Working in a Salt mine

Salzburg. Or close enough near it. We woke up in the family run (Expedia found) hotel to a very warm reception by the owners at breakfast where we were served coffee and hot chocolate by the wife. The rest of breakfast was buffet-style, but she served the hot beverages in lovely little tea and coffee pots. We sat at our table and enjoyed yogurt, hard-boiled eggs (Ed's FAVORITE: "with salt and pepper please, mommy." - which needed to be applied after every bite) lovely bread and cheese and of course a variety of cured ham slices. Which begs the question, what do all the Muslims eat on vacation in Europe?- or those keeping Kosher for that matter? Because (happily for me!) there is a plethora of pork products to be found at each and every meal, especially in Germany. No latkes here though like the ones we had the day before which, "aren't as good as Noli's," said Edwin and Aidan.

[NB. I am sitting in the internet cafe typing this entry. For the last 20 minutes, they have had one song on a loop playing over and over. It's some British folksy thing - perhaps brought back from the owners' recent vacation to Scotland. It's a nice sounding thing. The first 3 times or so. Now - not so much. A few of you will get the irony of my appreciation of this over-play. For those who don't: I have the "gift" of being able to listen to a song 100 times without learning the words. I tend to hone in on melodies and rhythem more than the lyrics. True to form, after hearing it so many times, I can only tell you one of the lines: "And it seems like... a room filled... with love." But she repeats it about 15 times during the song and now the song is -literally- on it's tenth go around.]

