Grödig

It was cold this morning, still a bit drizzly, but you only get one chance, so we set off to catch a couple of buses to get to the cable car which takes you up to the 1853m summit of Mt Untersberg. This is part of the mountain range which borders with Germany, so you have views of both Austria and Germany from the top.

Given it was rainy, we could see that the top of the mountain was in cloud, so in some ways I thought all we would get to do really is take a cable car into the clouds, have a hot drink and come back down again.

Whilst waiting for the cable car we saw a sign advising it was -1ºC at the summit! Just a wee bit chilly...

The cable car was over 3km in length and was a great trip up the mountain - about 10 minutes or so. Just as we arrived it started to snow! Only tiny little bits of snow, but snow none the less. We walked out on to the terrace, lasted less than a minute because it was so cold, in cloud and very windy.

What we did stumble on to out on the terrace though was a lot of Austrian military, new and old, in the middle of some sort of ceremony. When I asked it was a WWII commemoration for fallen soldiers. Very elaborate military uniforms, including swords, fancy axes, feathers on hats, capes, men with curled handlebar moustaches... Of course, in WWII the Austrian Army was fighting for the Nazis so hardly an Ally, but they saw sense by the end (it was a good excuse to go and read a bit of Austrian military history whilst having a hot drink - not wine!).

Finn declared it the best thing we have done on the holiday so far and was begging to go back out into the snow (quite possibly because Kate had thrown a snowball at him and he needed retribution?). Anyway, as we were eating lunch, over the space of about 45 seconds, the cloud completely cleared away to reveal blue skies and views over Austria and (we presume) Germany - we couldn't stay outside to work out where the boundaries occurred - it was too cold.

There were lots of Austrian older generation soldiers stomping around in the snow, so managed to sneak a photo of one who was in his cape, amazing hat with feather etc. Also a frau in a dirndl... and I reckon she must have had very cold ankles!

We had soup for lunch - husband never willingly eats soup. Photo worthy event.Читать далее