One of the great skills traveling adults should have is the ability to read subway maps. We’ve now managed to get around on mass transit in Chicago, New York, DC, London, Paris, Rome (for what the two subway lines are worth) and now Vienna. The names of stations change, but the basic maps look the same. It makes major city travel much easier. Ticket systems are another matter, of course.

We left Baden and headed to the Vienna airport to return our car. Our plans for the last three days are all in major cities (Vienna and Munich), so we had no need of a car. Getting to the airport was no problem at all — the route was well marked by signs and even airplanes painted on the road in the correct lanes, but, man, was finding the rental car return entrance a huge pain in the butt. We followed signs to a parking lot that was full of rental car signs, but we could not find any way into it. We circled the lot twice, in calm and soothing airport traffic, before making a probably illegal left-hand turn onto a small road that finally revealed an entrance to Fortress Enterprise. We left our little car of ten days behind, which always makes me a little less tense. I love the flexibility of a car in Europe, but the combination of not being able to read signs, unknown-to-me road rules, aggressive drivers, motorcycles and bicycles everywhere, and too many one-lane roads all add up to my being slightly tense while driving. It was a good car, though, and we will miss out only source of air conditioning.

We took the subway into downtown Vienna, and we checked into our budget room, which is very small but serviceable. I will say that I have missed air conditioning and fans on this trip, and that seems unlikely to change for the next two days.

Ah! People singing in loud voices while they die, or if it is a comedy, singing while they measure for furniture — we must be at the Vienna State Opera house. We took an interesting and lively tour of the building, which was for sure the ONLY way I was ever going to get on that stage. Parts of the building are still from the 1800s, but much of it was rebuilt after World War II. That turned out to have some good benefits, in that the stage was expanded to the side for more storage room, which is needed, as the opera house puts on forty-five different operas per year, and runs four or five per week. They need the extra space for storage of sets, which they change out daily, or two times per day if they are rehearsing an opera in the morning. They employ one thousand people all year round, on a budget of one hundred million euros. I am not a huge opera fan, but the building was interesting, and how it works was very interesting.

We tried to find the nearby opera house museum, wandering around a courtyard for several minutes, wandering into offices and storerooms, and almost walking into the opera house school. We finally asked around and found out there used to be a museum, but it closed (from the look of things, they needed the storage space).

On to St. Stephen’s! The cathedral in Vienna is one of the only things I vaguely remember from my trip here twenty years ago. It is huge, Gothic, spired, and quite lovely. We got the all-inclusive ticket that gets you everywhere (remember, it was a Meredith-in-charge day today). We started with an audio guide that pointed out twelve areas of the church, including the new organ from the early 1990s. My favorite fun fact — the cathedral is always under renovation. It takes about forty years to renovate the church, so when they finish, it is time to start renovating again. The recording used it as a sign of the futility of human endeavors. I liked that.

We rode an elevator up the smaller of two towers of the church. The tower building was interrupted by a war with the Turks, so the tower was never finished. It has good views from the top, and the safety netting goes well over my head, so I was only moderately queasy up there and was able to wander around with Meredith.

We finished the touring of the church for today with the crypt. We have more of the church to see, but we ran out of time today, so we will see the rest tomorrow. The crypt is still in use for the burial of bishops and cardinals, and the Hapsburg royal family was all entombed there. Fun crypt fact — they embalmed the bodies using wax so the bodies would not stink up the church when they decomposed. On the shelves around the coffins are jars full of alcohol containing the removed organs of the bodies, except the hearts, which are kept in silver jars near the palace (I think). The crypts connect to the old underground cemetery where 11,000 people were buried after an edict that no one could be buried inside the city limits. The crafty people reasoned the law did not forbid being buried under the square, but only on it, so they designed an underground cemetery. The practice was stopped after forty years when odors began making it difficult to have mass in St. Stephen’s.

That mostly finished up the day. We had supper and ice cream, then went back to the opera house. Since it was the last day of the season, they were broadcasting the live performance on a huge screen outside the opera house, and Meredith wanted to see some of it. We stayed for about a half hour before going home. Since it was in Italian with German subtitles, I was a little fuzzy on the plot, but it seemed as if it went some thing like: an implausibly older man who can sing his lungs out falls in love with a beautiful girl who can also sing her lungs out, but she is the daughter of an evil baritone, so there are going to be problems.

