Wednesday, May 23- Day 10:

So today I decided that I am moving to Hallstatt. Anyone know how I can get a temp visa? Hallstatt is by far one of the most beautiful places that I have seen in the world. Today we went to the salt mines in Hallstatt. This city is famous for their salt mines and also the oldest set of stairs discovered in the world. What impressed me the most was that over a thousand of years before Christ people were using this mountain to mine salt. The tools were so primitive and yet they were still able to do the same things that we can do now.

I learned lots of interesting things today. 1st thing: Japanese people love to travel especially to European countries. Also they will stop ANYWHERE and take a picture of anything that is not what they are used to. This got especially annoying when we were trying to walk places. 2nd thing: There are two ways of extracting salt from the mountain. The first way is dry mining. This is when miners use sharp tools to break rocks down into manageable pieces to carry out side. The second way is through wet mining. The miners drill a hole down in the mountain and fill it with water. The water absorbs the salt and is then extracted and boiled down until only salt remains.

Today I was in my happy place. The mountains, the water, and the view were amazing. I would love to live in Hallstatt.