Hallstatt, halt and start

Silhouette of wooden houses shivers in the shimmering Hallstätter See. Nestled in the surrounding mountains, Hallstatt is safely protected in the Salzkammergut region of Austria. I arrived on a May morning when the sun was at its most benevolence of the year.

The village was waking up to the heating morning rays. Floating ribbons of clouds decorates the serene valley like budding cotton candy. Against the emerald green, the white floss was moving gradually while expanding, evaporating, splitting into pieces, until vanishing into the deep valley. Wooden houses squeezed against each other over the thin patch of land between the glassy lake and the steep mountain surface. The ferry was gliding from the train station across the lake to the village, cutting open the lake surface and the lake recovered itself rapidly with rippling curves spreading behind the ferry.

I have been longing to place myself in the picturesque corner of the earth for months since the minute I was captured by an accidental glimpse over the picture of Hallstatt on a traveler’s magazine. Imagination provides the best allurement for a distant admirer. I was taken over by the thought of taking a train across mountains and rivers to arrive at Hallstatt, walking the ancient street of Hallstatt paved by ancient dwellers, diving into deep mining well to observe the crystalized salt that brought the village to life from the prehistoric period. Until one day, I cannot stand the feeling anymore and I was taken over by a moment of frenzy to get a train ticket from Paris to Salzburg, and from Salzburg southwards to Hallstatt.

Travel stories were commonly themed by exaggerated beauty out of imagination and the REALITY. If I was not disillusioned by my excitement, Hallstatt is an exception. Originated from the primitive need for salt and boosted by salt industry, Hallstatt begun it narratives with commercial exchanges and boasts the world's oldest pipeline made from 13,000 hollowed-out tree trunks, extending 40 kilometers to Ebensee dating back to 400 years ago. It is no doubt a spectacular achievement with intensive human endeavors. The Salzkammergut region where Hallstatt belongs to, literally means "Estate of the Salt Chamber", a claim over the precious resources bestowed by earth, leading to the wealth of Hallstatt. No wonder, prehistoric settlers would strive to place themselves on the unfriendly landscape on slopes over mountains, with a risk of flood for the sheer economic incentives. The money laden history failed to deprive Hallstatt of its natural beauty, not even leaving a single trace of pollutant. The spectacular Nature won over and attracted thousands of admirers.

I was a bit worried about the thousands for a village of around 900 residents. I was certainly one of those burdening the narrow space. Limited space is not a new product for Hallstatt. As I walk up to the higher point of the village to the 15-centruy parish church, I discovered a rare patch of flat land, flattened into a platform and lined with wooden boards carved in the shape of a Hallstatt house roof. Some of the triangle shaped boards bore intricate hollowed patterns at the edge, casting a distorted decorative pattern on the ground against the angled sunlight. Besides them were bright-colored wildflowers and Christian cross. The burial ground at the courtyard of the church, small as a miniature, was inundated with warm serenity, resembling a real settlement for people of the other world with all the house-shaped tombstones. Or rather, tome boards. Not far from me was an old lady watering the flowers and tidying the graveyards with the most care she could ever exert, as if she was caring for the tender newborns.

Set against mountains at its back and facing towards the Hallstatt lake, the graveyard could find no other better place. What a supreme place of eternal rest! Yet, the ancient residents of Hallstatt were given the luxury to sleep against the mountain bed for a limited period. Due to limited capacity, the ground only hold their resting bodies for 10 years, after which human remains will be unearthed, sculls bleached by the natural power of daylight and moonlight for weeks, painted with the names and years of death of the owner, stacked to a nearby chamber of skulls and bones. As space on the sculls bones is limited, as limited as the Hallstatt geography, a life of decades is abbreviated with the most essential information in several lines and compressed into a dim room of roughly 20 square meters. It is such a pity all the rich life stories were blown away except the names.

Upon death, it seems that what used to be important is degraded in its level of significance. Summarizing a person's lifetime in a few lines is a mission never properly accomplished. After all, the name, the year of birth and the year of death, are too dry to do justice to a once vivid life brimming with emotions of happiness, sadness, love, hate, hesitation, bursts of enlighten... Every time when I visit a city, I would make my way to the public graveyard. Each time, I walked my way quietly, striving not to stir any souls in the compact space of my predecessors. I read their names, their years of birth, and their years of death. I discerned how young or how old they were when they departed their family and friends. I saw smiling beautiful and handsome faces on the tombstones, probably the best ever profile pictures carefully selected by eyes veiled with tears. I sense the sorrow when I find photos of babies. I recognized their profession from the statue erected on the tomb. Yet, I knew there were much more. They are fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, doctors, actors, and writers. They are also human beings with their dreams, fulfilled or unfulfilled; with their pursuits in life, accomplished or unaccomplished; with their wisdom, recorded or unrecorded; with their guilt, public or private... All the things that define a life of years of earth were buries under the ground and hardly anyone cares as much as they do any more.

Great souls of history register their death or have been registered by others in distinctive forms, with exaggerated size of statues and huge tomb chambers. Their resting space becomes destinations of pilgrimage. Do they want to be visited so frequently? Death has sealed their mouths. Mostly, it is the living ones that are manipulating the lives of the death with their personal tastes and preferences. It might be a better tribute to Jean-Jacques Rousseau to read his works than making a visit to the Pantheon to see his carved hands on the surface of the coffin holding roses. I admire writers for their selfishness act of leaving all their wisdom to the coming generations in written forms. What is written on the tomb stone is not that important after all. Their works become story tellers of their lives, their emotions and their wisdom. A transient moment in history becomes eternity. We have not seen tombs of Plato, of Confucius, but the need to pay tribute to the tombs is superseded by observing their sparks of wisdom between the pages.

The skull chamber of Hallstatt summarized lives of 1200 skulls with colors and patterns, offering philosophical account of the essential elements that comprise life and death. About 600 of them were carefully painted by local artists with oak to symbolize honor, with laurus nobilis to show victory, with ivy for life and rose for love. Honor, victory, life, love. Each of the 1200 life form is different, but the four words might sift out the sediments of their value system in a neat manner. Over-simplified as it is, the truth is we might live for a common set of things ourselves, leading to jealousy, competition, and worse still, plot and hatred. When I look around at the stacked bones and skulls and how little space they occupy despite their effort to build larger houses and acquire bigger wealth, all that matters is nothing but vacuum. The two skulls put next to each other might be enemies of property conflicts. Those in the corner and the other at the far end of the room might be lovers that promised to stay close by each other. Indeed, I might be criticized by imposing the emptiness of death to a fresh life in which every act makes a difference. Yet, the precipitation of an end to everything brings me a sense of sweetness now and then when I was bothered by negative feelings. I was guaranteed of the serenity and a sweet end to anything annoying to the current me. As stated by Shi Tiesheng, a Chinese writer, death is a festival that is destined to come. Then why bother so much about things that will grow trivial when the festival falls? Tackle life with calmness and gratitude right now. Treat friends and family with all the love that I am still capable of giving right here.

Just like every visit to the hospital awaken my sense of gratitude to a healthy me, every visit to the graveyard reminds me of the emptiness that will finally take over a powerless mortal being. I possess no weapon against the final vanish, but I do have the power to take control of the sunny days and disregard the rainy ones when I still have time to define my own time.

I excused myself out of the dim room of 1200 people where I halted to the looming threat of death.

Out there, the sun starts to shines in my eyes.

#Austria #Europe #Travel