We returned to out room just as some (hopefully) cooling rain began to fall, so we had another good day of Riordan tourism.

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Last year in the Balkans, we learned that some spa treatment can go a long ways toward restoring tourism morale. So, when I was researching places to go between Melk and Vienna, I was delighted to come across Baden.

“Baden” is German for “bath.” Baden is the home of springs and baths dating back to Roman times, and our hotel connects to a large pool area that has indoor and outdoor pools and hot-tubs. Moreover, the town has a huge park system, and has a large rose garden to wander through as well. It sounded perfect for late in the vacation.

We got to the hotel really early, around 10:30, but they still had a room ready for us. We have been very fortunate that way all trip long. With a home base to work from, we set off to see the old town pedestrian area, which, like most old town areas, was filled with shops and restaurants, and, more surprisingly, a small Beethoven museum in the house he rented here for three summers. The town center was cute, but we continued on over to the main park of the town, which is really really big.

Oh, and it was hot. And I like to climb. So, every chance we had we went up. Then up again. And some more up. I kept expecting to find a vista overlooking the town, but the woods up on the hill did not open up. When I started sweating through my shirt, even in the shady woods, I knew it was time to go back. Then, of course, much lower down, we found a vista. Go figure.

To reward ourselves for a hike well done, we stopped in at a cafe for some pastries, and we got to sit in a little outside nook area that only had two tables in it, so we had a private dining area right where the old town began. It was a fine place to people-watch.

After we were thus fortified, we went to the Beethoven museum. It was very small, with only eight rooms, but they did a nice job of maximizing the material they had to work with. They told you how Beethoven was in Baden to try to improve his health, how he took three rooms in the house, how and whom he entertained, how he liked to take walks in the country around Baden, and how he still worked while in Baden. He composed major parts of the Ninth Symphony here.

By far, the most impressive room was the one dedicated to the Ninth Symphony. You could sit and listen and compare four different recordings of the piece. The final room had four monitors set up, all synced together. The first had Beethoven’s handwritten score on it, and a red line showed you where the music was (as an aside, how does anyone know what music to play? his score seemed illegible to me in places). The second monitor had a visual representation of what music was being played at the time, very much like what you see in music video games like Guitar Hero. That was fascinating to watch. The third monitor had a video recording of the orchestra and choir. The last monitor had commentary in German and English on what the music was doing, which was extremely helpful. It seems as if the most difficult musical technique to write in the 1800s was a fugue, and Beethoven wrote a double fugue into the Ninth. Twice. Easy little piece of music. The Ninth was also the first symphony to include voices. Nifty music.

By now, it was in the early afternoon, and it was hot. So, we went back to the hotel and changed into swimwear and went to the pool area. The main pool was indoors, so I was out of the sun, and the water was very warm. Mer and I sat in a bench area in the pool, and almost accidentally got included in some senior pool-noodle exercises before we went to another spot. We sat in the water jet area, and then we moved to the whirlpool. It all felt really good, and we spent over an hour there.

We changed back into touring clothes, and we headed out to find the rose garden, which we did. I had thought it would be one corner of the park with four or five beds of roses. Not quite. It was about a third of the park, with bed after bed after bed of every color rose imaginable. There were reds and pinks and whites and even purple roses. They were short, and they were tall, reaching to about four feet. They had small, tight flowers, and huge blooms. It was really a stunning display of roses. We wandered there for some time.

After that, we found a Greek restaurant in the old town that had an interior courtyard that was all in shade. We had a mellow diner, and called it an evening, getting back to the room around 7:30. The goal had been a relaxing day, and we even still managed to do a little tourist sightseeing.

By far the main thing to see in Melk is the abbey. It dominates the town. It is simply huge at over one thousand feet long, and it is brilliantly painted yellow so it can be seen for miles around. There has been some abbey here since around 1100, and the current form of the abbey is about 300 years old. It was the main reason I wanted o make sure I had a day to be in charge while we were in Melk – I really wanted to tour the abbey.

It did not disappoint. After a hearty climb up (and up) to the clifftop where the abbey stands, we entered the first courtyard where we bought tickets to a guided tour (in English). We had a few minutes before our tour started, so we strolled through the manicured English-style garden until our tour was ready. We had a large group of about thirty people, and we had a great enthusiastic guide who spoke excellent English.

