Berchtesgaden in the Rain

After walking back down the hill/ mountain whatever it was, we managed to find the bus back to Berchtesgaden. It was a fairly quick ride. The bus station is near the "charming" part of the town, the one the tourists want to see with the painted buildings, cute shops and restaurants. It's near it, but not that close. Especially not in the pouring rain. And it's uphill. It seems like everything is uphill in this place, but it makes sense, since it's in the mountains.

We walked around, taking pictures, soaking in the ambience, and the buckets of rain falling on our heads. It took us a while to decide on lunch, and we finally just went to one of the first places we passed, The Golden Bear. It's starting to look like animal themed restaurants might be a thing for us on this trip.

Short food diversion... No starter, just two beers. I had my first Radler, which is wheat beer mixed with lemon-lime something or other. Some people say it's something like Sprite, other people say lemonade. It was good. Herr Hai had a real dark beer this time, don't remember the brand, not Hofbrau though. He also got his first of many schnitzels of the trip. I had a list of things I wanted to try, and didn't get any of them. I got meatloaf, believe it or not, Zigeunerhackbraten-- literally Gypsy meatloaf, which was meatloaf with peppers and paprika sauce.

This was my next attempt with German. The waiter came over, said something, and I was trying to formulate that nice German sentence to order, "Ich möchte..." "Oh," he says, "American? What would you like?" I gave up utterly and completely right there trying to speak German.

Nice place, food was good. Service was like we were told to expect in Germany: efficient, polite, not overly chummy. We probably over tipped, because we weren't in the mood to do too much math.

We walked around looking for the few things we wanted to see. During this process, I was delighted to discover the Grassl company had a store in town, so we didn't have to go out to the distillery. That was our next stop. So excited, finally, I get to try this mythical Gebirgsenzian. I had come across it in research for something I was writing, and I couldn't wait.

I should have kept on waiting. They had shots set out in front of the various bottles, different flavors. I go right for the traditional stuff made from gentian roots. Knock it back-- words can't describe it. Yes, they can. Nail polish remover. I know a lot of people like it, but it was just not my thing. Nor was the bloodroot. Obviously I failed my first test of Bavaria here. The other flavors, various fruits, cream, egg were all pretty good. We ended up buying the gentian root in a small bottle for my brother-in-law, a set of fruit flavored ones, and a bigger bottle of the cream liqueur. We also bought some sausage and cheese in case we got hungry and didn't want to walk back down to town once we got to the farm.

We stopped in at the church, which was connected to the palace that belonged to the ruling family of Bavaria, the Wittelsbachs. Berchtesgaden came under the control of Bavaria in the early 1800s, and the Wittlesbachs established a hunting lodge there. Before that, like Salzburg, it was a salt mining region. Today you can tour a salt mine outside town (we didn't have time to do this, but maybe in the future), or go up to Bad Reichenhall where they have a spa and sell high end salt-related products. Tourism came after the Wittelsbachs, mainly due to the gorgeous mountains and the incredible views around the Königssee which attracted artists as well as climbers and boaters. Of course history buffs will know the area for its most infamous residents: Hitler and the rest of the gang had houses to the east of town, at Obersalzburg. What remains of the complex, Kehlsteinhaus, is one of the things a lot of Americans come to see. It was a teahouse used to entertain guests, though Hitler himself rarely set foot in it. Today, it's a restaurant.

Kind of a dark subject to close a post, but the past is the past. There's no point in ignoring it. Two last interesting tidbits. Most of the houses were destroyed. The hotel that was seized by the SS guards for their quarters is still there, but closed. When it was open, you could pay for a tour of the tunnels and bunker system under the Nazi leaders' houses. They were all connected, except for Göring's house. Apparently Bormann really disliked him and wouldn't hook him up to the rest. Two: Himmler's mistress's house, which was located just outside of the town, is now a vacation rental.

And on that less than cheerful note, ten carefully curated pictures. There are more on the Wolpertinger Wanderings facebook page.Leer más