Looking from the outside

All the Smiths have left but the Bureau stays for another week. We’ve hardly been outside of the building and it is time to explore the mountains around Hallein. It is breathtaking, the saltworks, enormous when you are inside, look tiny from the Barmstein, 841 meters above sea level. There are reminders everywhere of the time when salt was still being mined, closed off mine shafts, overgrown rails leading nowhere and the actual salt mines on the Dürrnberg above Hallein, where the Celts started mining their salt 2.500 years ago. It is something like an amusement park these days, so we avoid it. The massive rain of the last week has caused small landslides along some trails that are officially closed, but we wander there anyway and collect clay, another material I’ve been interested in and who knows, might be something to explore next year: the Bureau will be back.