She took us into the main courtyard of the abbey, where she pointed out the modern paintings of the four virtues – wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. She also pointed out where the abbey school was, were nine hundred local students attend school for only about one hundred dollars per month (teacher salaries are paid by the Austrian government).

She then took us into the abbey museum, which was laid out chronologically. It started with the oldest objects in the abbey (a portable alter from about 1100) and worked forward, with each room roughly corresponding to an age. At the high point of the abbey (around 1600 during the Counter-Reformation), the abbey had state backing and about eight hundred resident monks. It now houses about thirty working monks, with other monks associated with the abbey serving parishes around the area.

Joseph II, the son of the great queen Maria Theresa, was tolerant of other religions, and officially allowed Protestants, Jews, and Orthodox Christians back into Austria, and the abbey lost at least a little state support during the time. On display from the time was Joseph II’s plan of a reused casket where the body was dropped out of a bottom that opened in the casket. It was hugely unpopular and was no longer used after a few years.

The tour took us out to the balcony overlooking the Melk River (which we had mistakenly thought was the Danube, which is much bigger and nearby), with some amazing views. We also had close-up views of the facade of the beautiful church of the abbey. The tour continued, and ended, in the library of the abbey, which is still an active library where researchers come to read.

After the tour, we went into the church, which is the most gilded (covered in gold) church I have ever seen. It was jaw-dropping when we first walked in. We entered the church at 11:55, and they have a short prayer service at noon, so we stayed for that. We did not understand the German, but we knew the English version of the song they sang, so we attemped to sing the German words which we had to read. We also knew the scripture reading from John 21 was about Jesus restoring Peter to his position (the “Feed my sheep” passage), so we got the gist of that.

After the service, we wandered around the church, which had two skeletons decked out in fine clothing in tomb niches – they were unknown Christians, but were very old. The church also has the remains of the saint of the church, St. Coloman, who was mistakenly hanged as a Hungarian spy in 1012 AD.

We finished our tour of the abbey by going back to the gardens, but spending more time there. We wandered though well-kept paths in a small but dense forest, looked at the herb garden, and walked though a long vine-covered arbor. The gardens were quiet and soothing.

I was very pleased with our tour of the abbey – certainly an “A” for touring. We went back to our room and I planned the afternoon. I wanted to see various sights around Melk, for which I took advice from the internet. As it turns out, I got an “A” for effort, but really only a “B” for results – interesting drives, with nice and pleasant places on the far end, but no real must-see attractions.

We started the afternoon going to nearby Schloss Schönbühel (Schloss means “castle”). It looked really cool from internet pictures, so I was excited to see it. It turns out it is a private residence. What private citizen owns a whole castle, and not a small one at that? Clearly, it is some mastermind planning a lair. So, while impressive and pretty, it was a bit of a strike out.

We next headed inland away from the river to Schloss Schallaburg, which is happily open to the public. Unhappily, we got there at 4:00 and it closed at 5:00. Still, there was a certain rush to racing though the castle and grounds with no map and no audio guide, trying to see it all. I think we did see all the places open to the public, although we blew through the dozen or so rooms that had a museum exhibit dedicated to the 1970’s – I will admit it was strange seeing a Darth Vader outfit in a museum display. We found and loved the castle playgound, which was a large wooden dragon with things to climb and slides to play on. It was brilliant. This was a better stop, but the timing was a tad poor given that we only had about forty-five minutes to see things.

I then drove over to the north side of the Danube, and followed some winding roads to the town of Maria Laach, which was supposed to be beautiful. It turns out that is true, and the very pretty church was still open, even at 5:30, (as an aside – another tiny town with an amazing church!) but the town was mostly a small number of pretty homes surrounded by flowers, surrounding the church. It was pretty, but there was little to do or see. The cowpath we had to drive out of town made up some adventure, but the stop still seemed slightly disappointing.

We followed the cowpath, with a few close encounters with oncoming cars, to the town of Willendorf, where we had supper on a patio overlooking the hills of the area and the Danube river. Our server, who also may have been the owner, spoke good English and had a dry sense of humor, and the nice weather made al fresco dining a delight. This redeemed the afternoon quite a lot as we ate a leisurely meal in a pretty place.

