The Eagle's Nest

This morning we got up and prepared to leave Salzburg. While we were packing, Bezaubernde Jeannie (I Dream of Jeannie) was on TV. Emilie was enthralled with it, but at the moment when Jeannie's existence was on the verge of being discovered by Dr. Bellows, Emilie clapped her hands over her ears and ran around the room yelling, "Oh, no! I just can't watch! I can't stand it! Oh, no!" I never realized how suspenseful I Dream of Jeannie could be.


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We left Salzburg and in minutes were back in Germany.

We headed deeper into the Alps toward Hitler's chalet, the Eagle's Nest, located high up in the mountains.

Berchtesgaden is a beautiful spot in the mountains where Hitler had constructed a compound of 80 buildings which served as his second seat of government and planned refuge of last resort. Long before its association with Hitler, Berchtesgaden was one of the classic Romantic corners of Germany. This dramatic corner of Bavaria was steeped in legend and close to the soul of the German people. In fact, Hitler's propagandists capitalized on the Führer's love of this region to establish the notion that the former Austrian was truly a German at heart.

Almost everything in the compound, also called Obersalzberg, was destroyed by the victorious Allies (wanting to leave nothing as a magnet for future neo-Nazi pilgrims). Today you can visit the Nazi Documentation Center and learn about the rise of the Nazis, and you can tour the underground bunkers, but we were only interested in the one building that was left intact -- Kehlsteinhaus, or the Eagle's Nest, situated higher up the mountain.

From the parking lot in Obersalzberg where the compound had been, there is only one way to get up to the Eagle's Nest -- by bus, unless you want to make the long, steep trip on foot, which we didn't. The road there is only one lane, so only official Eagle's Nest buses are allowed to make the drive.

When we first arrived at the parking lot, it was cold, cloudy and then it began raining. How good would the view be and was it worth paying to go up? David said, "Let me check on bus tickets. If it's too expensive, we'll skip it. There's probably not much of a view anyway." Just a few minutes later we were on a bus making the 20-minute trip up the mountain, happy to be out of the cold rain.

With each passing minute, the rain lightened a bit and blue sky began peeking through the gray clouds.

After exiting the bus, we paused briefly for some pictures and in spite of the much nicer weather we were so happy to see, it was freezing! And Emilie and Rebecca were in shorts! What kind of parents are we?

Our trip was still not complete. We would need to walk 400 feet through a creepy marble-lined tunnel to the original brass elevator that would take us the last 400 feet up to the top of the mountain.

The chalet was a gift from the Nazi Party to Adolf Hitler for his 50th birthday in 1938 and was meant to be a retreat for Hitler and a place for him to entertain visiting dignitaries. Construction of the chalet was considered an engineering feat, including carving a 6-mile long winding road out of the side of the mountain. The Eagle's Nest cost $200,000,000 and 12 lives to construct. Hitler visited less than 20 times and usually for less than 30 minutes at a time. He was apparently afraid of heights. His mistress Eva Braun, however, often entertained her friends there.

Finally at the top. Click on the photos to get the full effect.

It was unexpectedly warm up at the top.

Edelweiss cross

The former great hall is now a restaurant.

The fireplace was a gift from Mussolini. In 1945, victorious allied soldiers chipped off countless souvenirs.

This was another one of those instances where we didn't know quite how to feel being here. The views were magnificent, but my mind kept drifting back to the Orthodox Jewish family we passed in the tunnel leading to the elevator. What had they been thinking? It was strange being a tourist in a place so strongly connected to Hitler. But then I figured that this visit, walking where he walked, having a Jewish family stroll though his $200,000,000 chalet, was like symbolically thumbing our noses at him.

As our visit came to a close and we boarded the bus to descend the mountain, angry-looking clouds rolled in, obscuring the view,and it resumed raining. We had lucked out.

Salzburg, Saltmines and Marionettes

After a quick lunch and with still a lot left on our schedule, David and I decided to divide and conquer. He left with Micaela and James to do a tour of a local saltmine and I tried to think of something to do with Emilie and Rebecca while we waited for the 5:00pm marionette show we had tickets for. David had suggested a horsedrawn carriage tour. Sounded nice and relaxing to me.

Taking in the lovely sounds of an Irish harp. I did mention that it was the Celts who first settled here, didn't I?

Back at Residenzplatz, this is a bad picture of the fountain film-Maria splashes in when she's leaving Salzburg. There was lots of construction going on, making taking pictures a bit difficult.

Getting ready for our short tour of the Altstadt

Unfortunately, our tour guide did not speak much English. Fortunately, I understood enough German for us to get by.

View of the fortress over some booths that were set up for a market of some kind

The Wilde Mann (in English Wild Man, see German isn't that tough! Ha, ha.) statue. I've had trouble finding information on this statue, but he is apparently from the early 17th century and has an interesting history. He is said to stand perfectly still all year long. Only at 12:00 on Good Fridays does he take a second to move -- turning around in a circle to "shake the sillies out," if you will, so that he can stand still another 12 months. Many Salzburgers say they have witnessed this phenomenon, while other say they have stared at him fixedly at the appointed hour and saw nary a twitch. At one time he used to converse with Salzburgers, but since he was moved from his original home where he could view the Salzach River, he is so angry that he now refuses to speak.

