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Chiemsee/Salzburg
June 9-12, 2003

Well once again we hit the road (without Gordon). This time we took a trip with my friend Jennifer Brewster and her 3 kids (Hannah 4 ½, Lily 3 and Margaret 16 mos). We left Monday morning and after getting the car loaded up with luggage, food and cooler made pretty good time down south. Our destination was the Armed Forces Recreation Center (AFRC) on Lake Chiemsee . We had originally (and briefly) considered camping at the facilities there, but then reason and the prospect of an air conditioned hotel room won out. We would later find out that there was no air conditioning. I assumed that as an American resort facility it would have A/C. Alas it was not to be. (It's a German thing- it isn't hot enough, for long enough, over here to warrant installing A/C)

Anyway, after driving for about 4 hours we arrived and checked in. We got two adjoining rooms which was great, except they were actually more like closets than rooms. But the ice machine was right around the corner and they had fans in the rooms which we turned on full blast to circulate the warm air as much as possible. Unfortunately, the heater in Jennifer's bathroom got tuned on and then Anabelle stepped on the knob (which was at foot level) and broke it off! She called the front desk and she assured us it would be fixed. That taken care of, we made some sandwiches for lunch and headed out to the hotel boat dock to catch the boat to Herrenchiemsee Island .

A little background…. mad King Ludwig built several castles around Bavaria . We visited Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau last November when Gordon's mom was visiting. This one was the last one he was having built. It is modeled after the Palace of Versailles and was never finished because he ran out of money. He was found drowned in a lake not too long after.

Anyway, the boat ride was pleasant and took almost a half hour. We had a pre set time for our English speaking tour which meant we docked and had about 15 minutes to make the 20-minute-uphill-with six-children-walk to the Schloss. Needless to say we were panting a little when we got there! They did have horse and carriages which we intended to take to get up to the castle, but there were none available. Later we discovered there are really only about 2 carriages that make the trip up and back.

Anyway, the castle itself was very beautiful and MUCH larger than Ludwig's other two that we had seen. It is kind of funny, when you think about a castle you imagine it to be huge and foreboding. Maybe a little mysterious. While it is true there are huge castle all over Europe , I have been surprised and a little disappointed to find many of the castles are quite small. Like not larger than a mansion kind of small. In any case, Herrenchiemsee is pretty large and the interior was very pretty. It was easy to see how Ludwig ran out of money when he spent (today's equivalent) of one million Euro on just one chandelier!

There was a Hall of Mirrors that was glass and crystal and mirrors. It had chandeliers filled with over 2000 candles that would take servants 25 minutes to light them all. There was also a gigantic bathtub that took eight hours to fill (no the tub was not in the Hall!). On the outside there two beautiful black fountains flanking the front drive. Farther out were manicured gardens and another huge fountain. It was all very pretty and the kids thought it was neat. The tour was (thankfully) quite short and the girls and Ben did not lose interest. Margaret however was being quite talkative in her 16 month old way, and it echoed unmercifully as the tour guide tried to narrate in his thickly accented English!

We took the boat back and after washing the kids up in our rooms headed for the town of Prien , about one exit north. We found a restaurant there that had some really good food (very LARGE portions). My kids and I shared two meals- kase spaetzel (noodles with cheese and bacon and fried onions- very good) and some kind of Swabian specialty- sliced pork roast in a creamy mushroom and vegetable sauce with spaetzel noodles. We could not finish either of them even with the Brewsters helping.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was after 8 o'clock . Not so far past bedtime for my kids, but for Jennifer's little ones who go to bed between 6 and 7- it was definitely too late. We agreed to try a different plan the next day- no more late dinners.

We returned to the hotel to find the heat still cranking in Jennifer's bathroom. Plus our rooms faced the west so we were getting the last visages of sunlight. Her room was really, really hot.. We called again and they said they would come up right away.

We planned to spend the next day in Salzburg . All the kids love the movie ”the Sound of Music”, (Jennifer's kids call it the “hills and the wives”… you know instead of “the hills are alive..”) Anyway, we decided against an actual tour since the shortest one was four hours long and instead planned to do a self tour. This would allow us to hit some of the things we knew they would recognize from the film. Yes, I know Salzburg is the birthplace of Mozart, but seriously… with kids?

Anyway, on Monday night I had discovered that my alarm clock was not working correctly so called the front desk to get the time to reset it. Apparently it still wasn't working right the next day, because evidently I got everyone up an hour earlier than intended. This turned out ok though as we were on the road to Salzburg by 8a.m. Oh, and no, they never showed up to fix the heater in Jennifer's bathroom.

