Tuesday - lots of sights seen in Berchtesgaden

We got up and again had a good breakfast...along with the usual, we even had liverwurst on rye bread. It was the best liverwurst I've ever had...and normally I don't even like it!

Right after breakfast we drove to Eagles Nest. We had to drive to a parking lot & hike a ways to catch the bus that took us 6 km up the mountain to the elevator that took us up to the Eagles Nest. Here's a picture of the parking lot after we were to the top:



For those of you who are non-history buffs, the Eagles Nest was Hitler's retreat during WWII. His mistress, Eva Braun, spent a lot of time there.


The Eagles Nest was built by one of Hitler's Nazis, Bormann, who along with the Nazi party, gave it to Hitler on his 50th birthday in 1939. It took 17 months to build the Eagles nest and to build the road up to it along with the tunnels and the elevator shaft to reach the top. The road goes up 6 km and only has 1 hairpin turn. Here are photos of the construction of it:






Interestingly, the word the Germans have for Eagles Nest is "Kehlstein" which as far as I can translate it is "stone throat"...maybe referring to the elevator shaft going up??

So you take the bus up the road, get out & walk through a tunnel to the elevator.




The length of the tunnel is 124 meters & the elevator goes up exactly 124 meters. Knowing the meticulous Germans, that didn't vary even a fraction of a centimeter either direction! The elevator is lined with brass and goes the 124 meters (406 feet) in only 41 seconds! This goes through the middle of the mountain and when you emerge, you are at Eagles Nest. To build it all, it cost the equivalent of today's 113 million Euro....or about 147 million U.S. dollars. Today all the profits made from the visitors goes to charity.

Here's at the top at Eagles Nest...the view is beyond spectacular:













This is the actual fireplace from the building. They managed to save it before total destruction by the soldiers who came and chipped pieces of it away as souvenirs after the war.




This is the Eagles Nest:


The area is now a restaurant:



So we sat down at the edge of Eagles Nest and at 10:30 in the morning we were drinking beer.



We had a toast to the demise of the bastards that built this place...and another toast to both of our fathers and others of that age who fought hard to deliver us from the evil of that empire.

When you look at the spectacular view you have up here, you can understand why Hitler thought he was king of the world. Like Leo says, there is no greater throne than this.











After that, we drove to the Konigsee (king's lake) & took a boat



across the lake to St. Bartholoma monastery.



Along the way (on the lake) we were totally surrounded by the alps. At one point the captain of the boat stopped in the middle of the lake, took out a trumpet, and blew the horn. You could hear the echo through the alps...way far away...as he played a few notes, paused, and then played some more. It was really amazing.

Here's some of the sights along the way:










Oh, almost forgot...Matt and Andy...can you guess what Dad's doing? Did you visit this building? I was sitting in the bench in front and heard Dad calling so I got up and when I found out...I was laughing so hard...I just had to take a picture!




So we left Konigsee and started down the German Alpine Strasse (Alpine Road)...it follows the contour of southern Germany as it goes through the alps. We had plugged in our GPS to get us out of town. We had programmed the GPS to speak in English and it's a female voice with a British accent that tells us where to go (ha!)....we call her Gwendolyn. The plan was to take the Alpine Strasse along the entire length in Germany to Fussen. So all is going well - beautiful scenery along the route:



And all of a sudden Gwendolyn announces, "Welcome to Austria"........WTF!!!!!!!!!! We both looked at each other and said "How the hell did we get to Austria?!". After several perplexing moments, we decided that it was nice to be in Austria so we went down whatever road we were on (?) and soon got to Lofer and found a wonderful hotel:




Luckily, we didn't stay here:




The lady here at the hotel is very nice...doesn't speak much English so I resorted to German. She told me my German was very good....Ich don't think so!....it's probably more like "Me Tarzan, you Jane". At least I'm able to communicate somewhat in German - better than I thought. But sometimes my language skills go crackers...like today...at breakfast this morning the fraulein there was asking me if we wanted coffee (in German ) and I said "si"...what the heck?? Then at the Eagles Nest a Frenchman was speaking to me in French (what the hey? do I look French??) anyway, I understood him, but I replied back in German and when I realized that, I spoke to him in French. Ach du lieber - where am I???

Forgot to mention that on top...at the Eagles Nest, we saw a small group of German motorcycle riders...wearing black leather pants, etc. and Leo said "here come the carpet pissers" (if you're not a Big Lobowski fan, you won't get this!)

So back to Austria...we went to the restaurant in the hotel and had a great dinner...Leo had liver dumpling soup that was fantastic, and also, goulash with spatzle. I had goulash with a wonderful salad. I ordered dinner for us totally in German and the waitress said my German was perfect! Yay!

Went for a walk around the town here as the sun was setting. Here we are surrounded by alps - it's unbelievably beautiful! Here's some photos that I took after dinner:













Came back and went to bed...oh...here's a picture of the bed. Yes, Sara it's another Lucy and Desi, but at least they are together! Anyway...the comforters on the bed were folded like hearts! I love it!







As I write this post, we're having some thunder storm...which sounds amazing in the alps!

Tonight at various times, I heard Leo mumbling to himself "ausfahrt" which means "exit"...we see it all the time on the roads when of course, there's an exit. Anyway, I asked him why he was talking about exits all the time. He said he finds the word funny so keeps saying it. I guess there's something about simple minds and simple pleasures!

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Location:from Berchtesgaden to a surprise ending!