Bex enjoying the tour immensely. It started to pour, and I mean pour, almost as soon as our tour ended, so, with Emilie in the stroller with Bex on her lap covered with one umbrella and I lucky enough to have brought along another, we made our way toward the marionette theatre, even though we would be three hours early for the show. I just wanted to be somewhere close to the theatre while I figured out what else we could do in pouring rain.

We settled on the cold, hard inside steps of the theatre to wait out the rain. And so we sat, for two-and-a-half hours, as the downpour continued. Becca took a nap on my lap and I don't know how Emilie amused herself for over two hours, but she did. The rain never let up enough for it to make sense for us to venture outside again. Finally, it was show time.

What better show to see in Salzburg than The Sound of Music.

Detail inside the theatre

Can you guess what song Fräulein Maria is singing here?

The production was a combination of the original Broadway musical and the film. For example, the Captain, Max and Elsa the Baroness sing the Broadway song There's No Way to Stop It, which is not part of the film version. In that song, Max and Elsa argue with the Captain about the imminent Anschluss, trying to convince him that he must compromise, because it is inevitable. The Anschluss, or German takeover of Austria, was a strange moment in the production. Nazi soldiers were at first portrayed by 2-dimensional cutouts of Doberman Pinschers in Nazi uniforms. But then an actual man in a Nazi uniform appeared on the stage, sweeping up the confetti left behind from Maria and the Captain's wedding ceremony, symbolically sweeping away old Austria. By this point, your eye had adjusted to the size of the marionette stage, with the puppets in perfect proportion to it. Suddenly seeing an actual human on stage was like seeing an honest-to-goodness giant appear. There was a bit of nervous laughter from the audience.

For the encore, the marionettes performed The Lonely Goatherd and a mirror popped down, allowing us to see how the puppeteers worked their magic. And yes, the puppets puppeted other puppets.

Meanwhile, David took Micaela and James to the Berchtesgaden salt mines, which have been in operation since 1517. Salt was considered one the areas most precious resources, was even referred to as “white gold” and gave Salzburg its name.

The salt deposit in this mountain is estimated to be about 300 meters deep, and the current mine has 5 different levels. The salt is extracted by drilling a deep shaft down into depths of the mountain, pumping fresh water down the shaft to dissolve the salt-laced rock and then pumping the briny water back up to the surface to be evaporated and purified into table salt. A large cavern is eventually formed as the water dissolves more and more of the salt-laden rock. Each shaft takes about 30 years to completely process and yields over 1.300.000 m³ of salt over its lifetime.

David, Micaela and James first had to don miner’s uniforms, making them look a bit like modern-day Oompa-Loompas and were then able to ride a little train deep into the mountain.

Visitors got so see how the salt was extracted, slide down wooden rails to lower levels, and ride a raft across a subterranean salt lake. They even got to sample the salty water from they lake they had just traversed, which was pronounced "Ewwww!" by Micaela and James. They had a great time and got a souvenir sample of salt from the mine to boot!

A morning tour of Salzburg

To walk from our hotel to the old section of the city, we needed to pass through the Siegmundstor, the tunnel through Mönchsberg, one of the five mountains in Salzburg.

The tunnel let us out at the horse bath, which is featured briefly in The Sound of Music.

The medieval equivalent of today's car wash.

Collegiate Church, built in the late 17th century

There was a farmers market set up in the square in front of the church.

St. Michael victorious over a creepy demon

Entering the shopping district

On one side of the street was a Christmas store.....

..... and on the opposite side was an Easter store.

In the Residenzplatz, with the Salzburg Cathedral behind them

Mozart statue

Mozartkugeln are chocolate and marzipan-flavored candies. They have beautiful wrappings, but neither David nor I care for them.

Dressmaker shop sign

Getreidegasse, the main shopping street

Another store sign. I can't get enough of them.

Mozart's birthplace, in the middle of the busy shopping area

Bex' recognizes the name Mozart and some of his music from her Baby Einstein Mozart DVD.

Mozart began composing music at five years of age. How tragic that he died at only 35.

Americans making an effort to fit in

Dirndl sighting on the bridge over the Salzach River. Salz is the German word for salt, which was transported down this river from the nearby saltmines for centuries. Ach is an old Celtic word for river. The Celts were the first settlers in the area. Our Sound of Music tour guide told us that's why Austrians tend to have sunnier personalities than other German-speaking peoples.

The Hohensalzburg Fortress, one of the largest medieval castles in Europe, was never really used. Construction started in 1077 on the Festungsberg hill and the fortress was so foreboding, nobody attacked the town for a thousand years. The city was never taken by force, but when Napoleon stopped by, Sazburg wisely surrendered.