The next portion of our trip included 2 nights in Salzburg,
Austria, 2 nights near Ravensburg, Germany visiting a friend of Karen’s and
her family, a quick stop in
Lichtenstein, and 3 nights in Switzerland.
I realize that Salzburg is ~ 200 miles east of Switzerland, but have grouped
these three destinations as they all are similar in character, and it also
helps to make the sections of the blog roughly equivalent in duration.
Day 61– Friday,
August 16. Salzburg, Austria. From
the Czech/Austrian border we headed southwest to the small town of
Hallstatt. This small town (population ~1000)
is in the Lake District about an hour from Salzburg. Hallstatt is a very old city, and was
prosperous before the time of Rome due to its salt mines. The salt mined here was traded throughout most
of the area of present day Europe. It
was so important that an epoch, the Hallstatt Era (800 to 400 BC), is named
after this spot. The current town is
very cute, hugging the mountainside slope next to the Hallstätter See. The main road to/from the area was routed
above town and through a pair of tunnels back in the 1960s, so today the single
road going through the medieval town center is restricted to local traffic and
the old part of town is almost car free.
We parked in the new section of
town, and walked the ~10 minutes along the lake to the old part of town. The views of the old town from across the
corner of the lake are almost as worthwhile as walking through the old town
itself – it is extremely picturesque.
We spent about 2 hours in Hallstatt before heading on to our final
destination of Salzburg.
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| Hallstadtt |
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| Main street in Hallstatt |
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| Main Square in Hallstatt |
I apparently cursed myself Friday afternoon by remarking
that it had been more than 24 hours since Matthew had finished throwing up in
Prague and that the rest of us were likely safe as none of us caught whatever
bug he had gotten. I started to feel ill
in the evening after arriving in Salzburg, and started throwing up about 10
PM. I spent the entire night throwing up
about once an hour. LLL
Day 62– Saturday,
August 17. Salzburg. Today our plan
was to spend the day in Salzburg. There
was a bus stop was right in front of our hotel, and a 10 minute ride led to the
center of the city. We had booked
afternoon tickets for a Sound of Music Tour (Karen’s favorite all-time movie)
the previous day when we were in Hallstatt, and our plan was to do a walking
tour of Salzburg in the morning, followed by the organized tour in the
afternoon. The rest of the family headed
off into town in the morning and I told them if I was still alive I would meet
them prior to the departure of the Sound of Music Tour. They did a ~ 4 hour self-guided walking tour,
including lunch. They started at Mozartplatz,
a square with statue of Mozart in the middle.
Next was Residenzplatz where a lot of famous historical Salzburg figures
have lived. Residenzplatz has a large Italian
fountain in the middle. They then went
to Neue Residenz which was formerly a palace, but is currently a group of museums. On the top of the Neue Residenz is a glockenspiel
which plays three times a day. In Neue
Residenz they went into the Salzburg Panorama Museum which houses a panoramic painting
of Salzburg created in 1829. This
painting toured around the world for 10 years to show how beautiful the city
was. There was also a Sound of Music
exhibit in the museum that contained artifacts from the movie. After going to the Salzburg Cathedral they
went to Kapitelplatz which has some modern sculptures and an old horse bath. They then walked through St. Peters Cemetery
which inspired the scene from the Sound of Music where the von Trapp family hid
out from the Nazis. There are a lot of interesting
renaissance style tombstones lining the cemetery from former graves. From the cemetery you can see up on the cliff
caves where medieval hermit monks lived.
After going by St. Peter’s Church they strolled through Universitätsplatz,
a large open air produce market. They
wrapped up there tour of the city center by going to Getreidegasse which was the
center of trade since Roman times and Alter Markt, the old market place. Getreidegasse has a lot of old wrought iron
signs showing what the stores used to sell.
Mozart’s birthplace is also located there.
