Crazy4fiction.com Website Review

> treasure, a castle, and ordinary people who resisted evil in their > own extraordinary way. Backpacking across Europe—that’s how my husband and I decided to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. I hadn’t intended it to be a research trip, but hours after we arrived in the ancient Austrian village of Hallstatt, a storybook town curled up between a rugged alp feet between the fortress of mountains and woods. As I sipped coffee on our sliver of porch, these quiet waters seemed to whisper to As Jon and I wandered the cobblestone lanes of Hallstatt, we began to learn the history of this region. Near the end of World War II, as Nazi officials fled south, they hid all sorts of items in nearby salt mines, castles, and lakes. Because of Lake Hallstatt’s depth and the many hiding places in the underwater caves, forests, and shifting sands, divers have continued finding Nazi artifacts for the past seventy years. Some believe there might be a treasure trove hidden far below a scuba diver’s range. In 1945, fleeing Nazis dumped multiple crates into the nearby Lake Toplitz. While some believe those wooden chests contained missing gold reserves, the only crates that have been reported as found in Toplitz’s de*p waters were filled with millions in counterfeit banknotes, money printed long ago to disrupt the British economy. This legend about lost treasure ignited my imagination. What if the Nazis had dumped crates into Lake Hallstatt as well? If so, were they still there, or had someone already salvaged and hidden them away? This inkling was just a spark at first, but as Jon and I climbed the hillside to Hallstatt’s old cemetery, I saw spires of an abandoned castle across the lake, hidden partially by trees. And the tiny flame in my mind began to blaze with possibilities. Intrigued, Jon accompanied me across the lake in an electric boat, and the rusty turrets, boarded windows, and wooden boathouse only fueled my curiosity. Did anyone live here during the war? And had the Nazis hidden any of their stolen gold on the estate?