The last stop of the evening was to go back to Melk where we could cross the Danube, and drive up the south side to more or less Willendorf, but on the other side. We drove up and up another paved cowpath to get to some castle ruins, Burg Aggstein. It was late enough (about 8:00) that the high existing parts of the castle were locked and closed, but we could still wander around the lower levels. That was good, and the views we could see of the Danube and valley were tantalizing, but it was obvious the real views were up in the locked towers. I told Meredith it felt like the Dance of the Seven Veils of tourism, but we had only seen two veils. So, another slight letdown, but the evening air was fine and the drive was pretty back to Melk.

So, tomorrow we move east again, aiming to get to the town of Badden, where there has been a bath/spa since Roman times.

So, after nine days of being in Alpine country, we finally left the mountains behind, heading east toward our eventual destination of Melk, home of a huge (and I do mean huge) abbey. We started off the day in a light but steady rain, but we had a two-hour drive ahead of us, and the rain did stop just as we pulled into our main destination of the day, Mauthausen concentration camp.

Mauthausen concentration camp has been partially preserved as a memorial site to those victims who died there, as well as those who survived. There have been some changes in the seventy years since the camp was liberated — most of the external buildings (soldier barracks and administrative buildings) have been torn down, all but four of the prisoner barracks have been torn down, and many countries who had citizens imprisoned in the camp have since put up memorials where the soldier barracks were. Still, the external walls, four of the barracks, the outlines of the other barracks, and the kitchen and laundry buildings all still exist, and the site is free to the public to visit.

A concentration camp may seem like an odd thing to go to while on a sightseeing tour, but since we are both in education, it seemed appropriate as a way to learn more about the very dark side of World War II. I had not even known there was a camp at Mauthausen, but 190,000 people were imprisoned there or in one of its smaller satellite camps, and of those 190,000 people, 90,000 died.

There was a lot to see, and we spent over five hours at the site. We had an excellent audioguide that took us around the camp and explained what we were seeing. There were also three film rooms that showed films about the camp and what happened after the war. Finally, there was an excellent museum that told about how the camp came into being (broad history about the Nazis), as well as day-to-day life in the camp (personal stories including photos, letters, and possessions).

Outside the camp were memorials to many of the victims from various countries. France and Italy included many pictures of victims in their memorials. The socialist Eastern bloc countries tended to be huge and defiant. Slovenia and Spain had smaller, emotional memorials. We did not find any memorial from the U.S., probably because we did not have a large presence in the camp, with only twelve people imprisoned.

In a couple of ways, the camp was a bit different from our typical ideas of concentration camps.  For one thing, while some of Mauthausen’s inmates were Jewish, the camp held a number of non-Jewish inmates too, from Soviet POWs to political prisoners from all over Europe.  Also, it was mainly a work camp rather than a mass-extermination camp. However, its inmates were treated so badly that many died within a few weeks of arriving at the camp. Initially, the work involved a nearby stone quarry; later in the war, the workers were switched over to work that would aid the war effort more directly.  And though Mauthausen had fewer direct killings than some of the other camps, it still had its share, especially toward the end of the war.

There were some uplifting stories told about the camp — stories of prisoners hiding sick men so they would not be shot, and stories of smuggling people in to the main camp to get them out of the holding camp for those who were going to be killed. Overall, though, the tour is a very sobering experience.

We continued on our way to Melk, getting to our hotel in the evening around 6:30. That left little time for more than supper, although we did sneak in a short walk down to the surprisingly small Danube River. We walked along it for a short ways, stopping by a store to grab some European candy bars before heading back to the hotel.

Today largely felt like a bonus touring day. When last I had internet access (Friday), the forecast was calling for a good chance of rain all day today. Happily, while it was cloudy enough to shroud the mountains for much of the day, we avoided any rain — the only rain we had all day was while we were in a museum, so it all worked out fine.

We started the day having breakfast on the patio out back of our B and B, where we met a man from the Czech Republic and his young daughter (who was too shy to speak). We chatted over breakfast, and he had even been in Ohio back in the 90s to see an old girlfriend. After he excused himself from breakfast, he came back a few minutes later and gave both of us each a can of Czech beer, which he insisted had to be served very cold. It was such a friendly and generous gesture that we thanked him profusely, even though we do not drink beer. I’d love to bring it home for my friends who do like an occasional beer, but it is in a can, and I am afraid to bring it on the plane in my bags for fear it will burst. Perhaps we can give it to our B and B hostess.

