Europe - Day Four

Day Four – 27 Sep 2008 – Castle Day

This was a day all four of us had looked forward to. Even though we had all been in this area before, Marie is the only one who had been to Neuschwanstein Castle.

We toured the lower castle first – Hohenschwangau – and then hiked up the mountain to tour Neuschwanstein Castle.

Taken from a postcard of Neuschwanstein Castle.

Diane and Marie waiting for tour to begin.

This is a bridge that is behind Neuschwanstein Castle. After the tour, we walked up to this bridge.

Mick on bridge behind Neuschwanstein Castle.

Neuschwanstein - "New Swan Castle" - You must have swans at the swan castle.

After touring Neuschwanstein we drove to the Linderhof Castle- another of “Mad” King Ludwig’s castles. Here we are on the grounds of Linderhof Castle.


Upon returning to Reutte to our hotel, we came across these street performers. I mean this literally as the parade was going right down the street we needed to go on. It was Oktoberfest in Germany. There were 5 or six perfomers walking and dancing on stilts and 2 marching bands dressed in traditional Bavarian costumes.

Europe - Day Three

Day Three - 26 Sep 2008

Before we left the hotel we took this picture of Stephie (prounouced “Schteffie”) who had taken such good care of us at the hotel. Her name is actually Stephanie and was delighted to find we had a daughter with the same name with the same spelling.

We drove from Berchtesgaden to Innsbruck,Austria, thoroughly enjoying the scenery – everything so green and the leaves were just starting to turn fall colors. We didn’t spend long in Innsbruck, but did take time to find the LDS chapel there. Mick had actually helped work on the construction of this building while he served his mission in Austria.

From there we drove from Innsbruck to Garmish, Germany. Here we hiked up a gorge. It was approximately a one-mile gorge cut through sheer rock, which was approximately 15 ft wide with a fast flowing river coursing through it. There was a path cut through this rock with a railing guarding you from falling and followed just to the side of the river. Quite beautiful as well as breath-taking.

From there we drove to Reutte, Austria – just across the border from Germany – and found a hotel.

Europe - Day Two

Day Two – 25 Sep 2008

We spent the morning on the Königsee. All boats on the Königsee have to be electric. They have not allowed any gas-driven motors since the beginning of the 1900’s. At one point on the boat ride, they stopped the boat and a trumpeter played – the song echoing several times along the walls of the mountains.

This picture was taken between the lake and this church.

In the afternoon we took a tour of Obersalzburg and the Eagle’s Nest. Our guide was an American who grew up in Europe and specialized in the history of this area. Obersalzburg is the area where Hitler lived and, therefore, his top leadership also had homes there. Since Hitler would spend several months at a time here, his leadership would follow him. They also built (or confiscated) their homes here and most of them had their families live here. NO ONE entered this area unless on official business so it was very secure for them.

The Eagle’s Nest was NOT where Hitler lived, but was a gift for his 50th birthday. He only visited a few times – something like 14 times. In today’s economy, if you take the cost of the gift divided by the number of times he visited, each visit would have costed $10m.

Today there is not a lot left of the buildings in this area. In 1952 when this area was turned over to the Bavarian government from the US military forces, the Bavarian government completely destroyed the buildings. For instance, Hilter’s home was totally razed, all of the debris hauled off and the area re-planted with quick growing plants. Here is a picture of what used to be the driveway to his home.

In the 1990’s after the US Military turned over the hotel which they had used for their R&R, it, too, was totally razed and hauled away. Only a smaller outbuilding remains and is currently a museum giving the history of this area.

In addition to the homes there, they had dug over 6 miles of bunkers underneath the mountain. They could have survived in these bunkers for over 6 months and still continued to run the war from there. Only a small portion is now available for viewing.

Europe - Day One

Day One – 24 Sep 2008

We were not sure Wayne & Diane were going to make it out of Arabia in time to make our flight out of Bahrain. When they had returned from Bahrain 4 days earlier there had been a computer glitch on the Saudi side of the Bahrain/Saudi causeway causing them a several hour delay getting across. (In fact, the back-up on the causeway was so great, that Bahrain had to close the causeway for a while because they literally couldn’t get any more cars on it!)

This “computer glitch” affected about 19,000 people. Even though they had returned to Arabia, the computer was showing they were still “out of the country.” It was the day before we left that Wayne & Diane became aware of the problem. They had to turn their passports in and then we met some official on the causeway where we waited for 2 hours for them to fix this “computer glitch” and return their passports.

After a red-eye special from Bahrain through Abu Dhabi we arrived in Munich, where we picked up a rental car.

While we were waiting for the shuttle to take us to the rental car, Wayne wanted to sit down. This is all he could find. (We were hoping it was not an omen of what was to come.)

We drove from Munich to Berchtesgaden, Germany which is just on the border of Austria and Germany. Everything was so green and lush – such a contrast to where we had just come from. All of the windows had flower boxes that were full of blooming geraniums, petunias and all variety of flowers.

After we got checked into our hotel, we drove to the salt mine near Hallein. They had us all wear white coveralls to protect our clothing.

Inside the mine are two slides – one about 27 feet long and one about 42 feet long.