Hallstatt Local Customs

Down by the lake, you'll get a sense of the way that humans have adapted to nature here in Hallstatt. People have, in fact, been doing that for thousands of years in this town, and today it's evidenced by the water garages you'll see, complete with beautiful swans adrift on the smooth water. Is this a fairytale place or what?

Hallstatt's buildings are mainly built in the traditional Alpine style. Though the small hamlet sits is perched at only around 1700 feet, it sits just below the Plassen Mountain which towers at around 6400 feet.

On my picture you may see the old street going through the village of Hallstatt, and just a few years ago this was the only street going through the village.
recently they built a tunnel that may also be used by big trucks, motorhomes etc.

As the ground is very precious in Hallstatt all the buildings are built into the slopes and will be rather high, like you may see on my picture.
The gardens will consist of various terraces on different labels...

This is the small cemetery of Hallstatt with tiny graves that will be filled according to the rules :
Come first, served first ...

After 10-20 years, the dead bodies will be excarvated, cleaned, the bones will be sorted and the head-bone eventually decorated, when the descendants order it that way.

Most of the time there is shadow on the cemetery and a thick layer of snow will remain on the ground still in april or early may like on my picture ( all the surroundings and the rest of the village had no more snow at all)

The carnel / Beinhaus in Hallstatt is NOT only open to inhabitants of the village of Hallstatt, BUT also people from outside may be displayed there in that quite unusual way.
The tradition of this Beinhaus started in 1720 and at the moment there are 1200 headbones in the carnel 610 of them are decorated in different styles, according to the times when they were made...
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I still have to make up my mind, if this is the way I would like to be exposed to tourist-cameras, maybe with nothing else on the headbone than:

www.virtualtourist.com/globetrott

Well, at least it is possible to order the style and decorations on your head, and why not also indicate your e-mail-adress... ;-))

It is certainly a special feeling that you get, when you are standing inside the carnel, beeing able to almost touch the head-bones of people, who died a long time ago and their head-bones were beautifully decorated by an artist - mostly it is done as a side-job by someone from Hallstatt with an ordinary profession as well.

"Was bin ich ? " (What is my profession ?) was a small quiz in german TV, beeing broadcasted for about 40 years and I still remember the time, when this person from Hallstatt was the one to be found.
He was quite a funny, young guy and also showed them afterwards, how he was doing it.

The Carnel is open during the day and in the high season you may only enter it after having payed a small fee of 1 Euro to the lady at the entrance.
You also get a small leavlet with some infos and pics togeather with your entrance-ticket.
You may walk into the carnel on your own...

all the rest of the year you may just take a look through an iron fence into the carnel and take your pics from there like I did for that picture.
The head-bones have engravings with the names of the dead persons, all the other bones are not sorted.

The exhibits in the Hallstatt Museum 2000 are taken from all times in history including great christmas-decorations and cribs like on my picture.
The crib dates back to the 18th century and is a mixture of the orignal landscape in Bethlehem and the area of the hills around Hallstatt.

When you click on my picture you may see an alpine-hut in the style of austrian houses on the left of the crib.
Sorry for the reflections of the glass in the museum...