Odds and ends from Berchtesgaden...

Here are a few final pictures from Berchtesgaden. It's coming up on three weeks that we visited there, so it's about time that I wrap things up.

Here is a sign from a bakery near the center of the historic central district. The lot where we parked was a few feet from this bakery.



















Here is another intricate sign - they seemed to be fairly common. Those clever Germans.



















Here is a sign from the salt mine that we toured. The history of the mine starts in 1156!

St. Bartholoma Chapel...

This week I will be finishing up posting on our trip to Berchtesgaden. The weather this weekend was just terrible. We had planned on visiting Terezin, a WWII concentration camp that is about 30 miles outside of Prague, but it snowed a bit yesterday and today it snowed, then sleeted and then rained. We decided that after church we would just go home and stay warm.

Anyway, to continue on our boat trip on Lake Konigsee, the boat takes you to the other end of the lake to a peninsula with an old baroque hunting lodge and the chapel of St. Bartholoma.

Here is the view of the chapel as you arrive by boat.














From Wikipedia:

The church is located on the western edge of the Königssee (King's Lake) on the peninsula of Hirschau. It can only be reached by ship or after a long hike. The chapel originated in part in the 12th century. Since the 16th century it has been in the baroque style. St. Bartholomew is said to be the protector of alpine farmers and of milkmaids. St. Bartholomä has two onion domes and a red domed roof. The floor plan is based on that of the Salzburg Cathedral. The church features stucco work by the Salzburg artist Josef Schmidt and a three-apse quire. The altars in the apses are consecrated to St. Bartholomew, St. Catherine, and St. James respectively.

Near the chapel lies the old hunting lodge of the same name. The lodge, which was first erected in the 12th century with the church, has been rebuilt multiple times. Until 1803, it was a private residence of the Prince-Provosts of Berchtesgaden; after Berchtesgaden became part of Bavaria, the building became a favorite Wittelsbach hunting lodge; today it is an inn.


The hunting lodge is on the left.
















Misty mountains off the lake.















Here is a photo I pulled off the web that shows the scale of the chapel compared with the surrounding terrain.

More Berchtesgaden - Boat ride on Lake Konigsee...

I guess I should return to our trip to southern Germany before it becomes old news.



One of the highlights of the trip was a vist to Lake Konigsee and a 90 minute boat ride. In an area where just about everywhere you look could be a postcard, Lake Konigsee was the most scenic.

Just three miles outside of Berchtesgaden, emerald green Lake Konigsee lies in the mountains of Berchtesgaden National Park. The

According to the web site http://www.salzburg-hotel.at/en-salzburg_sightseeing-lake_konigsee_berchtesgaden.shtml


Lake Konigsee's landmark, the chapel of St. Bartholomew, can only be reached by boat. This world-famous church, originally dating back to the 12th cent., lies at the tip of a picturesque peninsula. Neighboring the chapel stands the former hunting lodge of Berchtesgaden's provosts and Bavaria's kings, today an idyllic location for an inn.

The Palace and pilgrimage church were founded by the Prince-Provosts of Berchtesgaden in 1134. The triple-concha design of the church dates back to 1697; the stucco-work is by the Salzburg master Joseph Schmidt. In the 18th century the summer and hunting palace was rebuilt, with older building sections incorporated. After Berchtesgaden became part of Bavaria in 1810, the palace became a hunting lodge for the Bavarian kings and was one of their favourite haunts. Since the Romantic period, the world-famous pilgrimage church, set against the Watzmann range, has been a source of inspiration for numerous landscape painters.


Here are Kathy and Noah posing by the boat that would take us on our 90 minute jaunt to St. Bartholoma and back.















Here is a spectacular waterfall flowing down to the lake. It had snowed a lot at higher elevation the day before we arrived and the melting snow created some volume of water for the falls.




















Here are boat houses on the shore of Lake Konigsee.
















I will post later with pictures of the chapel of St. Bartholoma.

Back in the salt mine...

There is a working salt mine within a couple of miles from our Berchtegaden hotel so we took the tour. The mine has been in continuous operation since 1517 - that's a historical perspective that is hard for Americans to grasp, since to us something that is 100 years old is ancient. Anyway, the tour was a little over an hour and was more enjoyable than I expected. However, the tour guide, who spoke 95% in German and just 5% in English, solicited tips at the end which I always find to be bad form.

Here we are in our stylish protective clothing. It looks like we work in a nuclear facility.















Here is one of the rooms deep in the mine. It had some educational exhibits.















This is the small boat that takes you across the 100 meter underground lake in the mine. It's really cool. While you cross in the dark they have a laser light show. (I cheated and pulled this picture off the web).












This is a little grotto room. The tour guide gave an explanation in German.













From the Berchtegaden town web site (www.berchtegaden.com). The translation is a little stilted, even after I cleaned up some of the more confusing passages.

In former times, when Berchtesgaden was still "Fuerstprobstei", only chosen people were allowed to visit the salt mine. Today this vault is open to everyone and the attendance remains an unforgettable experience. Bringing in annually over 400,000 visitors in the mine, by the way in the same protective clothing according to the type of the old miner clothing, which have been already carried by kings and princes at the entry. And now a miner accompanies you through the fascinating world under days. You are shifted automatically into another time. With the pit-train you drive in the 600m long lug by the riding seat a into the "Kaiser Franz Sinkwerk", an enormous hall with a cover surface of 3000 square meter.

From here walk either on a comfortable or - which is still very beautiful - you slide down one of smooth-polished slides 34m down to the next station, a beautiful salt cave. In the cave you will be astonished, as the transparent colours of the rock salt lights up. Only a few steps ahead an instructive film continues to take up your attention over the emergence of the salt deposits and the production of the salt. Then the guidance continues: With a multiplicity of machines and devices the work is represented. In the salt museum you find among other things a chronicle of the salt mine, historical tools and lightnings, rocks and minerals and an earth tidal station. At an old "Handgoepel" you come past over a second chute down there to that 100m x 30m large, lit up salt lake.

