DAY 102 THURSDAY JULY 5 RAMBLING AND PLANNING

As we have no definite plans made for the next few weeks we decided to spend the day in town at Fuschl and try to book some accommodation  in the time before July 24 when we meet Pam and Ken in Paris.  We had booked Hotel Petri in Munich last night for 5 nights but we wanted to sort out how to obtain visas for Mongolia.  Before tackling that we set off after breakfast for a walk around Mount Bambichl.  The track followed a beautiful stream past a community herb garden in the forest and came to an old mill which has been reconstructed so people can grind grains and bake bread there.  Along the way we read the story of the dwarves in the forest who all used to live their own separate lives.  But they all had different talents and interests so eventually they realised they were happier when they got together and achieved more working together.  The miller dwarves were Mr and Mrs Cotton and they had sextuplets who lined the track and the Cottons wanted the walkers on the track to help name them.
As we came out of the forest into open fields we were attacked by large biting flies who spoilt our fun until we got back in the shade.

VIEW FROM THE BAMBICHL TRACK

Coming back to Lake Fuschl we took a photo of the meadow where Julie Andrews sang the opening number on Sound of Music, according to our guide.

The book says no one can remember where it really was filmed but that looks good enough for us. Apart from the flies it was an excellent walk.  It could have been done on a bicycle and on the weekend a running race will be held around the same route.
During the afternoon we tried to fill in an online application for the Mongolian visas that we found but we could not make it work as it insisted we fill in our nationality in a space where no window was present.  So we sent an email request to the Geneva Embassy to see whether we could apply there. Otherwise we have to go back to our original plan to apply in Vienna.  Since July 11,12,13,14,15 are all public holidays in Mongolia, that does not leave much room to move.  Anyway we searched for Hotels in Switzerland and found 95% were fully booked.  We settled on one in Chur called Hotel Schweizerhaus which seemed to fit well with the name of yesterday's ship (Austria) and the barge that took us on the bike ride (Holland).
In the middle of the afternoon we suddenly suffered a vicious hailstorm - no wind but heavy hail:

 After a nice dinner in our hotel restaurant we went for another 40 minute walk up above the lake.
We leave tomorrow morning with many great memories of Fuschl.  When we asked a local whether this place was unique she claimed there are many others in Austria like it.  We hope so, the world needs more Fuschls.