We found a place to park (probably because it was so early) and first walked through the Mozart Platz to see the statue of Salzburg 's native son. It just happened to be across from the tourist info center and enroute to our next stop. The Residence. In front of the Residence is the fountain that Maria passes while singing “I have Confidence” as she catches a bus to the von Trapp home. We detoured down the next street and strolled through the market where the kids drooled over all the fruit- specifically the cherries and strawberries. We ix-nayed the cherries as I did not think it appropriate for the kids to be spitting cherry pits all over the streets of downtown Salzburg.

We walked around and eventually found Toscaninihof- the Festspielhaus. This you would recognize as the stage with all the archways above, behind and around. It was here that the (movie) von Trapp's sang their concert right before their escape. (The real von Trapps did not flee Austria in the manner depicted in the movie. They actually took a train to Switzerland , were not chased by the Nazi's and did not hike through the Alps singing Edelweiss WHICH by the way is NOT the national song of Austria , rather a song composed by Rogers and Hammerstein for the movie!) Anyway, it was after their “escape” that Hitler closed the Austrian border. Have I shattered all your romantic illusions about the von Trapp family yet? Sorry!

Anyway, back to the Festspielhaus…. when we walked into the platz all we saw was the entrance to a parking garage directly in front of us. Just as we were about to turn back we decided to follow a side entrance that looked like the pedestrian entrance to the garage. Well, it turns out the side entrance led us directly to the Festpielhaus!

It was covered top to bottom with scaffolding as it was being renovated, but we took photos anyway. After that we saw on our map something called the Pferdschwemme. Pferd is German for horse so, not knowing what it was, we headed in that direction to check it out.

It turned out to be a huge horse fountain and behind it a long row of gigantic horse murals. The kids thought it was great, and although I ran into the stone banister surrounding the fountain and bruised my hip, thus crippling me for life (or at least the rest of the trip); I thought it was pretty cool too. What we later found out, (Friday morning when we returned home and watched “the Sound of Music” again) that the Pferdswemme is in the movie. We had never noticed it before. It is in the scene where they are traipsing about Salzburg learning to sing “Do, re, mi.” I think before the carriage ride. So we saw things we did not even realize were in the movie!

Well, after that we walked (I limped) to St. Peter's. We stopped briefly in the Franziskanerkirch (Franciscan church) and then passed the Dom. We did not go inside as you had to pay and it was a museum tour and you may remember from past narratives about kids and museums filled with religious relics.

Finally we came to St. Peter's. Off to the side is a cemetery. The gated graves in the cemetery are where the (movie) von Trapp's hide from the Nazi's at the end of the movie.

I am pretty sure the actual scene was filmed from a replica set built in Hollywood and not here. Overlooking the cemetery is a chapel built literally into the side of the mountain. Inside the chapel you pay a Euro and can climb some very steep stone stairs up to the catacombs. I took all the kids and left Jennifer at the bottom with Margaret. It was nice and dark and cool and the kids thought it was deliciously creepy. Except Lily who got freaked out by Emily and Ben talking about ghosts and dead bodies and started to cry. Actually I think she was afraid to walk back down the steep stairs, so I ended up carrying her down.

When I got there Jennifer was talking to an elderly Belgian couple who in their limited English, sparse German and vigorous gestures, we learned were on a world tour. The man was quite funny and amused us with his interpretation of President Bush as being a long armed cowboy with a swagger. It's funny how people view our president. I think he meant cowboy in the sense that he shoots from the hip as opposed to the fact that he is from Texas , wears boots and owns cows.

After that we planned to take the funicular (train) up the mountain that towers over the city. On the top of this mountain is the Schloss Hohensalzburg. Somehow as we trudged along with the kids, we missed the HUGE sign that said schlossbahn (castle train) and continued trudging up the steep city street. About a third of the way up we paused and found out from a friendly native that we had missed the train station and it was quite a climb the remaining way up. We decided that we were on the right path to make it to the Convent at Nonnberg- which was where Maria actually taught. (In truth she was sent to be a tutor to one of the von Trapp girls, also named Maria, who had been ill. Oh, and the eldest child was in fact a boy, Rupert I believe, not Lisle. All the children were given new names in the movie)

Ok, I digress yet again. We found the Convent with its distinctive red roof and the entrance gate which looked like the same one in the movie. We made all the kids hang on the gate and call for Fraulein Maria. It was pretty funny. The inside of the church was quite pretty and is where the real Maria and Capt. Von Trapp were actually married. They were having a funeral in it now and the body was laid out. As we started back down the hill Ben and Lily suddenly announced they had to go potty. I directed Ben off the path (street) to a dumpster to pee. Hey, he's a boy and he can be discreet. Well, Lily was about to go in her pants so Jennifer took her over to the dumpster so she could go too. This would have been fine except, a) we really were just outside the convent gates, 2. There was no other path we or anyone else could take and 3. A large group of Japanese tourists happened to be leaving the convent at that point. The rest of us tried to arrange ourselves in front of Lily and I pulled open the map to try and hide the proceedings.

