Castles in the air

On the way back to Zurich on Sunday we visited two castles near Füssen in southern Germany near the Austrian border. The first is Hohenschwangau Castle.

King Maximilian II of Bavaria built Hohenschwangau (High Swan) Castle from 1832 to 1837 and was the summer residence of the family. It is still used by family but the main rooms are open to the public every day. We were shown some very elaborately decorated living rooms and bedrooms, a piano used by Wagner when he visited and magnificent silver and gold table centrepieces gifted to the king by Bavarian titled families. It's a beautiful castle.

The second castle was Neuschwanstein Castle. Maximilan's son, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, also lived at Hohenschwangau Castle and built a new castle called Neuschwanstein (New Swan) Castle nearby. (Swans have a high symbolic significance in Bavaria.) Well actually, he half-built it - it wasn't finished when he died and as he was deeply in debt it was immediately turned into a museum. Here is a view of the new castle from the first one, and from a rest/information area just below the castle. Because Ludwig was such a fan of Wagner the second castle is deeply operatic in style.

Berchtesgaden

This is the view from our bedroom window at Berchtesgaden!

From Innsbruck we had driven further east through the alps to Berchtesgarden in the Bavarian region south of Salzburg in Germany. It's a beautiful city, the buildings intricately decorated inside and out, religious icons and shrines everywhere, cobbled streets, lots of cafes and restaurants - and the mountains all around.

The bells were ringing as we walked though the streets on Saturday evening and we watched as a silent procession of priests and alter boys (dressed in white) and about 100 people of all ages moved through the street to the church.

And the farm houses and buildings are under one roof, the house up one end and the animals the other. It would have been interesting to do a guided tour of a farm.

In the morning Glenn took us to Dokumentation Obersalzberg, a purpose-built building on the site of Hitler's country retreat that became the second base for the regime's leaders. It consists mostly of panels with information, photos, maps, and graphics explaining the Nazi period with special emphasis on the area's role in the Nazi leaders’ lives. Under the building is the huge bunker complex consisting of kilometres of tunnels and rooms and a small section has been opened to the public. Usually it is possible to also see 'Eagle's Nest', the house commissioned for Hitler's 50th birthday, but the access road was closed for roadworks the day we were there. All of the documentation is in German but we had used an English audio guide. It was an emotionally exhausting museum but well worth a visit.

Then in the afternoon we went on a guided tour of an underground rock salt mine that has been in operation since 1515. We were dressed in protective overalls, taken underground on a wooden train, treated to a sound and light show as we boated across an underground lake and (most of us, not me) slid down several long wooden slides. It was all very interesting and would be a great spot for families as well.

To complete the day we went to Königssee, a beautiful glacial lake, the third largest in Germany, and walked to a viewpoint. To maintain its clean image only rowboats, pedal boats and boats with electric motors are allowed on the lake so even though we saw boats it was very quiet, except in the street leading to the lake which is full of noisy tourist shops and tourists.