We got in the car and drove a few miles to a nearby cable car at the foot of Dachstein Mountain. There are actually two cable cars up the mountain, and we took the first one up to about 4,000 feet. We were going to try to catch the second one up to 6,000 feet if the weather cleared up. At the top of the lower one, the weather was clear enough to see back to Hallstatt. The views were very fine, but we were there to tour two caves — Ice Cave and Mammoth Cave.

We started with Ice Cave, where we had a twenty-minute wait after our energetic hike up to the mouth of the cave. We were in a multi-lingual party of about twenty-five people, but there were options for all of us — either a downloaded app for your smart phone or a printed information card in various languages, and the guide spoke in both German and English.

The tour of the cave was about a half-mile long, with a fairly major elevation change over five hundred steps; the exit was a separate place from the entrance and was quite a bit higher up the mountain. The first third of the tour gently went down, and all of that part of the cave was ice-free, with a temperature of about 35 degrees. We then went through a door and the temperature dropped. I had always thought that all caves had the same constant temperature, but I was wrong. This cave is such that cold air in the winter cools the cave, but then in the summer does not heat it so much. At any rate, it hovers right below 32 degrees all year round, and so most of the water that finds its way into the cave freezes. The summer water, which is warm, melts the ice some, but the winter gains outpace the summer losses, so the ice accumulates about 1/3 to 1/2 an inch per year.

It was very impressive. I like caves anyway, and this one was full of ice, which I had never seen in a cave before. The ice piled up to make interesting formations or to look like flowing frozen water. We got splashed a lot from the drops of water coming from overhead, but it was well worth it. Two highlights from the cave were a large ice pillar almost thirty feet tall and a huge room full of ice that was over sixty feet deep (which you could see the profile of when you left that room). It was all very beautiful, and it meant that we had gone from Salzburg being over 90 degrees two days ago to being in this cave where it was about 30 degrees.

We got out of the ice cave and checked the time. We had a group tour of the other cave at 12:55, and it looked as if we only had about twenty minutes to get there. Mer and I went along without stopping and got to the other cave door right at five of. The door was closed, and there was no one there. We sat down in the beautiful spot and waited. After a few minutes, a couple came around the corner and joined us, but still no guide. Then the couple got up and left. Still no guide. We got restless. It had now been fifteen minutes. A few people showed up, but still no guide. We decided after twenty minutes to give up, but as we got to the corner, I looked back and saw the guide coming out of the cave. We hurried back, but he had disappeared. We could not find him, so we gave up again, and as we got to the first corner and were talking about how to get a refund, I mentioned to Meredith that we had been waiting over a half hour to 12:30. Then it hit Mer — our time was for 12:55. We had gotten to the door at 11:55. Ooopps.

So, happily, we made the tour. The Mammoth Cave is so named because it is huge and not because any bones were found in it. They know of over forty miles of cave system in Mammoth Cave and they are still exploring parts of it. The tour we were taking was again about a half-mile, or, as our guide put it, one percent of the system.

While lacking in ice since the cave stayed at about 35 or 36 degrees, it was still impressive. The first part of the tour featured colossal rooms. The second part of the tour was through steep and narrow passages, and included a room where lime and iron had leeched through to the walls and ceilings and created these amazing patterns. It was worth the little mix-up we had.

We came out of the cave and went back to the cable car center. We tried to buy tickets to the next level, but the kind man told us it would not be worth it, as the peak was fogged in. Mer was disappointed. I was sad for her, but not too upset for me, as the peak features the “Five Fingers” — five metal walkways that extend over the side of the mountain for a sheer view of (and drop to) the valley below. I’m fairly confident I would have been terrified.

We went back into Hallstatt, and after a quick snack in our B and B room, we went into Hallstatt to go and tour the Hallstatt museum. This is where we were when a thunderstorm rolled through, so we stayed quite dry. The museum, in addition to its noteworthy waterproofness, laid out the history of Hallstatt and its important salt trade, dating back to at least 5,000 BC. You can see the museum in less than two hours, and it is laid out very logically, with displays in both German and English.

