How do you know you're addicted to posting on your blog? When you find yourself sitting in an outdoor Internet cafe in the drizzle typing on your familiar laptop. The rain taps on the large umbrella that covers the circular bar, and the owner smokes and greets everyone who passes by. I look out over the lake, and thank my lucky stars that we have come to such a beautiful place.
Hallstatt is the oldest town in Austria, and yesterday we toured an ancient salt mine. Afterward we had a snack on top of the mountain and for about an hour the sun came out, the blessed sun, and I snapped some pictures of the meadow flowers. I kept a picture of this town on my computer screen at work. Every day it greeted me, motivated me. Now I'm actually here. I've walked its backstreets and alleyways (almost all its streets are alleyways), I've looked long and longingly at its lake.
I've also thought about the wonders of travel, of dropping briefly into another way of life. Here they serve bread in little cloth baskets, they carry walking sticks, they fight an expansion of their UNESCO World Heritage designation, one that would make it impossible for the residents to even paint an interior wall without approval from an international organization. Almost every quaint house in this town is plastered with a sign that reads "Nein, Danke!" or some other expression of their dissatisfaction with this proposed change. And as we start to think about leaving Europe in a few days, I want to take this sentiment with me. "Nein, Danke." No, thank you. We'd like to keep our old ways. The little fights the large. Let's hope the little wins!