This Austrian Park Is Underwater For Half The Year
If you haven’t already started planning (read: fantasising about) your next European adventure, this is the perfect place to start. Grüner See, meaning “Green Lake”, is a breathtakingly beautiful lake located in the Hochschwab mountains of Styria, Austria, a stone’s throw away from the tiny town of Tragöß. Grüner See is famous for the quirk of nature that allows the lake to dry out almost completely during autumn and winter, and fill up again (by 10 metres!) in summer, which happens because Grüner See is fed almost entirely by snowmelt running down from the surrounding mountains, rather than by a river or stream.
The results are amazing: during the winter, the lake bed is used as a park, complete with trails, trees, bridges, picnic tables and benches for hikers to use. During the summer, when the lake reaches its full depth of 12 meters, the park is completely submerged but remains visible through the vivid-green, crystal-clear water.
Instead of hiking, visitors to Grüner See can scuba dive among the park’s trees and wildflower meadows, and enjoy a leisurely underwater swim along the meandering trails. As far as holiday destinations go, it really doesn’t get any more stunning, off-the-beaten-path, or FOMO-inducing than this: the GoPro footage alone will have all of your less-inspired Facebook friends wondering what they’re doing in Ibiza for the third summer in a row.
(Lead image: Martin Str/Pixabay)