With a raft you slide over the lake and arrive by a sparkling spring at the famous brine lifting machine of the royal upper mountain and saltworks advice George von Reichenbach from the year 1817. Now it continues to go with an inclined elevator uphill to a lug decorated with wonderful, old sinking factory boards and to the pit-train, which brings you in rapid travel back to the daylight.

A walk through Berchtesgaden...

On Friday afternoon, after getting settled into the hotel, we drove about a mile to Berchtesgaden and parked in a small lot near the historical old part of town. It is low season there now, after the end of summer but before the ski season, so crowds were not a problem at all the entire weekend. We always found a parking place quickly, and we were always seated immediately at restaurants. Except for the fact that the Eagle's Nest was closed, low season is a perfect time to go.


Here is one of the many pedestrian streets with cute shops and restaurants. On Saturday we stopped at the cafe you can see at the end of this street for an afternoon dessert and coffee.













One of the many churches in Berchtesgaden (and throughout Bavaria in general). All were in very good condition and appeared to be functioning churches (unlike churches in Prague).















There were many houses on the hillsides around Berchtesgaden. The picture doens't do justice to the colors of the homes and the very good condition they appeared to be in. Germans do know how to keep things orderly and in good condition.














Many of the buildings, many from the 1600s-1800s, had interesting things painted on them. I don't know what this style is called, but it was quite common in the town.

We're back from Berchtesgaden...

We just got back to Prague about an hour ago from our weekend visit to Germany. We lucked out by gaining an hour this morning thanks to central Europe coming off daylight saving time. (I just looked in google and it appears that the US doesn't revert to standard time until next weekend. As of 2007 it is the first weekend in November).

I'll post several items over the coming days, so now I will just give an overview. There were two bad things that happened on the trip. First, while the hotel had wi-fi, the signal was so weak that it was not usable. So I couldn't post anything during the trip, and I couldn't check email, or news either (we had 18 TV channels in German).

The second thing was that the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's retreat, was closed for the season. I didn't realize it was a seasonal thing, and it looks like we missed it by just a week.

Still, we did lots of other things, and the town of Berchtesgaden is as quaint as a postcard. The whole area is. But more on that later.

Here is our hotel. I found it on the internet, and I chose it because it had a family apartment - a separate bedroom for Kathy and I, and a living room with a foldout couch for Noah. It also had a very small kitchenette with a fridge and stove. The cost was 100 Euros per night, which was considerably cheaper than the other hotels in the area. We had to pay in cash upon arrival - something that is more standard in Europe.















Here's Noah in front of the hotel. ("Here's the Spanish Inquisition on the side of the hotel." "Gee, I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition").















Here's the view from a few yards away from the hotel. Like I said, the view was great just about everywhere. It had snowed the day before our arrival, so at elevation there was a lot of snow. In Berchtesgaden there was still snow on the roofs of buildings, but the temperature was about 50.



The Garmin performed very well. We actually disregarded it once because it directed us to leave the freeway about an hour southeast of Munich and we thought that it would be faster to stay on the freeway. 3 miles later traffic on the freeway was stopped due to construction. We apologized to Garmin and asked for a new alternate route. Garmin obliged and at the next exit took us on side roads around the construction. 15 minutes later we were back on the freeway at 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour - I just found the conversion on google and had no idea we were going that fast. I had figured we were at about 80 MPH).

More tomorrow.

Off to visit Berchtesgaden...

It's 6:30 a.m. and we're off to visit Germany for the weekend. Noah has been off school all week (the first of several week vacations throughout the year) and I took a vacation day. We are going to Berchtesgaden, in the alps along the Austrian border. Berchtesgaden is probably best known for the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's wartime retreat. It's about a 5 1/2 to 6 hour drive, but I have already loaded the route into the Garmin so I am confident that we will get there directly and without incident.


From Wikipedia:

The Kehlsteinhaus (or Eagle's Nest) was built as a 50th birthday present for Adolf Hitler. The Eagle's Nest was meant to be a retreat for Hitler and a place for him to entertain visiting dignitaries. It was commissioned by Martin Bormann, with construction proceeding over a 13-month period prior to its formal presentation to Hitler in 1939. It is situated on a ridge at the top of the Kehlstein mountain (1834 m), reached by a spectacular 6.5 km (3.9 mile) road which cost 30 million Reichsmark to build (~ 150 million euros). The last 124 metres up to the Kehlsteinhaus are served by an elevator bored inside the mountain, reached via a granite tunnel; the elevator itself is surfaced with polished brass. Construction of the mountain elevator system was had at the cost of the lives of 12 construction workers [1]. The main reception room is dominated by a fireplace of red Italian marble, presented by Mussolini. Much of the furniture was designed by Paul Laszlo.

Although the site is on the same mountain as the Berghof, Hitler rarely visited the property. It has been suggested he only visited the Kehlsteinhaus around 10 times, and most times for no more than 30 minutes. It was perhaps because of this lack of close association with Hitler, the property was saved from demolition at the end of the war. It was subsequently used by the Allies as a military command post until 1960, when it was handed back to the State of Bavaria.



We have an apartment in a family run resort called the Alpenhotel Weiherbach. It has an indoor pool and a scented hot tub (?). Noah loves the thought of playing in a pool, so we will use that as a bribe to first make him do some of the things we want. The resort also supposedly has free wi-fi (oh, what an age we live in) so I will bring the laptop and may do some blogging if the mood strikes me.