Ok, so you may be wondering at this point, what's the big deal? Well, truthfully it was the side of the street, and (those of you with kids will totally understand this, while those of you without will just be grossed out), Lily suddenly decided she had to poop. So as I am shaking with laughter, convinced the Japanese tourists will be able to smell what was going on. (I didn't dare turn around to see how obvious it looked) All I could think was the “How do you solve problem like Maria song” from the movie, except instead of the words “she's really not an asset to the abbey” the words going thru my head instead were “you really shouldn't poop outside the aaabbeey !) What can you do though? Tell a 3 year old to stop?

After that we walked all the way back down the hill and took the train up. The view of the city was quite spectacular. We planned to take a special route back down to the city, called “the hills are alive” walk. But we couldn't find the correct path because it was not marked (the Austrians think the tourists are crazy for being so interested in the Sound of Music- they could care less) so after wandering around the Schloss for a while we bribed them with ice cream and decided to find a place to eat. By this time Margaret and Anabelle were asleep. We found a pizzeria that served us cold glasses of dirty water and pizza that was actually pretty good. And we didn't have to leave one of the kids in order to pay for the meal. A definite bonus.

After that we piled everyone into the car, paid our 20 Euro for parking and headed for Mirabell Gardens . We thought that this was where the gazebo was (as seen in the song “16 going on 17”…). In the ten minutes or so it took us to find the gardens and park, Lily had joined Anabelle and Margaret in nappy land. She wasn't too happy about being woken up. Actually none of them were. Anabelle fell back asleep in the stroller and Jennifer stayed with Margaret and Lily on a bench while I walked around with Ben, Emily and Hannah. The gardens were really beautiful and we ended up looping around the outside portion and getting Jennifer and Lily who at that point was interested in playing on the branches of a huge tree.

The Mirabell Gardens it seems were featured in the “Do, re, mi” song. The kids sat on the unicorn statues which are situated at one end of the gardens, and we strolled through the ivy covered tunnel that they ran through in the movie to the other end where all the statues were. As we looped our way around to find our way back to the car, we crossed a bridge into the Dwarf garden, which had charming little statues of dwarves in various poses (also featured in the movie). We never found the gazebo and later discovered that the gazebo was in fact at the Hellbrun gardens. We did not end up making it there this time around.

We also did not see the lake where the opening scene is filmed, nor Mondsee, where is where the cathedral where they marry (in the movie) is located. Also there are two houses used in the movie for the outside shots of the von Trapp family house, one for the front and one for the back, and somewhere is the REAL von Trapp family house. SO we have a lot of things to go back in see, the least of which is the “hills and the wives” The kids really wanted to find a mountain to spin and sing on so we need to go back and find one!!

That night we got back to the hotel, exhausted and realized the next day required better planning. We fell into be without eating much- just a few pieces of cheese and some fruit.

The next day was Wednesday and we were going to Berchtesgaden to see Hitler's Eagles nest. The Obersalzberg/Berchtesgaden area was rebuilt by Hitler as his government headquarters. The Eagle's Nest was a gift from the Nazi party to Hitler for his 50 th birthday and was built at a cost of over 30 million Reichsmark.

We left early (although not as early as the previous day!) We drove to Berchtesgaden and followed the signs to Kehlstein, the Eagles Nest. First you drive halfway up the mountain and park. Then you buy your tickets and get in a bus that takes you up a very steep, winding, switchback road. It's kind of scary (for me anyway as I hate heights) to look out the bus window and see, well nothing, except the base of the mountain, far, far below. A few times I had to look away. Anyway at the top you have your ticket stamped with the time you wish to go back down. We arrived about 11am so we decided to take the 1pm bus back, figuring 2 hours would be enough time.

First you enter the mountain through a huge set of wooden doors. Then you must walk down a long tunnel that is dimly lit by yellow lights in a line straight down the center of the tunnel roof.

.The floor is wet and the block walls weep also, but the most noticeable thing is the chill. It is so cold in the tunnel, that literally by the time you are 10 feet in, you feel cold. I am sure the dampness is a contributing factor.

At the end of the tunnel you enter a room at which the end of it is the elevator. It has a big wooden door but the inside the elevator it is all brass. It is still fairly impressive, so I can imagine what it must have looked like when the elevator was new.