After supper, we wandered the town according to our Rick Steves guide book “recommended walk.” It took us up to a waterfall we had heard but not seen, and through a very narrow lane that used to be the town’s main street up above the current one. That wrapped up our last day of being in Hallstatt before we head out to the town of Melk tomorrow.

Having a GPS for Europe is a wonderful thing, especially in Austria, where it has been very accurate. Last year, in the Balkans, the GPS usually got you in the general area, but you had to do some guessing. None of that this year. The fun with the GPS, though, is that it generally wants to take the shortest route, even if that route more or less resembles a driveway or a cowpath. We had a good distance of our route today on a scenic one-way road, and the last part leading up to the lake town of Hallstatt was very winding. Still, the GPS did get us to our B and B, where we checked in and dropped our stuff, and Meredith took a few minutes to plan.

The forecast was calling for thunderstorms tonight, or possibly sooner, and for rain for much of tomorrow. Mer had to quickly rethink her plans to take advantage of the clear, if hot, weather today. She made up her mind, and we went off along more winding roads and up and up to Gosausee, which is an Alpine lake which has a trail of three miles or so that goes all around it. Mer wanted to hike it.

The setting is spectacular — the lake is surrounded by towering mountains, and even a cliff that comes down to the lake. One of the mountains on the far side of the lake is home to a small glacier, which was easily visible today. We set off in a clockwise direction around the lake at a very leisurely pace. It was hot, but the mountains and the forests kept us in shadow a lot, and it turns out that snow-melt mountain streams carry a lot of cold air down the mountain with them, which was amazing to feel as you walked through it.

The walk was very pretty, and as we were in no hurry, we sat on a bench to take it all in. Then we found a place that went down to the lake edge, and Meredith dipped her toes in; I decided to wait for a later opportunity since I did not want wet feet in my shoes for the whole walk.

Then we came across the mad people. There were dozens of them, men and women, clinging like flies to the edge of the cliff we came across. It seems some people think clinging to the side of a sheer cliff is fun. I think we came across a climbing school, which had a very elaborate rock trail set up, with safety lines for attaching to, vertical stretches on built-in ladders, rungs hammered into the rock for footholds, and even a double wire “bridge” (one wire to walk on and one to hold on to) that crossed open space between cliff faces. It was an unexpected and impressive sight that we stayed to watch awhile, and one we could still see from the other side of the lake when we got over there.

We circled around the far end of the lake, enjoying the smells of the pines, even though they ended up being in the way of the lake and mountain views. As we came around the end, we started coming across snow-melt streams, some very small, and some fairly large. At the first one we came to, which was a couple of feet across, I took off my shoes and socks and stuck my feet in. It. Was. Cold. It was the kind of cold that makes your feet hurt in about ten seconds. It was the kind of cold that can only come from water that was snow a few hours before. So of course, I stuck my feet in a couple of times. My feet were cool for several hundred yards of walking after that.

We continued along the trail in an unhurried manner, stopping off down at the lakeside again to take some pictures. We started finding large dung on the trail, which made us a little anxious about bears and all the signs in German that we could not read but that seemed emphatic. We eventually came across a half-dozen cows in a small meadow, and so we ended the bear threat.

It was a perfect outing — it was soul-soothing and beautiful and mellow, much needed after the hectic day in Salzburg on Friday. We sat on a bench near the entrance of the trail and relaxed before going back to the car and driving back to Hallstatt.

Back in Hallstatt, we walked to a nearby supermarket to grab snacks, since we had skipped lunch. We then walked through the cute main street area before we headed up and up to the Catholic church in the town, which has a commanding view. Additionally, it has an interesting graveyard with (mostly) carved wooden grave markers. Since space was crowded in Hallstatt, bodies only stayed in the grave for ten or twelve years before being dug up to make room for the newly dead. So, there are not many old markers in the graveyard, although the digging-up of bodies for space has gone away since the Catholic church started allowing cremation in the 1960s.

So, where did the dug-up bones end up? In the basement of the small chapel on the grounds, dedicated to St. Michael. In the charnel house, there are several hundred decorated skulls arranged around the room, sitting above stacked bones. The skulls are decorated with paintings of flowers, as well as the name of the deceased and the years of birth and death. Meredith and I both have a fascination with crypts and the like, so we spent several minutes in the room before visiting the small but pretty chapel above. The preaching lectern was huge, taking up a good quarter of one wall.

