The Linz trip: Hallstatt

24 July 2009

Safely on board the bus with the band and a number of the forthcoming harbour festival’s guest musicians we travelled through the beautiful Austrian countryside to the next street concert location: Hallstatt. As we passed through Goisern, Hubert’s hometown, the girls sang a few apt local traditional gstanzls – just in case he’d missed where we were.

Hallstatt is a pretty town, nestled into the mountains around a lake. Due to it’s unusual layout there’s next to no parking and no through traffic a lot of the time. There are car parks above the town, which are reached through a tunnel carved into the mountain. A tunnel that isn’t bad to navigate in a car, but which is a whole different kettle of fish when you’re in a big coach. Gradually we passengers realised that we weren’t just in a dark tunnel, we were in a dark tunnel where the rockface was inches away from grazing the windows on either side. How the driver got through I’ll never know, but he did and earned a round of applause from us all. Which startled him and caused him to drive into the lake. Or not, whatever.

Dropped out at one of these car parks we made our way down 120 steep stone steps. I’d done them once before when I came to the town and so knew they were coming. My poor knees – thank God I’d left my rucksack on the coach and taken only my camera with me. We walked to the Marktplatz and the band set up for another street concert, the tech van having come in another way with all the equipment. Once again Karandila opened proceedings and the square was pretty full with an appreciative audience. Ukrainian band Haydamaky played this time too – another Eastern European explosion of rock, brass and joie de vivre. It was a great setting for something so unusual, this invasion of musicians in the square, enveloped by the traditional Austrian houses tucked into the mountainside. There were a number of kids in the crowd and one little boy with blue car-shaped crocs on his feet was busy running around and dancing. Hubert followed behind him amused, bent double to his level playing his accordion until the boy suddenly realised that this crazy musician was right behind him, freaked out and sat down. But it was only a moment or two before he was up and running again.

The set lasted about an hour before the crew started to pack up, Hubert signing a few autographs here and there. We chatted a little to my friends from Munich before suddenly noticing that there were no musicians left in the square. Time to go! We hurried through the streets and back up the 120 steps. So exhausting that I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath and reassure my legs that, no, they were unlikely to fall off however much it felt that way. We were soon at the top of the steps and back in the car park.

“Please be kidding,” I said to the ominously empty space where we were expecting the coach to be standing. They’d gone without us.

Click for the set

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2 Responses to “The Linz trip: Hallstatt”

dreamdust » The Linz trip: in the right direction
26th July 2009 @ 12:45 pm

[...] were stranded in Hallstatt. Suzy hurried back down the way we’d come in case any of the technical crew were [...]
2009 : dreamdust
31st December 2009 @ 8:07 pm

[...] and then went to Gmunden. We met up with the band and went to Hallstatt. Where they heartlessly abandoned us. Then we were rescued. And then mildly abandoned again in Ischl. Finally we made it to Linz in [...]