At the top you exit the elevator and walk straight down a hallway past the dining room (which was once… the dining room and is adjacent to the conference/reception hall.) You continue right outside to the terrace which is quite impressive. You can leave the terrace and walk a stony path up toward the “peak” of the mountain. The terrace now serves as seating for the restaurant also. For those of you who watched HBO's “Band of Brothers”, (and if you have not seen it you should- it is amazing), the entrance hall that you see in the movie and the terrace with the arches where you see them lounging and drinking Hitler's wine is off limits unless you take a guided tour, so as not to disturb the diners in the dining room. I was actually surprised at how small the whole facility was- I expected it to be bigger- and the building itself was not as pretty as I expected it to be. Granted, the original furnishings etc are gone, but the dining room remains much as it was then, minus the big tables and with the addition of smaller, intimate one.

Anyway, after we hiked around a bit we decided to eat lunch- part of our “feed the kids early “ plan. Unfortunately it was by that time after noon and we realized we would never be able to eat in the short amount of time we had left before we had to go down and catch our bus. We decided to let them get ice cream and they split a couple of banana splits while Jennifer and I ate apfelkuchen (apple cake).

The ride down the mountain was even less enjoyable, because while the bus only went about 25 mph on the way up, it went down MUCH faster and as we whipped around those hairpin switchbacks, I thought of how easy it would be to just fling ourselves off the side of the mountain and tumble to our deaths. In my opinion, the driver really needed to be riding the brake the entire way.

Once we got back to the car we drove back down to the town to find a place to eat. We ordered our food, but the kids were not overly hungry (probably form the ice cream) and the woman who took our order did not comprehend that I ordered two plates of bratwurst and kraut and apparently thought all four of us were going to eat off the one plate. Jennifer ha some extra food though, probably due to her "less than hungry children", so she shared with us.

After that we drove to Lake Konigsee , an alpine lake which is really quite beautiful. The only problem I had was that it was so touristy! I mean it really almost ruined the entire experience for me. Everywhere you go in Europe you are bound to find little touristy shops and booths that sell the usual junk and souvenirs- but here the entire lakeside was lined with them.

Anyway after that we drove back to the hotel and after feeding the kids a bit we called it a night.

Thursday was our last morning and we had decided to eat breakfast in the hotel dining room. Now if I haven't mentioned before, the resort is scheduled to close and be turned back over to the Germans in September. The Chiemsee resort was actually built on Hitler's orders as an autobahn rest stop. (FYI and beside the point, did you know that the autobahns were also built on Hitler's orders to facilitate the movement of his troops?)

OK, well I think because they are closing, they are a little more lax in their service then they might have otherwise been. The hotel service wasn't bad, but no one offered any information unless you specifically asked and gave details. Point in case- the breakfast buffet. We were never told anything about it or how much it cost and we didn't ask figuring it was probably pretty expensive as most hotel meals are. (plus I was fresh off that Holland trip where they wanted my first born child, a pint of blood and my left leg for payment)

Well, it wasn't expensive. In fact it was so inexpensive (remember most of the kids were free too) that we were kicking ourselves for eating cereal in our room for the whole week when we could have been eating or fill at a really great breakfast buffet. Well, you win some and you lose some.

We checked out and loaded up the car and then sat there in the air conditioning with the car running trying to decide where to go that morning. We decided to head home and stop at a Nutcracker factory near Ulm , about the halfway point.

The drive home started out well, until we missed the turnoff to take 99, which is the autobahn that routes you around Munich . Now we were stuck driving through Munich , quite aimlessly I might add, looking for the connection to A8 (Autobahn 8). This took over an hour. Then as we finally burst forth from the city limits BAM! We hit a stau. Now by this point I am about to pee on myself (two cups of coffee and a juice- at breakfast-way to go Stef!) Finally we get though and after about 5 miles we see a BP gas station. We stop to gas up and (pee) and as I am pumping the gas I suddenly notice traffic slowing down again. What? Not another stau! I figured we couldn't be too far behind it as it formed while we were stopped. Sure enough it was an overturned tractor trailer. We got through it fairly quickly and headed for Ulm .

We finally arrived in the village where the Nutcracker factory was located. After driving around looking at the stadt (city) maps for the street we found it! It was really just a very small shop that had ornaments, smokers and nutcrackers but we bought a few things as really decent prices. After that we headed to a playground that the sales girl told us about and let the kids eat lunch and run around a little. So that was about it. We got home around 6:30 and had plenty of time to unwind and get the kids in bed without feeling utterly exhausted. It is always hard not to pack everything you can into a trip, and for the most part we kind of did. But we took the last day at a more leisurely pace (honestly, probably just because of the traffic) and it was nice to be able to get home and just reflect on the trip. We had a great time and we plan to go back to the Salzburg area to see the “Sound of Music” sights we missed and the surrounding lake region which is quite beautiful.

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