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Musical Bread
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Mozart Statue
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St Peter’s Cemetery
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Cheese seller at Universitätsplatz
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Getreidegasse
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After the walking tour they crossed over the river to go on
the Sound of Music Tour. I was feeling
marginally better by 1 PM having slept for a couple of hours in the morning, so I decided too go into toen to join them for the tour. We met about 15 minutes before the
scheduled departure, and after checking in headed across the street to Mirabell
Gardens. Some of the outdoor scenes of the
movie were filmed in these gardens by the fountain and stairs, so we took some
photos there before heading back to get on the bus. The Sound of Music Tour was 4 hours long, and
included many sites in and around Salzburg related to the movie. This included the two houses that served as
the von Trapp house in the movie (the yard was used from one of the houses, and
the actual house was used from the other), the gazebo, and the church in
Mondsee where the wedding scene took place.
The tour was well done, with a good guide. However, I should have skipped it. About 30 minutes in I started counting the
minutes until it was over, hoping to get through it without throwing up
again. I was successful, and partially
saved by the fact that there was a ~30 minute break in Mondsee to explore the
town on our own. I found a bench in the
shade near the bus, laid down, and even dozed off for part of the time. After the tour I headed back to the hotel
along with Matthew. Karen and Elizabeth
did a little more exploring in town, had dinner, and caught the bus back to the
hotel a couple of hours after we did.
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Mirabell Gardens
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| Church
in Mondsee |
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von Trapp
lake house
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Gazebo (no longer
in original location)
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Road to
second von Trapp house
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Day 63– Sunday,
August 18. Wiengarten, Germany. Salzburg
is located right next to the border with Germany, so it was a short drive from
our hotel to cross into Germany. Total
distance driven in our second time in Austria, 170 miles (270 km). Total distance driven to date, 6940 miles
(11170 km). Our favorite things in the
Austria (including our previous stay in Vienna) were: Karen –Sound of Music Tour, Elizabeth
– all the musical things, Matthew – Haus der Musik in Vienna, Mike – Hallstatt.
Our next stop was to visit a friend of Karen’s who lives in
southern Germany, near the town of Wiengarten.
Karen met Barbara in college when Barbara spent a year as an exchange
student at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon.
We would spend two nights staying with Barbara, her husband Volker, and
their daughter Elisabeth. Barbara and
Volker have a second daughter, Rebecca, but she had just left a few days before
we arrived to spend a year as an exchange student in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Instead of taking the most direct route on
the autobahn, decided to take a more scenic route through Berchtesgaden and
Inzell before joining up with the autobahn.
Our plan was to make short stops in Köningssee and some other small
towns along the way, but traffic was horrible (the worst we have experienced on
the whole trip), so we just enjoyed the scenery through the car windows and
only made essential stops. The traffic
woes continued on and off for most of the day, with too many people enjoying
the beautiful weather in the mountain towns, and too much construction on the
autobahn. We ended up arriving at
Barbara and Volker’s house about an hour later than we had planned despite not
making our planned stops. We were
welcomed by an American flag flying from their flag pole.
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Bavarian scenery
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Unique German road sign (no – it is not a speed limit for
tanks)
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Mike, Karen, Barbara, & Volker
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Barbara had bought tickets for both families to see
Motzart’s
The Magic Flute, in Bregenz
Austria that evening. Bregenz is about a
45 minute drive from their house. The
Bergenz festival is in its 67
th year, and the stage is located on
Lake Constance. The performance was
wonderful, and the set was AMAZING. The
only bad thing is that it rained for ~ 1.5 hours of the 2+ hour performance,
and at times it poured very hard. We
were soaked by the end, but we still enjoyed the opera.
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Set for The Magic Flute
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Day 64– Monday, August
19. Wiengarten. We slept in since we didn’t get to bed until
close to 4 AM after getting back very late from the opera and then spending
time visiting. After brunch, we went
with Barbara’s family to see some of the local sites. We started at the Weingarten Basilica. It has very beautiful fresco paintings on the
ceilings. We then went to Affenberg, or
“Monkey Hill”, which is located by the town of Salem. While there are deer, waterfowl, and lots of
storks (dozens or more roosting on top the buildings), the featured attraction
is 200 endangered Barbary Macaque monkeys that live in a 50 acre heavily wooded
enclosure at the top of the hill. You
can stroll through the paths in the enclosure, and feed the monkeys
popcorn. If you hold the popcorn in the
palm of your hand the monkeys will come and take it out of your hand and eat
it. We especially enjoyed watching the
cute 6 week old baby riding around on her mother’s back or clinging underneath
her mother as she walked around. The
whole family enjoyed watching the monkeys interact, and being able to get so
close to them. We finished our day in Meersburg,
a small town on the shore of Lake Constance.
