Sunday, 20th of September 2009 at 06:13:31 PM
The weekend of Sep 19th I had to redeem a birthday gift coupon for Christiane. I had promised a weekend trip to the Salzkammergut in Austria. Originally I had planned to stay 3 nights in Gmunden at the Lake Traunsee. Then I was convinced to roadtrip and stay the first night at the Halltätter See a little bit more south and framed by mountains. We stayed at a hotel in Obertraun when we arrived friday evening. Its only 3 hours away from Munich. After dinner we went to bed cause there was not much to do there. The next day in the morning we checked out and visited nearby small village of Hallstätt. Its directly at the lake and really nice is, that in Hallstätt no cars are allowed in the center. So its idyllic to stroll through the village streets and one soon discovers that 60% of the tourists are of Asian origin. 
We were told at the evening dinner in a Hallstätt restaurant that the reason herefore is a famous korean TV series “Spring Waltz” which was shoot also in Europe locations of Salzburg and Hallstätt. The TV-drama series was extremly successful and sold also to nine other countries including Japan, Taiwan, Hongkong, Philipines. We spent Saturday morning with visits to the Salt mine mountain having a great view over the lake. The afternoon we decided to visit the Dachstein Cave world. We bought a guided tour for the Giant Ice cave. That was really impressive. Herefore we had to take the cablecar to the Krippenstein Middle station. After the Ice cave tour we took another cable car which brought us to 2100m altitude of the Krippenstein. A high plateau with great hiking trails and an amazing view towards the Dachstein (3004m) and the Schladming glacier. We had not 
enough time to stay for long but decided to return somday for a hiking tour on this high plateau. We returned in time for a stroll in Hallstätt and fish dinner at a lake restaurant at the town center. I still remember the garlic soup (nice experience). Christiane choose char (Saibling) and I the common whitefish (Rainanke) and we both liked that fresh fish. ( I liked mine more). After long evening strolls through Hallstätt with a brass concert at the central plaza we stayed the night in a guesthouse whith large room and balcony towards the lake. We liked this more than the Hotel in Obertraun. The next morning we drove to ceramic town of Gmunden at the Traunsee. We found a place to stay in a Hotel and spent the rest of the morning stolling through Gmunden, having a coffee and snack break at the city hall plaza.
Afterwards we did the so called guided 1h castle boat tour on the Traunsee. It was nice sitting in the sun on the boat deck and having a small beer. We had catched a unexpected warm late summer september weekend with temperatures reaching 30° cel. After the boat trip we made a long walk from Gmunden along the shore towards the The castle of Schloss Ort . We walked than back to Gmunden where we discovered a exhibition of ceramic scupltures embedded in the pavement and visible through a glass panel. We both liked best the funny frogs. The evening 
we had dinner in the Hoisn Lake-restaurant. On sunday morning we took the Grünberg cablecar which was located in front of our Hotel to hike on Grüngerg mountain. Unfortuantely it was little bit foggy and we kept the hikes really short. We than decided to visit the Wildpark Hochkreut which was on the way to the Lake Wolfgangsse, which was out target on this sunday. Before arriving at Lake Wolfgangssee we crossed also the Lake Mondsee. At the Lake Wolfgangssee we had decided to visit St. Gilgen where we had lunch and where we did a nice hike along the lake towards Gasthof Fürberg . Here we had a coffee break and than we walked back to St. Gilgen and drove home to Munich. This was a really relaxing nice weekend with great weather and many new impressions. I would say “Not bad for a birthday present”.
Click here for a Album with all fotos of this trip.
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