The Hills Are Alive (And So Is Hitler's Eagle's Nest)

Austria + Germany  |  Salzburg + Berchtesgaden + Rothenburg + Munich  |  October 2011 

I had a cold going into Salzburg. I'd felt it coming the day before we left, dosed myself on Zicam, thought I'd won that particular battle on Saturday and Sunday, and woke up in Mittenwald knowing I had lost. Very sniffly. Sneezing constantly. Not slowing down even slightly.

We had a wonderful breakfast at our Mittenwald guesthouse, where the owner brought out soft-boiled eggs wearing tiny knitted covers: Matt's was a ski hat and mine was a chicken. I am telling you this because it was the most charming thing and deserves to be in a permanent record somewhere. We spent a pleasant morning walking the town, which is quintessentially the German village of your imagination: neat shops, flower boxes, cappuccinos outside in the cool air. The pharmacy was a highlight of the day from a purely personal health standpoint.

The drive to Salzburg was mostly Autobahn through Austria, beautiful the whole way. Matt had figured out the in-car GPS by this point, which worked better than the Garmin they'd given us because the Garmin narrated every instruction and constantly announced "recalculating" in a tone that I would equate to nails on a chalkbord. We turned on the radio for the drive and discovered that Austria has a profound love of Elton John and the Lion King soundtrack. Both were on multiple stations multiple times in one trip. Also: "Born to Run" covered in German. Go Jersey.

Salzburg is smaller than we expected. Beautiful but compact. The big fortress on the hill dates to the 1400s and offers views that justify the climb. We found a small outdoor cafe at the top with apple strudel and a view of the Austrian countryside that made the steep climb worthwhile.

Day two in Salzburg was the Sound of Music tour, which I will defend to anyone. We rewatched the movie before leaving so we'd have context, and on the bus our guide was a genuinely wonderful older man who'd lived in Boston for ten years, which explained his impeccable English. He had a radio broadcaster's voice and a laugh that made you laugh too. We saw the mansion used as the grounds, drove past the lake where Captain Von Trapp finds the children in the trees, visited the gazebo where "I am sixteen going on seventeen" was filmed, and drove out through the Lake District to the church in Mondsee where the wedding scene was filmed. The bus played the soundtrack the whole way and yes, everyone sang. Every person on that bus sang. Including Matt.

The Mirabelle Gardens where the Do Re Mi scene was filmed are just across the street from old town. Very pretty gardens, very much what they look like in the movie. We felt obligated to also visit the Mozart museum nearby since Salzburg is his birthplace and all. We were pretty disappointed for the twenty dollars. The only thing worth seeing was an original Mozart piano, which was astonishingly, amusingly tiny.

We ended the Salzburg evenings at the Augustiner Braustubul, a beer garden with indoor food stalls selling rotisserie chickens and traditional Bavarian fare. You pick what you want from the stalls, carry your tray outside, and rinse your ceramic stein with water at the tap before they fill it. We had bratwurst, two kinds of kielbasa including one filled with cheese, and a giant pretzel. Cold beer, outdoor seating, the day cooling off around us. This is exactly what we wanted Germany and Austria to feel like.

After Salzburg: Berchtesgaden, thirty minutes away and a completely different world. The Alps arrive immediately as you leave the city and they do not stop.

We had planned to stop at the Steigl Brewery on the way out of Salzburg, and we did. They opened at ten and we were there eager and waiting. Outdoor seating, gift shop, a hundred dollars on souvenirs because we love zee beer and felt no shame about it. We sat outside with a wheat beer for Matt and a grapefruit Radler for me at ten-thirty in the morning. I say, “When in Germany…”

Hotel Zum Turken in Obersalzberg. This is a hotel with a history. An 80-year-old woman named Ingrid Scharfenberg runs it, the same family that has owned it since her grandfather purchased it in 1911. The guesthouse was well-known and had famous guests. In 1933, Martin Bormann, Hitler's third-in-command, visited repeatedly trying to purchase it. Her grandfather declined. So the Nazis did what the Nazis did: forced the sale at an insultingly low price and sent her grandfather to Dachau, where he died a year later. The SS used it as their Obersalzberg headquarters. In 1945, American bombs hit the property. The Allied Forces held it until 1947. In 1951, the decision was made to demolish all Third Reich structures in the area, including Hitler's Berghof home next door. At the last moment, Zum Turken was spared and sold back to Ingrid's mother.

