missed a turn. The GPS rerouted us and we had to head through Munich at rush hour. We got caught in a traffic jam and we could not move. We experienced a choir of car horns. The bus driver behind us started to shout, curse, and wave his arms at us like we were the cause of the whole thing. I turned around and thought i saw a wisp of smoke coming out from his ears. I just think he had a hard day. But I do wish I had a video or just a picture of it.
