Bad Goisern am Hallstättersee, Salzkammergut, Oberösterreich

Wednesday, 10th of June 2020

Ups .... I am suddenly here, in Salzkammergut! And it rains, it rains, it rains endless .....

Yesterday I decided to finally go to Hallein to visit the "Salzwelten" (Salt Worlds), but then I saw that I could go to Hallstatt for the salinas there so that I get two things at once! I heard about the charmant Hallstatt last year being in Salzburg from a Canadian young tourist. I thought, wow, people are coming here special to see Hallstatt and I live here and never heard about it?! It seems to be a very interesting old place on my taste ......

I am now in Bad Goisern. I found a fair price in a 3-stars-hotel about 15 km away from the salinas, so the plan is to have the base camp here and to go by bike to Hallstatt and to Bad Ischl (9 km only!!). 
The room is very small with 8 square metres, but it has a balcony and a lovely view! (1st picture above)

I left home around 10 a.m. The weather forecast for today was rainy. I had the inspiration to take the short boots and some summer and autumn clothes in the backpack as well as the mountain bike!

For the 110 km I needed 1 hour and 45 minutes as the roads are under cleaning and renovation works all over the country Spring in Austria is like an "under construction" site after winter: green spaces, roads, streets, gardens, houses, shops, forests, paths, cabs ..... everything is being cleaned, renovated, cut, adjusted, modernised and so on. It is amazing how much it is done by private ownerships and by state. So you should mostly take in consideration that a planned route from A to B will not take 60, but maybe 75 minutes :-) Everything works in flow actually and the traffic participants never get angry or aggressive or so. 

trees are cut so that they don't fall over the road later.
Waiting time: three to five minutes

4822 Bad Goisern is situated lower than Zell am See at 500 metres alt. and the population is about 7.600 souls.

As I already got used with the Austrian specific, it is no wonder to meet here a total different space: flair, architecture, designs. It is like a different country. So, coming from Vienna through Lower Austria (with one year studying in Linz as the capital city of OÖ) and Salzburger Land now I meet Upper Austria (Oberösterreich).

Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg. With an area of 11,982 km² (4,626 sq mi) and 1.49 million inhabitants, Upper Austria is the fourth-largest Austrian state by land area and the third-largest by population.

For a long period of the Middle Ages, much of what would become Upper Austria constituted Traungau, a region of the Duchy of Bavaria, while the area around Steyr was part of the Duchy of Styria (which derives its name from the city). 

In the mid 13th century it became known as the Principality above the Enns River(Fürstentum ob der Enns), this name being first recorded in 1264. (At the time, the term "Upper Austria" also included Tyrol and various scattered Habsburg possessions in South Germany.)

In 1490, the area was given a measure of independence within the Holy Roman Empire, with the status of a principality. By 1550, there was a Protestant majority. In 1564, Upper Austria, together with Lower Austria and the Bohemian territories, fell under Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II.

At the start of the 17th century, the counter-reformation was instituted under Emperor Rudolf II and his successor Matthias. After a military campaign, the area was under the control of Bavaria for some years in the early 17th century.

The Innviertel was ceded from the Electorate of Bavaria to Upper Austria in the Treaty of Teschen in 1779. During the Napoleonic Wars, Upper Austria was occupied by the French army on more than one occasion.

In 1918, after the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the name Oberösterreich was used to describe the province of the new Austria. After Austria was annexed by Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator, who had been born in the Upper Austrian town of Braunau am Inn and raised in Upper Austria, Upper Austria became Reichsgau Oberdonau, although this also included the southern part of the Sudetenland, annexed from Czechoslovakia, and a small part of Styria. 

In 1945, Upper Austria was partitioned between the American zone to the south and the Soviet zone to the north.

Today, Upper Austria is Austria's leading industrial region. As of 2009, it accounted for approximately a quarter of the country's exports. 

Bad Goisern belongs to the political district of Gmunden which is one of the 15 districts of Upper Austria.

Bad Goisern am Hallstättersee is a town with a long history. 

It was first mentioned in the 13th century under the name "Gebisham". 

In 1931 Goisern became a spa-town and in 1952 it became a market town. 

Since 1955 Goisern is called "Bad" Goisern (Bad means bath in German and it is a title given by the government to cities with medicinal or thermal baths). 

A famous development is the "Goiserer Schuh", a good wearable mountain-shoe.