One of the things we like to do in Europe is visit small picturesque towns and esque a bunch of pictures. One of those towns was Mödling, Austria, best known for being the capital of the Austrian district of Mödling as well as being unknown to 98.7% of all Americans.

It’s also famous for the “ö” in its name, which is pronounced by forming an O with your mouth, placing your tongue just behind your last molar, making a gargling sound like you’re swishing around mouthwash, and then fluttering your tongue rapidly while exhaling. We’ll just stick with pronouncing it Modeling.

It also features a statue in the town square entitled, “Homage to the Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cone.”

People have been living in this area since the Neolithic Era, which is the fancy name for “Stone Age.” Despite it’s advanced age, it’s a cute little place and we enjoyed wandering around taking photos and just seeing what popped up.

Well there you go, our first Pop Up. I didn’t actually jump because I didn’t want to break a hip.

In addition to being famous for having two dots above its name, Mödling also offers a tour of the Seven Deadly Sins. Here, we see me enjoying some Lust, and then I experienced Wrath because they make doorways so low you’re guaranteed to get very pissed off after bonking your head. I might as well add Gluttony here because my stomach looks like I ate a whole Happy Meal without taking it out of the box.

We missed out on the other deadly sins, but we’re hoping that by taking pictures of a couple of churches we will be forgiven for the ones we experienced.

One of the advantages of sight-seeing in a small town is that there are a lot fewer pictures to choose from. Despite that, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the stupid joke I had in mind when Carolyn took my picture in front of the Teeladen store. But it was hee-larious, I’m sure.

Before we move on to Hallstatt, here are some photos of the Austrian Alps we encountered while on our drive. Any one of these would make a great background for your computer screen, don’t you think? The beauty of driving in this area is that the drive is just as entertaining as the destination. There’s a lot to be said for driving around in a car instead of bypassing all this natural beauty by flying in.

Of course, there are also some other advantages as well.

Hallstatt is a small town in Austria that is so naturally beautiful it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997. Carolyn has long wanted to visit, being drawn by the amazing photography that regularly pops up on the internet. And it didn’t disappoint. The town even greeted us with a rainbow; we felt so special that they went all out just for us. Munich didn’t even give us any free beer.

Halstatt is such a small place that it’s easily viewed in just part of a day. In 2020, the town had a population of 780, but is now a shining example of over-tourism, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to almost 30,000 tourists per day. It was hard to see how they had the infrastructure to handle all that, so we eventually ducked into the salt mines in order to earn our keep and avoid having Austrian dung thrown at our heads. Which isn’t a thing, I just like to say dung.

Hallstatt is surrounded by beautiful Alps and sits on Hallstätter See (aka Lake Hallstatt). It features rainbows for very special tourists, as well as the Hallstatt Ossuary in a chapel called St. Michael’s, where they have more than 1,200 human skulls, 600 of which are artistically painted with symbols, names and dates, while the other 600 remain nude. As far as we know, none of the original owners have come to collect any just because they had their names on them. We didn’t bother with the ossuary because we’ve been to Portugal’s Chapel of Bones in Évora as well as the catacombs in Paris, which has an abundance of formerly used bones. Plus we thought an ossuary was where they practiced Jiu-Jitsu. (OSS is a reverential term used in Jiu-Jitsu. See, that was a preemptive joke-splain right there.) Hallstatt also has the aptly named Hallstatt Museum, which we also didn’t see because we’re a little museumed out. But I’m sure it’s wonderful and probably features many halls and stats.

We’re not as good at photography as many of the folks who have posted pictures in Instagram and who helped make Hallstatt known as “the most Instagrammable town in the world” to the chagrin of all 780 residents. Instead, we give you some unique commentary to make up for our lack of professional photography skills. It may not actually make up for it, but it’s all we’ve got. Oh wait, there’s a slightly used mint in my pocket if you want that.

Additional beautiful views were had by taking the funicular (yet another one!) up to the salt mines, which we’ll get to in a bit. At the top of the funicular is the Hallstatt Skywalk, which offers stunning panoramas and long lines for selfies. Enjoy the scenery!

I have dozens more scenic photos, but I didn’t want to post them all since so many people have approached me saying, “There aren’t enough words in your blogs! The pictures are nice, but I use my toilet time for reading and there just isn’t enough to read per poop!”

Okay, I’m lying. Actually, if I had a euro for every time someone grumbled about BaldSasquatch having “too many words,” I’d have more euros than I do now, so from now on I will demand a euro from anyone who makes that comment. In fact, I just need one more euro to lose one less euro on this project. But enough about the millions I’m not making, onward and upward, it’s almost time to trudge off to the salt mines!