I had a chat with the owner when she asked what we were going to do for the day. She spoke amazing English - which wasn't too surprising given that English is THE international language. (And it feels like a room filled with love...) Examples of the internationality:
The postal worker in the Eiffel Tower post office speaking to the Italian tourist – both using English. The German hotel front desk worker speaking to the Middle Eastern tourist –both using English.
So the owner suggested that we could do the Saltmine as it was inside the mountain, and didn’t matter if it was raining. She also mentioned that The Sound of Music tour (another reason for going to Salzburg) was 4 hours long. I took this information back to the room where Edwin was “planning” the day with Brian. Edwin really wanted to have “his” day – but wasn’t really all that interested in the planning part – except when it came to planning ice cream breaks. This he *was* ready to do. We found the information we needed, powered up the (awful) GPS again and made our way across the Deutchland/Osterreich border and found one of three nearby saltmines.
We bought our ticket, and since we had to wait a bit for our tour number to be called, made our way over to the “Celtic Village” set into the hillside above the entrance. The Celtic tribes were the first people to mine the salt in this region. There were huts set up (sort of like the Native American village set-up in Jamestown, VA) to show visitors what life was like there 2000 years ago. There were people dressed up like the Celts to further enhance the experience and also to offer a craft making booth, and a snack stand complete with roasted sausages and beer (things that I’m not so sure were around 2000 years ago… but what do I know) Also in the village was a playground – mostly for Edwin’s size but that didn’t stop the bigger kids from killing time by getting dizzy on the spinning wheel. So in the on-again, off-again rain, the playground was fairly muddy. Aidan and Edwin were a mess by the time we started on the Saltmine tour.
With our tour number called, we made our way down to the changing area. 2 very efficient German/Austrian women were in charge of handing out protective overcoats and pants to the tourists. It’s at this point that I will point out the number of (unknown countries of origin) Muslim tourists. I’m guessing Middle Eastern, but I couldn’t really say. The women are beautiful and exotic looking with their traditional dress and headwear. The men? Look like typical tourists. And there are so many. Maybe their countries take the month of August off too, because I don’t remember seeing so many Muslim tourists before on my (3) trips to Europe. Or perhaps with the Euro being so high these days, there weren’t the numerous American tourists to overwhelm the tourist sights. Whatever the reason, it led to an interesting exchange at the changing area. Some pantomiming was involved. A gentleman was trying to ask how the women in his party (fully clad in skin covering black gowns and headscarves) were supposed to put on the required overcoats and pants. The German woman seemed to have *very little* patience for this dilemma – but mimed how they were to pull up the skirts/dresses and shove them into the pants. The women disappeared into the changing rooms (everyone else was putting clothes on out in the open) and came out a while later with the pants and coats on. [Yep, this is the kind of thing that interests me, so you get treated to it too… can’t you just hear the Disneyland dolls singing,”it’s a small world after all”?]
Off and down into the mine. We got on a little train that pulled us (quickly) into the mountain to start the tour. We were warned not to stand up unless we wanted a new haircut. We had maybe 50 people on our tour – a mixture of German, Italian and English speakers. Thankfully, our guide spoke all three (and I suspect more) languages. We were filled in on the history of the saltmine, which was mined up until 1989. We learned a lot about salt and the different mining techniques. But definitely the highlight of the tour was the 2 very long slides that we got to ride down. Brian and I thought that more of the tour would be slides, but it wasn’t. We had to make do with the two. On the second one though, you could go down twice if you were willing to run up the stairs to the top again. Which everyone did but me. There was a lot of walking involved and 4 short movies along the way. The movies explained part of the history of the saltmines and the wealth they provided for the various rulers over the years. Many of the famous buildings and palaces of Salzburg (even the city is named for the salt) were constructed using the profits that came from the mines.
The tour turned out to be a great hit with the kids. They really enjoyed sliding down the salt mines. After we came out, we were all starving so we hiked up the STEEP hill to a small village above the mine and found a restaurant for lunch. More sausages and potatoes – but also the very good Frittatensuppe, or “pancake soup:” broth with sliced up crepes in it. A HUGE hit with Edwin and all the kids alike. After having lunch, we made our way into the city of Salzburg to try and obtain a copy of The Sound of Music – since we had planned to do the bike tour the next day. After walking for quite a bit around very crowded streets, we finally found a copy at a gift shop. It was astronomically expensive. Only slightly less than my hospital bill was when Colin was born. But tired feet and whiny kids will make you do crazy things like pay too much for a DVD. We headed back to the hotel [meandering through small village towns: one complete with statue/fountain of the Virgin Mary with – and I have pictures that I made Brian pull the car over to get to *prove* it – water shooting out of her nipples. No, I am not even kidding] to watch the DVD – which, of course, the kids vehemently protested doing. (yeah, don’t get me started on this subject) They got their wish (for a while) as the over-priced DVD proved incompatible with both my computer and the portable DVD player we had brought with us. Brian figured out how to get it to play on his computer (hooray!) but by this time it was time for dinner. So we headed back into the small village to find dinner.
We found a relatively quiet place for dinner – and by this point we had seen enough menus in German (with English translations) that this German-only menu didn’t prove too difficult for us. We sort of knew what we liked by this point, and none of us was disappointed with our dinners. The 3 younger kids got to order off the “Kinder menu” and Colin ordered a ginormous plate of food: which the waitress (dressed again in traditional Bavarian garb) at first balked at, then took a look at him, and then approved the choice. More pancake soup and some other great food was ordered and eaten. As well as some great German beer – for the grownups. The kids by this point were used to only drinking water with their meals out, as soda and juice remained crazily high-priced throughout all of Europe.
While walking through Salzburg a few hours earlier, I noticed the large amounts of Austrians dressed in traditional (if subdued) Austrian clothing. It was about 6:00 at night and many couples looked like they were ready to go out either to eat or to the theater/opera/symphony. I was surprised how many (obviously non- tourist industry) people still wore some form of traditional dress. So I was not very surprised to see a gentleman walk into our restaurant in full Austrian- lederhosen garb. Hat, suspenders, short pants and all - the whole nine yards. Edwin, on the other hand, was completely surprised and expressed it (in the now quiet room) by using his best Irish whisper (read: yelling)
“HOLY SCHNIKEYS! Look at THAT guy!”
Which cracked everyone at our table right up. Especially Brian, who was not able to even try and keep a straight face. He recovered pretty quickly and asked Colin to take Ed outside to run around, since Edwin was done with dinner. Dinner was pretty much done for all of us at that point, so we, as graciously as possible, made our way out of the restaurant and back to the hotel to watch “The Sound of Music.” Which the kids liked.