Walking in is a time warp. Large skeleton keys. Matt noted it was the first place he'd ever stayed where you can genuinely peep through the keyhole of your room. Ingrid is five feet tall at best, with perfect English, and greeted us warmly and told us to treat the place like home.

The hotel sits above part of the Nazi bunker system, and Ingrid still mans the entrance herself. She gave us maps, oriented us to the area, and we descended a spiral staircase into the bunkers. Long concrete corridors, metal clips on the walls where electrical wiring was run, machine gun shelters. The tunnel that once led to Hitler's Berghof has been bricked off, but you can see where it went. It is simultaneously fascinating and deeply strange and you feel both things at once the entire time you're down there.

We walked to where the Berghof once stood. Only the foundation wall remains, built into the hillside. The views from that spot are extraordinary. This is why Hitler spent a third of his time here: the position, the seclusion, the mountains. Our room balcony had the exact same view as the Berghof and looked down on the old driveway. Matt noted that at least we both had good taste in views. I am choosing to take this at face value.

A short trail leads to the Documentation Center, which is probably the only museum in Germany dedicated to the full Nazi history: Hitler's rise, the war, the defeat, all of it with a comprehensive audio guide. It sits above an additional set of bunkers, much larger than the ones under Zum Turken. You could drive a vehicle through most of these tunnels.

We asked at the bus ticket station about the employee bus up to the Eagle's Nest that Ingrid had mentioned. The ticket agent seemed to be saying "no no," which turned out to be "snow snow" because there was snow forecast and NO buses would run the next day. The Eagle's Nest sits at 6,000 feet and it was 72 degrees in town at that moment. We caught the last bus up that afternoon.

The Eagle's Nest was a gift from the Nazi state to Hitler for his fiftieth birthday, reached by a four-mile road that goes virtually straight up with your ears popping the entire way, then an elevator lined in brass to the very top. It's a restaurant now but completely original inside, old photographs showing it looking almost identical to today. Standing in that space with the Alps spread out in every direction below you and knowing its history is a specific and strange experience.

That evening on our little balcony at Zum Turken: cold Steigl beers, the sun going down behind the most magnificent mountains I'd ever seen, the valley and town below, the green hills. Most people's paradise is a beach, or somewhere tropical. Mine is this: an Alpine view at dusk with good beer and the person you love most. We will never forget it.

Rain and snow on the mountains the next day, which meant the Eagle's Nest was indeed closed, and we were glad we'd gone up the evening before. We drove through Berchtesgaden National Park, stopped at adorable little towns, and Matt extracted a Sound of Music twirl from me on a mountain despite the cold. The highlight was a short boat cruise on Konigsee Lake, a mountain lake surrounded by walls of rock. The boat captain cut the engine halfway up and played trumpet so you could hear the echo against the rock walls come back across the water. That was pretty special.

From Berchtesgaden we drove four hours through a mix of heavy wet snow and construction to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We arrived at one-thirty, checked into our hotel directly across from the main square, walked outside for twenty minutes, and immediately cancelled our Munich hotel reservation for the following night.

Rothenburg is a completely walled medieval city dating to the 1100s. Many buildings from the 1400s. Some wooden city gates still original from the 1500s. Cobblestone streets in every direction. You can walk anywhere and eventually find your way back because the wall means there's a limit to how lost you can get. It is storybook in the most literal sense of the word, and we spent two full days just wandering and exploring and eating and walking the top of the wall.

The Night Watchman tour on our first evening was perfect. The guide sounded like he had walked directly out of Monty Python, was both informative and consistently funny, and did a dramatic reading of local medieval history that made a genuinely hilarious evening out of plague mortality statistics. This is not easy to do.