We walked around the church, happening to catch the end of a wedding in the Protestant church below; we think they set off a cannon three times while we were in the tomb below the main church, which was an alarming place to be when hearing cannon fire. We went in the church itself and looked around, and finished off by wandering the graveyard and looking at all of the individual touches on the graves and grave markers.

We walked back down to the main street and back to our B and B before going and getting pizza for supper. We were both hammed and fried out after a week of fried foods and ham. We got back to our room and had a good time watching the storm move in over and around the mountains. The clouds moved up and down different mountains as the wind blew. It was very pretty to see from inside a safe and dry room.

I knew today was going to be rough — my body does not do well in the heat, and it was supposed to be hot today — “Increased heat stress must be expected,” according to the German version of Weather Underground. It was supposed to get to around 90 today, and we only have so much time to be in Austria, so sitting out a hot spell was not really an option, and there are only so many salt mines to visit, so it was going to be a hot day.

Up front, I have to give Meredith a ton of credit. She knows how badly I do in the heat, and she did everything she could to help me today. She walked in the shadows, and read from our Rick Steves tour book in the shade. She let me rest and eat something twice in cafes during the day. When I got really bad late in the afternoon, she was patient while I sat in the shade not moving for about ten minutes, and then we went inside to a museum. She is a trooper; I did my best to stay upbeat.

Enough of that — it was hot, and I struggled late in the day. For the actual touring part of the day, we saw Salzburg. All of it. At least that is what it seemed like — we walked all over the old town area all day, so we covered a lot of it.

We started the day with a real treat for me — we toured a working town glockenspiel. Near the cathedral are the residence halls of the prince/archbishops who ruled Salzburg for five hundred years. The New Residence (from the 1600s) was outfitted with a glockenspiel (hammered bells that play a tune — think a huge music box) around 1700. Twice per week you can actually tour the entire thing — the mechanism and the bells — and see it playing when it runs at 11:05 am.

We had a tour of five — me and Meredith, a German-speaking couple, and a woman from near Toronto. Our guide was a young woman from southern Germany, and she did a great job giving the tour both in English and in German. We got to climb up two flights of stairs in the highly ornate stairwell of the New Residence hall, then we climbed up a wooden staircase to a heavy door opened with a heavy key, which led up another set of wooden steps to the mechanism, which was huge. The giant wheel which plays the tune has 8,000 holes in it, and they change out bolts in these holes once a month to change the tunes. The bolts hit little hammers, which yank on wires, which go up to hammers on the individual bells, and the hammers hit the bells. It is all genius, and it was all run by a clockwork mechanism that was wound three times per day until it was bypassed for an electric motor. Very cool.

After we got to see the glockenspiel wheel in action, we climbed up a ladder to the roof, for spectacular views of Salzburg and close-up views of the 35 bells and their individual hammer wires. It was high enough (about a hundred feet) that I mostly looked at the bells, but I managed to glance at the city a few times.

After we climbed back down and ended the tour, Meredith had us set off on Rick Steves’ recommended old town walking tour. The walk takes you past most of the important sights in the city, which is fun to wander around in — lots of squares, interesting streets, tons of people to watch, great churches, natural beauty all around. We saw a ton of things, of which I’ll cover the places we actually stopped in to look around.

We first stopped in at the cathedral. It is huge, as you might expect a cathedral to be. This cathedral is from the early 1600s, replacing one that burned down. It was built fairly quickly, taking less than twenty years, so the the inside and outside of the church are all of one style. The inside is mostly white, with elaborate stucco work and magnificent paintings on the ceiling and domes. The church has five organs, so music still plays an important part in Sunday services, even today.

We then meandered over to St. Peter’s Cemetery. Meredith and I have an interest in cemeteries in that they tend to be in beautiful places, and seeing the graves can be interesting — the individual nature of the headstones, memorials to the loved one, and so on. In addition to all of these things, this cemetery has a staircase inside the cliff that leads to two chapels that were (supposedly) used by cliff-dwelling hermits. After we looked in the cliff chapels, we also went in to St. Peter’s Church, which is no small church itself. It is a little darker inside than the cathedral, but it still has a lot of art inside.

