Against the odds, we landed the last available parking spot in the P1 lot. Lukas muttered something about divine intervention. I said nothing because I was still trying to reverse into it without gouging a Hungarian license plate or scraping the bumper of a French family’s Renault that looked like it had never lost a fight.
We’d made it to Hallstatt, and apparently, so had every other person on Earth.
From the lot, we started walking toward our Airbnb — a pink-painted gingerbread fantasy tucked halfway up the village like someone tried to hide a dollhouse on the edge of a mountain. We didn’t rush. You can’t rush in Hallstatt. The streets are cobblestone and crowded, and every five feet someone stops to photograph a swan, a window box, or a cloud formation that “looks like a bunny if you squint and ignore physics.”
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