Munich was our last stop before the airport. Hofbrauhaus for lunch, founded in 1589 by the Duke of Bavaria: huge wooden tables you share with strangers, years of carved names in the wood, liter beers, pretzels the size of your head, and a band playing traditional music. We swayed and bobbed our heads and ate our last sausages and sauerkraut and didn't want to leave. Then old town, a brief hop-on hop-off bus until it made us too sleepy to continue, then Hofbrauhaus again for dinner. Germany was everything we hoped it would be and we already want to go back.

A few German observations that belong on the record: Germans take walking sticks seriously. Not just for hiking. In towns. On flat roads. Both hands. Everywhere. The Autobahn left-lane etiquette is miraculous: people actually move over when faster cars approach and the whole thing flows like it was choreographed. Beds in Germany have no top sheets, just an enormous poofy duvet, which is wonderful except when your feet poke out the bottom. Beer is always the local variety wherever you are. There is no national brand loyalty. You drink whatever is made near where you're sitting. This is an excellent system.

The best moments were Matt and I breaking spontaneously into Edelweiss or a Sound of Music number at random moments in the car. This happened more times than I can count and I regret nothing.

Red Square to the Alps: Moscow, Dachau, and a Fairytale Castle

Russia + Germany   |  October 2011  | 

We flew to Germany via Moscow, partly for the routing and partly because spending a day in Red Square seemed like exactly the kind of thing we do. We flew Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, and I want to describe the flight attendants: matching uniforms in bright orange, high heels, coordinating scarves, and cute little hats bobby-pinned to their heads. It was exactly like the PanAm TV show from that era except in orange. Very 1960s. Very fabulous.

We landed in Moscow around one in the afternoon, cleared passport control without issues, and met our day guide Irina, who pronounced her name exactly like mine but with an "a" on the end. She was a middle school history teacher who guided on weekends. Quiet but extraordinarily informative. She took us by express train into the city, then the metro to Red Square.

Entering Red Square and seeing St. Basil's Cathedral for the first time is one of those moments where Matt and I just looked at each other and said: Can you believe we're actually here? Red Square doesn't disappoint. The Kremlin on one side, the History Museum on another, St. Basil's at the far end, the specific quality of the air in that enormous open space that makes the whole thing feel like theater. Moscow was much more European and much more modern than we'd expected, which almost every city outside of the US turns out to be.

The Kremlin means "fortress" and inside it there are presidential administrative offices, three cathedrals, two churches, all original. The interiors are beautiful. Napoleon used them as horse stables and a winery, which the Russians have not forgotten.

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior is their national cathedral, reconstructed in 1991 after Stalin had the original blown up in 1931 because he felt it was too close to the Kremlin and religion should be kept at a distance. The rebuilt interior is beautiful. Some interesting facts Irina shared: Russian Orthodox churches have no sculptures, only icons. The congregation stands for the entire service, no pews. No musical instruments, only choirs.

Irina took us through several different metro stations on our way back to the airport, each one architecturally distinct, several featuring extraordinary mosaics and marble. The Moscow metro is genuinely one of the more beautiful transit systems in the world and almost no one outside Russia seems to know this.

Our six hours in Moscow were up. The flight to Munich that followed was one of the smoothest landings we've experienced. People applauded when we touched down. Matt got us a rental car for the rest of the trip: a Peugeot 508 with a full glass sunroof, which we were delighted by. The navigation system was entirely in German, and after fifteen minutes of Matt pressing every button in the car while I paged through an equally German owner's manual, we went back inside and asked for a portable unit.

The car itself was a manual, because automatic rentals in Europe are essentially impossible to find and cost double when you do. This presented no problem until Matt tried to reverse in a parking lot to correct a missed turn and the car went forward. He tried again. Forward. He tried lifting as he shifted. Lurch forward. Ten more minutes with the owner's manual revealed that the Peugeot's reverse requires you to lift a small inset ring under the shift knob before shifting. This is information that would have been helpful earlier. It was genuinely very funny and we made it to the hotel by midnight.