This charming medieval city and its castle were built in the 7
th
century by Merovingian king Dagobert I. We walked around town for a while, had
dinner, and then walked some more around town, looking at the sites and doing
some window shopping. We then went back
to Barbara and Volker’s house for the rest of the evening.
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Weingarten Basilica
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Storks at Affenberg
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Elizabeth feeding monkey
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Baby Macaque and mother
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| Sunset at Meersburg |
Day 65– Tuesday,
August 20. Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.
We said goodbye to Barbara, Volker, and Elisabeth and headed off
mid-morning. We would have had a 3-3.5
hour drive to Lauterbrunnen if we had taken the most direct route, but we
decided to go through Lichtenstein and also take a more scenic route through
the mountains in Switzerland. Within
about an hour we had left Germany, driven through the corner of Austria,
entered Switzerland, and arrived in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Total distance driven since leaving Salzburg,
410 miles (655 km). The vast majority of
this was in Germany. Total distance
driven to date: 7350 miles (11825
km). We a little over an hour in Vaduz,
walking through town, getting some Swiss Francs (Lichtenstein uses the Swiss
Franc along with Switzerland) and buying a couple of souvenirs.
After leaving Lichtenstein we reentered Switzerland, dropped
down to Chur, and then cut diagonally down to Andermatt, crossing Oberalppass
(2044 m, 6706 feet). The mountain passes
in Switzerland are very scenic, and we had mostly sunny weather. The roads are narrow and very windy, with many
switchbacks. Since the passes are above timberline, you can
see the road ahead (or behind) zig zagging up or down the mountain slope. We
then drove northwest, crossing over Sustenpass (2259 m, 7411 feet). At this pass there was a group of cows off to
the side of the road, and a farmer had a portable milking machine set up to
milk the cows. All over Switzerland the
dairy cows are grazing in these alpine meadows during summer, and the farmers
need to go up to milk them. At least in
this case they were setup right by the road.
It was very cold at the passes –
a shock getting out of the car in shorts and a short sleeved shirt. Once we arrived in Lauterbrunnen we checked
into our hotel, got dinner, and planned our next couple of days. We had a corner room in the hotel, with the view
out the front looking east across the valley, and the view from the side
looking at Staubbach Falls, one of many waterfalls in the valley. These falls, which are illuminated at night, are
about 850 feet high (~260 m).
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| Swiss mountain road |
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| View from near the pass |
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| Roadside waterfall |
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| View from our hotel in Lauterbrunnen |
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| Our hotel in Lauterbrunnen |
Day 66– Wednesday,
August 21. Lauterbrunnen. We woke to
a totally clear sky. We were very fortunate
that we had beautiful weather both days we were in Lauterbrunnen – clear blue
sky and high in the low 70’s (low 20’s in Celsius) during the day. Lauterbrunnen is a very picturesque town in a
deep valley about a 30 minute drive south of Interlaken. There are trains and cable cars that can take
you to other small car free towns above the cliffs on both the west and east
side of the valley. We decided to spend one day on each side of
the valley. For Wednesday, we choose the
west side. We started by taking the
cable car to Grütschalp, and then the train to Mürren, a total of ~20
minutes. In Mürren we bought some groceries
for lunch, and headed off for our hike. We
decided to do the North Face Trail, a ~ 4 mile loop. This trail is named after the north face of
the mountain Eiger, which is considered one of the most difficult mountaineering
feats to climb. The trail has great views of the climbing
routes on the Eiger, as well as other mountains in the area. Along the trail there are informational
plaques describing the routes, and providing information on the climbing
history. This information was
interesting, but we took the trail because it was so beautiful. We started by taking the funicular from Mürren
up to Allmendhubel. This made our
starting elevation for the hike 6250 feet (1905 meters), and made the overall
hike a net elevation loss, but there were still lots of uphill sections. We had gained over 3600 feet (1100 meters)
from our starting point in Lauterbrunnen to the top of the funicular where we
started the hike. We then hiked a
counterclockwise loop back to Mürren.
