Germany trip #6: Berchtesgaden

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Berchtesgaden is a village on Königsee, a beautiful Alpine lake.  'Beautiful' doesn't quite cover it, really.  It's stunning.  The water is very clean, and they keep it that way by not allowing gasoline-powered anything on the lake.  This made for a lovely peaceful atmosphere as people rowed and paddled, but didn't have jetskis or powerboats.  The ferries are all electric, which would be hard to tell if you didn't know; they are surprisingly powerful.  Königsee is a long lake, and the ferry took us most of the way along (dedicated hikers head all the way to the other end) to an area with a little church and some meadow/forest land.




Halfway there, though, we stopped in the middle of the lake near a flat cliff, and one of the boatmen played a trumpet, which echoed beautifully from the rocks and let him play a duet with himself.


We had a short devotional in the church, and then wandered around for a while.  Mom and I walked along the shore and into the forest a little way, and we found quite a few wildflowers that were, of course, new to us.  We could recognize the buttercups and clover, but not much else.





Lookin' doofy in a meadow! :)

The ferry took us back again -- after a long wait* -- and we walked along the lakeshore and across a covered bridge to our restaurant, which served us fresh (and whole) trout from the lake.  It was delicious. 


The brightly sunny day was giving way to clouds gathering around the tops of the mountains, but quite a few of us didn't want to miss the chance to go up to the Eagle's Nest, even if it was kind of late in the day and cloudy.  I was one of them.  So we took our bus up into the mountains, and got on another bus -- this one a shuttle specially designed for the steep road -- that took us very high up on the mountain!  Then you walk through a tunnel into the mountain, and take a remarkably fancy elevator up to the actual Eagle's Nest.

map of the mountain


The tunnel to the elevator



There's a stunning 2,000m view behind that cloud!





The restaurant's sign


The great brass elevator?

The buildings that are left are from the mid-1930s.  Hitler had an entire estate where he would host eminent guests, but that is all gone; it was bombed and then demolished, since they don't like to have anything that could be a shrine.  Only the restaurant remains, but it is visibly a 1930s construction, with historical photos and explanations in a hall to the side.  The view must be incredible on a clear day, but all we could see was the inside of a cloud.  I'm not sure anybody minded too much; it would have been great to see the view, but we were all pretty excited just to be there.  

There are a lot of tunnels underneath the buildings, but we didn't have a chance to see those; we barely had time to look around, even without the views.  I would really like to go through the whole (4-hour!) tour someday.  There seems to have been some idea that Hitler would be able to reign from his mountain lair (in the style of a James Bond villain, I guess?), but at the same time, Hitler doesn't seem to have liked the place too much.  He worried that the elevator mechanism would be struck by lightning, and that the mountaintop location was too vulnerable.  


On the way down

An attempt at a view from a moving bus
halfway down the mountain

It took a while to get all of us back down the mountain and on the road to our pension.  On the way home, a fairly nasty thunderstorm hit the area and we could feel the winds and rain shoving our bus around.  But Adrian, our wonderful bus driver, was a very skilled driver and always took good care of us.  Hooray for Adrian!

Mystery wildflower

*During the wait, a cute little green beetle hung out on my shoulder and the fellow behind me pointed it out.  We took a picture and my mom said I ought to send it to 'T' for identification.  I explained to the guy that my friend's daughter is an entomologist, and he said casually, "Oh yeah, I know T."  I thought he was joking, but he wasn't.  He'd been her boss when she worked at a butterfly sanctuary.  This is not the only small world connection we made with the people in our group, and there were only about 50 of them for Pete's sake.

T did indeed identify my little buddy. 
He's a Hoplia argentea.  The German name
seems to be Silberkäfer.


Comments

  1. Jinjer-The Intrepid AngelenoJuly 8, 2022 at 6:30 PM

    WOW!!!! That is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen pictures of!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JeanJuly 9, 2022 at 10:06 PM

      It was stunning! It seemed like every day we went to a new, incredibly beautiful Alpine lake.

      Delete

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