The first full day in Germany began at Dachau. We drove through the most pristine countryside to get there: lush green hills, farmland, barns, picture-perfect towns, no dilapidated buildings, no broken-down vehicles, the kind of orderliness that makes you feel you're driving through a film set. The contrast with where we were going was not lost on us.

The morning was foggy, which was the right weather for Dachau. Not the cheerful blue-sky morning you'd want for most sightseeing. The fog gave the site a quiet, surreal focus. Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp, established in 1933, and all subsequent camps were modeled on it. The death toll of 32,000 recorded deaths is lower than Auschwitz but the significance is in what it represents: the prototype. The original.

The bunkers have been reconstructed, two of them, so you can look inside and see the wooden box bunks stacked up. Each bunker was designed for two hundred people. Most held over two thousand. The crematorium and gas chambers are original. They eventually built a second one because the first couldn't keep up with the volume of bodies arriving from other camps. We spent a couple of hours walking the grounds and the museum. These places do something to you that is hard to name and harder to shake.

Then we drove toward Neuschwanstein.

Within ten minutes of leaving Dachau's surrounding area we were back in alpine Germany and the contrast was absolute. The mountains appeared. The landscape turned green and impossible. Matt settled into the Autobahn with what I can only describe as joy, driving at whatever speed he chose and shouting random German words out the window to express excitement. The drive took an hour and a half and it was the most beautiful driving we've done anywhere. Perfectly maintained countryside the entire way. Then the castle appeared at the top of the mountain with the Alps rising behind it.

We stayed at Villa Jagerhouse, which sits directly between the two castles, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. Our room had a view of Hohenschwangau from the window. At a local restaurant with a full view of both castles, we had our first proper German meal of the trip: beer, pretzel, and sausage. The pretzel alone was worth the flight. Enormous, crunchy on the outside, perfectly soft inside, nothing like what gets sold as a pretzel at home. I said at the time that it reminded me of the first real bagel I had on the East Coast after years of eating the dense hockey-puck version on the West Coast. Pretzels have a correct form and Germany knows what it is.

Matt's last-minute decision to catch the final bus up to Neuschwanstein for sunset turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. The light on the mountains. The castle above. Perfect in a way you want to hold onto.

Dinner that evening included pork knuckle with dumpling and sauerkraut for me and deer with spaetzle and Brussels sprouts for Matt. A nice bath in the hotel's excellent tub. I read the Hunger Games until I remembered Germany came first.

Tour of both castles the next day: Hohenschwangau first, where King Ludwig II grew up and watched Neuschwanstein being built across the valley. Then Neuschwanstein itself, which is the castle Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle is directly modeled after. Ludwig lived in it for only 172 days. He was arrested there, declared unfit to rule, and found dead by a lake outside Munich the following day under circumstances that have never been explained. The interior was only thirty percent completed when construction stopped. Within six weeks of his death people were paying to tour it. Our Rick Steves guide called the interior underwhelming compared to Hohenschwangau. Rick Steves was wrong. The level of detail in every finished room, the paintings and woodwork and mosaic floors, was extraordinary. No photos allowed inside either castle, which is a rule that exists and is enforced and which made us sad.

We hiked up to the St. Mary's Bridge both evenings for photos from the best vantage point. People leave engraved locks on the fence there, names joined together. Romance at its best. On the walk back down we stopped for a liter of beer, which is the size of Matt's head. I am not exaggerating.

From the castle we drove to Mittenwald, deep in the Alps, through Oberammergau and the most beautiful stretch of road we'd driven yet. The guesthouse we stayed at was run by a warm and friendly woman who gave us a dinner recommendation with a specific endorsement: a chef who had received stars at his previous restaurant in another town had moved to Mittenwald, opening without stars, and she said his cooking was top notch. She was completely right. The restaurant was cozy and they brought us Prosecco to start. The chef came out and gently asked if we spoke any German. We did not. He tried to describe the tasting menu in basic English. We said "four courses, yes please" and let him do his thing. Every course was extraordinary. We took a walk through the lit-up town after dinner in the crisp mountain air before coming back to sleep.