OK, I see you’re slightly constipated, so I had to offer up one more set of Hallstatt pictures first.

Up, up, up we went, over 360 meters (1181 feet) above the town. Given that we were going to an actual working salt mine, I had to wonder if that’s where they came up with the word “funicular,” maybe just so the workers might be convinced that what they were doing was fun. Otherwise, it would be called a “nofunatallbutatleastitisapaycheckicular.” Then fourth graders and many grown American men could giggle because it contains “tit.”

Once we made it to the top, we dressed up in our finest salt mining gear (it pays to pack for every contingency!) and prepared for our trek deep inside the mountain. This was our Salt Trek: To explore strange new condiments. To seek out new spices and new causes of high blood pressure. To boldly sprinkle where no one has seasoned before!

When I saw this sign in the waiting room, I knew exactly what was going to happen. You see, if you’re in a salt mine, you obviously have to use salty language (well, duh!). We knew we were being reminded of that by reading the above sign and realizing what it rhymes with. That said, fair warning, the rest of this entry is going to contain some very salty language. So if you’re offended by words that have been deemed objectionable by the U.S. Department of Words We Think Are Too Salty, then just scroll to the end of this entry or close your laptop with a light but firm slam to express your distaste, because I have to tell you that what follows is gonna contain some very salty language, dadgummit. Okay, I started it with an old swear word, but don’t worry, all the latest and greatest will be represented here.

On our way up to the goddamn mine entrance I took the scenic photo on the left. Carolyn asked if I made sure to crop out the ugly-ass dumpster. I said, “yes, of course dear.” Then I took another close-up shot of the dumpster, just because I’m an ornery son of a bitch.

The dickhead tour guide (he was actually nice, I just had to figure out how to work in a “dickhead,” and we encountered no dickheads throughout this whole trip) marched us like jackasses to the mouth of the tunnel and made us do the wanker walk for what seemed like hours upon fucking hours. I fully expected never to be heard from again, surely much to the delight of those who cringe every time they read another swear word. Although I found it interesting that both Trump and Vance used words like “motherfucker” and “bullshit” during their rally speeches, upending hundreds of years of the tradition of mostly non-vulgar political public speech (often offset by more “fucks” per sentence in recorded history when the tape recorders were running in the oval office; Tricky Dick, I’m pointing at you). So I guess if it’s okay for the President… although I definitely draw the line at even talking about pussy grabbing. Unless it’s my cat. Oh, and no felonies here either, unless escaping from a salt mine counts.

One of the things we learned is that to move between the levels of a salt mine you get to ride a long-assed slide… as long as you want to go down. It was a little goddamn scary at first because, y’know, we haven’t been kids for a couple of millenia now, but we managed to keep the skin on our asses and land on the bottom with only a few salty phrases like, “Whew! That was some salt-assed shit-scary piss-wizardy ride, boy howdy!”

If you ever had the urge to lick something salty besides your partner, then come to the Hallstatt salt mines and lick the damn walls. We didn’t lick a wall ourselves, but we did lick our fingers, and then ever so gently began circling them slowly around and around until -oh wait, wrong lick thingee. Anyway we did in fact taste the wall. Spoiler alert: it was salty. These are the stratusses of salt layers, only interrupted by an occasional black pepper stratus. If you can believe it, even though this mine is the oldest operating salt mine in the world, with excavations dating all the way back to 2,000 years Before Kee-ryst (don’t worry, I never use the lord’s name in vain, although I’m guessing Jesus might’ve uttered a “goddammit” or two when his wine conversion count came up a little short… or would he have said “Daddammit?”), they have only mined about four bloody percent (The Brits- represent!) of all the salt in the mountain. Suffice it to say, humanity will have enough salt to last until we blow the motherfuckin’ planet up.

As we toured the mine, we were shown how salt apparently makes everything look like blue balls (unless this was formerly a stage for Blue Man Group), plus we saw a salty lake. All the tourists hurled obscenities at the salty lake because it needs that to keep it moist.

At the end of the tour, they loaded us on to this “train,” which looks like long-ass wooden benches for a long-butt picnic table. (Seriously, why can we say “long-ass” but not “long-butt?” Oh the vagaries of English are endlessly perplexing! Just like every word that starts with “vag.”) Also, we were slightly pissed off that the assholes didn’t give us a paycheck, talk about a horseshit way to get free labor. I almost burst all my gonads hauling those grains of salt. Fuck ’em all anyway, it’s all fuck news.

OK, here’s some pretty scenery to help everyone relax from all that saltiness. Now I’ve got to go wash my mouth out with soap.

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