I never got around to writing about a lot of my adventures in Germany, partly because I was having trouble uploading pictures to Wordpress. So, I guess you’re in luck, ’cause I figured that out.
When my parents came and visited at the end of my stay, we took a week and went down to poke around Bavaria. Our first stop was Berchtesgaden, a lovely alpine resort town and one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite places. For his 50th birthday, the Nazis built a mountain retreat for him on a crag with 360-degree views. Hitler, according to my guidebook, had vertigo and hated it there.
The building survived – unusual for Nazi sites – and is now a major tourist destination. Buses run up the winding road all day, and there’s a restaurant up top.
The day we went up it was super cloudy and you couldn’t see the views. My dad and I went on a little hike on a trail that climbed up and down the rocks and wound around, with what should have been fantastic views of the alps.
It felt exactly like the beginning of the second Lord of the Rings movie, when Frodo and Sam are trying to find their way through the rocks of Emyn Muil. Spooky.