Exploring Tyrol of Austria

Hall in Tirol

Austria is our first country for this trip and we stayed at a small town called Hall in Tirol, next to Innsbruck for eight days. Our Airbnb was an absolute delight. There were Easter surprises including chocolates and wine. As this Airbnb catered to longer stay travellers, it was well equipped with a lot of supplies (like multiple varieties of pasta and rice). We also received a guest card that allowed us to use unlimited public transport across the region.

As we have travelled to Switzerland and Dolomites in Italy before, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the Austrian mountainous landscape had a bit of both. We could see the green mountains (reminding us of Switzerland) on one side and the rocky lime-stone mountains (reminding us of Dolomites in Italy) on the other side. Hall in Tyrol is a small picturesque town, well connected by buses to Innsbruck (half an hour). And the best part: we could see the mountains by standing anywhere in the town.

Mountain View from the hike

Salt Mining

This town is called Hall in Tirol as it was famous for salt mining (mining ended 50 years back). The people here started mining in the 1500s from the mountains around this region. Yes, you heard it right! The mountains here contained salt. Salt is often referred as white gold and it brought a lot of wealth to these regions back in the day. It is not very economical to mine salt now as it is very cheap to import it. Read more here ↗

We missed the bus!

One evening, we did a small hike in a forest surrounded by mountains and reached a remote-village called Gnadenwald. As we reached the village bus stand, we realised that the last bus had left and there were no buses to go back to our stay in Hall in Tirol. What do we do now? Hall in Tirol is quite far and we will have to walk 5 kms on a highway to reach the nearest town.

We tried asking for lift from cars passing by. After about 20 cars, we finally saw someone stopping ahead for us. We ran to the car and found a lady named Verena, a local of the region, waiting for us. She graciously dropped us at the Hall in Tirol. She was curious as to who we were and where we were travelling from. We love connecting with locals and asked her if we should meet again for a coffee. Luckily, she was open to the suggestion.

We met Verena another time. This time in a coffee shop. We spoke about Indian food and about our love for travel. She talked about Easter and also helped us understand a few Austrian foods and gave us restaurant recommendations. It was really nice connecting with a local.

Other things

We also visited the neighbouring towns of Rinn and Absam. They were extremely beautiful. At Rinn, we did a small hike through dandelion fields. To our surprise, we ended up getting a spectacular views of the mountains after the climb. We also watched a traditional Austrian dance another day, where men, women, boys and girls danced in pairs in traditional Austrian attire, welcoming spring.

Hall in Tirol became our home and we didn’t want to leave it. But, we had to keep moving forward and go to our next destination. In the next mail, learn about how we watched a symphony for free in Salzburg (Sound of Music, anyone?) and what we learnt about Austrian history in Vienna. 

Incase you missed it

Checkout our Instagram Video on Spring Bloom in Austria ↗