Salt Mines Climb
Picking up where I left off with after our Neuschwanstein adventure, we took another day trip to Salzburg while we were staying in Munich. I love that everywhere in Europe is so much more easily connected by trains compared to the US. It makes day trips like the one we took to Salzburg possible. We hopped on an early train from Munich and made our way over to Salzburg, which is a small town on the Germany-Austria border. We had a free morning since we had only booked a Sound of Music tour in the afternoon. I’m probably a bit biased since it’s my favorite movie, but if you’re ever in the Salzburg area, I highly recommend booking one. It was pretty cool to hear about some of the filming secrets and get the chance to look around the mountain and lake district, which lies just outside of Salzburg.
Anyway, we decided to journey a little outside of Salzburg to take a tour of the famous salt mines. There are two possible famous salt mines on opposite sides of the same mountain, and we chose to do the tour at the mine located in Hallein. Our previous research on how to get to the salt mines suggested we take a train from Salzburg to Hallein and then walk to the salt mines. When we plugged the salt mines into google maps after arriving at the Hallein train station, it said it would only take us 35 minutes. We figured the walk was relatively short and hadn’t heard of a bus to take us to the salt mines. Little did we know about the journey we were about to embark upon. We were on somewhat of a tight schedule for this day because we had the Sound of Music tour in the afternoon, and the salt mine tours only ran every hour, so we knew that we had to make the 35-minute walk in 40 minutes to catch the 11 am tour. Foolishly, we figured this was entirely possible. We were fast walkers and often beat the time google maps estimated for us to get places.
We started off through the small town, which was beautifully set among the mountains with a river running through the middle at a brisk pace and commented about how we couldn’t wait to come back after our tour when we had a little more time to take pictures. We started walking towards the outskirts of the city and then started up quite a steep road that was paved. We figured this was only a short climb, but the hill just kept going. After walking up this hilly road for about 10 minutes, we figured we were making a turn onto a flatter road, and we were already dying, however, google maps directed us onto an even steeper hiking trail with stairs climbing up the side of the mountain. At this point, we were getting worried about making the tour on time since we were falling behind google map’s estimated time. One of the girls in our group with asthma was particularly struggling, and since we figured it couldn’t be that much further up the hill we decided to split in half. I went with another girl and forged ahead hoping we could arrive a little earlier to secure tickets for the group while the other two stayed back to make sure my friend with asthma could breathe.
The flattest part of our uphill trek
At the top of each section of this path I thought we had reached a road which would flatten out and take us to the salt mines, but the path just kept going upwards. It was at this point that I realized we were fully climbing up the side of a mountain. The estimated time on google maps kept inching closer to 11am, and I was getting increasingly exhausted, especially as we had climbed another mountain in the snow just yesterday to reach Neuschwanstein Castle, but I was determined to make it to the salt mines. During this trek I wondered how other people made it to the mines because I couldn’t believe others would also do this hike. After what felt like hours but was in fact about 40 minutes, we finally made it to the road with the salt mine on it. Where the hiking trail met the road, I was dismayed to find there was a bus stop.
We walked into the salt mine ticket office covered in sweat and panting .It was now 11:05, and we were in the process of begging the ticket office to let us on the 11:00 tour, which was the only tour we could do with our schedule when my other friend who had stayed back with our friend with the asthma walked through the door. It turns out he had left the other girl behind because she knew she wouldn’t make it in time. I was terrified that we had just marched up the entire mountain just be denied entry because we were just too late.
By some miracle, the mine staff issued us tickets for the 11:00 tour and we rushed down to get changed into the overalls that you’re required to wear during the tour. While we were putting on the overalls, we ran into the other people in our tour group and our guide who suggested that we wear a sweatshirt into the mine to stay warm since it was only 10˚C (50˚F) inside. When we explained to her that we had just finished the walk from town, her eyes grew wide. We ended up having a great time learning all about the mining practices and going down the two slides inside the mines.
Walking across the international border inside the mine
Despite the tour online being advertised as only an hour, we walked out of the mine at 12:35, freaking out about whether we were going to make it back to Salzburg in time for our Sound of Music tour. We met up with our friend who hadn’t made it up the mountain in time for the tour and found out that she had enjoyed the museum while we were on the tour. We decided to take the bus down the hill because we were absolutely exhausted and figured that hiking back down the trail would take too long. We became increasingly anxious when we got to the bus station and found out the bus wouldn’t arrive until 1:15. We needed to be back in Salzburg by 2:00 for our Sound of Music tour and we had to take either a train or a bus there. At this point, I was about to cry on the side of the road. I was convinced there was no way we were going to make it to the Sound of Music tour.
We decided to hope for the best and wait for the 1:15 bus. I ended up calling the Sound of Music tour operator and asking them to wait 10 minutes for us because we were going to be running late, but I wasn’t hopeful this would happen. When we boarded the bus, we were met with a bunch of young kids who looked like they were coming home from school. Despite the kids, the bus driver drove like a bat out of hell down the very steep road back toward the main town. I was swinging all over the bus and hanging on for dear life, just hoping not to collide with the walls. We made it to the main bus stop in town and jumped on another bus to Salzburg. We ended up making this bus by 2 minutes. By some miracle, we made it to Salzburg and ran to the place where the Sound of Music tour was supposed to leave from. They had waited for us, and we boarded the tour bus 5 minutes late. As we boarded the guide made a joke about us being late because we were Americans, but we were so incredibly grateful to have made it. We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the music and scenery on our tour before heading back to Munich.
The famous house from The Sound of Music
I’m not sure how google maps didn’t warn us that we were about to set off up a mountain, but we had no idea when we set off from the train station. I’m still in disbelief that we managed to fit everything in that day. Lesson learned, just because google maps says you can walk somewhere in 40 minutes, doesn’t mean it won’t take you up a mountain. Also, if you’re planning a trip to the Hallein salt mines, know that you can in fact take a bus both up and down the mountain instead of hiking like we did. I very much suggest this plan for your own sanity.