The “trail” was a combination of unpaved farm roads, and walking paths. It passed through some small summer farms, or
“alps”, and there were a number of dairy cows grazing in the meadows with their
distinct Swiss cow bells clanking as they moved around. After completing the hike we did some shopping
in Mürren before catching the train and cable car back to Lauterbrunnen where
we had dinner.
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| The views on the hike - cows and mountains |
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| This cow really liked Matthew - she thought he tasted good |
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| Mike, Elizabeth, & Matthew on hike |
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| Cow bell on barn wall |
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| Paraglider above Murren |
Day 67– Thursday,
August 22. Lauterbrunnen. Our
primary plan for the day was to take the train up to Jungfraujoch. Jungfraujoch is the highest train station in
Europe, at 11300 feet (3444 meters). For
those of you in Oregon, this train station is higher than the top of Mount
Hood, the highest mountain in Oregon.
Getting to Junfraujoch involves taking two trains, both cog railways due
to the steep grades. First there is a
train from Lauterbrunnen to Klein Scheidegg (elevation 6762 feet, 2061
meters). Then you transfer to a
different train to reach Jungfraujoch.
This last train actually goes through part of the Eiger, and there are
two stops where you can peer out of the side of the mountain. Building this railway was a major engineering
feat when it was completed in 1912. The
final stop is in the saddle between the Eiger and Jungfrau. There are a number of things to do once you
get there. There is an observation
building with an elevator that takes you several hundred feet higher than the
station, historical displays on the building of the railway, a gallery of ice
sculptures (the floor is also polished ice), and several restaurants. We spent most of our time outside on the
snow. Karen did a zip line that was
suspended over the snow which you stopped yourself by sliding across the
snow. The kids did sledding on a hill
that had a moving walkway to bring you back up to the top. I took a mike about a mile up the hill to another
viewpoint with better views to the west. The crutches actually worked pretty
well on the packed snow, sort of like trekking poles, and the snow was soft
enough that walking on it wasn’t too bad on my foot. We spent a lot longer than we had originally
planned at Jungfraujoch, and didn’t do a hike that we had planned in Klein
Scheidegg on the way back down. We
returned to Lauterbrunnen just in time for dinner. The train ride to Jungfraujoch was very expensive,
(except for Matthew who was considered a “child” and cost 1/7 of the adult
price), but it was one of those once in a lifetime things that you “have to
do”. I am glad we did it, but if we go
back to the area again I would rather spend the day hiking or take one of the
other train rides than go back to Jungfraujoch again.
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| View from lower elevations on train ride |
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| View from one of the tops inside the Eiger |
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| Matthew and Elizabeth inside train station |
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| Sled run |
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| Mike and Karen above train station |
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| Matthew and Elizabeth taking a break |
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| View of the glaciers and mountains |
Day 68– Friday,
August 23. We started the day by heading about one hour
west of Lauterbrunnen to the town of Adelboden.
We had reservations for a tour of Our Chalet, one of four world centers
of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Our Chalet was founded in 1932 and offers a
variety of programs year round for Girl Scouts and Girl Guides. Since Elizabeth is actively involved as a
Girl Scout (she is in process of finishing up her gold award, equivalent to Boy
Scout Eagle award) and Karen has been actively involved as a leader they were
interested in seeing this site. The 90
minute tour provided a lot of history on Our Chalet as well as Girl Scouts
worldwide. The site is also beautiful,
situated in a rural setting with views of the mountains and the town of
Adelboden below in the valley.
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| Elizabeth on steps of Our Chalet |
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| Mike pinning Our Chalet pin on Elizabeth |
After leaving Our Chalet we headed off to Germany, passing
through Bern and Basel. We crossed the
Swiss border early afternoon, heading back into Germany. Total distance driven in Switzerland, 280 miles (450 km). Total distance driven
to date, 7630 miles (12270 km). Our
favorite things in the Switzerland were:
Karen –cows with bells, Elizabeth – scenery, Matthew –
Jungfraujoch, Mike – hiking above Mürren.
