Friday, July 27, 2007
Friday 13th July
We have arranged to meet the Querner’s at the bottom of the near vertical Funicular railway; it is only a 5 minutes walk from our campsite. The boys are all excited to see one another not to mention about going on the railway that can be seen from the campsite and has caused much fascination over the last couple of days. At the top of the railway there is a 15 minutes walk to the Salt mines. We all dress up in ‘mining gear’ and join the tour spoken in both German and English. It was a well organised tour with many different techniques used to share the information. There were a few talks, lick stones to experience the salt in the rock, a short video that even though in German the boys were captivated enough to behave through, a talking miner, a couple of still life exhibits, a light show on the walls of a cavern showing where the man in salt had been found, the highlight of course has to be the two wooden slides that you need to use to get to the lower levels of the mine and finally the train ride out of the mines. This was definitely a worthwhile visit and the boys really enjoyed it.
The Querner’s used their local knowledge and took us to a nearby restaurant that specialises in a traditional Austrian dish consisting of different cuts of pork, Sauerkraut and dumplings; it was delicious. It was a novelty to have someone who understood the menu and knew what to order. There was unexpected excitement for the boys as the large Pole that had been erected in the car park for the May festival was being taken down, we stayed around to watch the unexpected event with the men of course offering their opinion on what the professionals were doing wrong with the whole procedure.