We made our way over to the old market street and walked down to the house where Mozart was born. I’m sheepish to admit our main motivation for going inside was to use the bathroom (the public bathrooms were closed), but we did go through the house and read about Mozart’s family life, which was interesting to me. I was not aware that he had a very talented sister who toured with Mozart and their father until she was 17 years old.

After Mozart’s house we took the funicular up to the astonishingly massive castle on top of the hill/cliff overlooking the old town. It takes up over eight acres and has over fifty buildings, and multiple levels of walls and defenses. It was never attacked, which was probably what the prince/archbishop was hoping for during the Thirty Years’ War and other potential conflicts.

The castle has several things to see — a tower tour that we took, which involved a lot of stairs and spectacular views for Meredith while I stayed safely back from the edge. It has some small museums that we visited as well. There were the prince’s rooms, which are all decked out as they think they were back in the 1400s. We toured a museum on an Austrian regiment that was stationed at the castle at one point, which Meredith found particularly interesting since they fought on the Italian front in World War One (Meredith teaches a book about World War One from the perspective of a German soldier). There was a very cool armor display, where the armor was all in action/attacking poses, held up by wires, including shot arrows and cannon balls. We saw some models of the fortress over the centuries, and a wonderfully fun mechanical theater show about the archbishop from the fifteenth century who made Salzburg into an economic powerhouse. We even checked out the small marionette museum on the grounds.

That ended our touring for the day. After a supper in a restaurant near the castle, we walked back to the river, where we watched it and people pass by until out bus showed up and took us home as the day finally cooled off.

Today was an odd mirror of yesterday, in that we went to the same areas. We did see different things, which was great, and Meredith did a great job of helping me to manage the heat (the temperatures were in the high 80s).

We started the day off going back to Berchtesgaden, Germany, which is about a twenty-minute drive away. We were there to take the hour-and-a-half tour of the salt mine, which is still active, although the active part is about six hundred and fifty feet below the level on which the old mine is located.

I love knowing how things work, so I was already interested in the mine tour. Add in that it was in the low 60s in the mine, and the tour started on a mine train (narrow and low ceiling), and I was hooked.

It was great. We learned how the pre-1900 miners manually carved at rock (to the tune of about an inch per day), then moved up to pneumatic drilling and blasting (about six feet per day) and finally moved up to a modern drilling machine in 2000. I learned that water is injected into drilled vertical holes, and it slowly dissolves the salt out of the rock. This water is pumped in fresh every two years, and it takes thirty years for a cavern to form and be ready to pump the salty brine out of. I had no idea it took that long to get salt out of a modern mine.

We had to get dressed in working overalls, and we got to use two wooden slides that miners used to use to get down to the next level. Since these slides were over 150 feet long, we got up some speed. It was great.

We got to take a boat across a brine lake that reflected the ceiling because of all the particles in the water (it was 27% salt, compared with 3-4% for ocean water). They lowered the lights in the cavern, and we got to see a programmed light show, which had nothing to do with mining, but was very beautiful.

The entire tour lasted over an hour in the mine, and I never felt bored (ha!). It was much fun, and I actually did learn a fair amount.

We then drove slightly south to Germany’s largest lake, Konigssee. Konigssee is a protected national park, and the lake is large and deep, stretching over 4.5 miles in length and reaching depths of up to 650 feet. Swimming is allowed, although the water is very cold, but the only boats allowed on the lake are the special tour boats used to take tourists out to St. Bartholomew’s church, which is right on the lake, and to some hiking points beyond. We took the boat out to the church, which is about a thirty-five-minute trip.

The time was well spent. We had a guide who spoke in German and some halting English, but he was still really funny. Judging from the laughter around us, his German jokes were going over very well. He also played a trumpet for us, aiming it at an echo wall on a cliff that bordered the lake. It was eerie how exactly the sound came back. I know it has to since it is an echo, but it was so clear that it messed with my ears as to where it was coming from.
The church is very beautiful, white with onion-shaped domes typical of the region, with the domes painted red. It turns out the church itself is very small, with maybe a dozen pews. The main part of the building, the part away from the lake, is a restaurant and a souvenir shop.

Happily, as in all parts of this region, there were hiking trails, so we could get away from the crush of people. We stuck along the lake and even waded in a bit, although we did not stay in the water too long because the bottom of the lake is all small rocks that hurt to walk on. The water sure felt good, though.

We took our time, sitting on benches and admiring the setting. There were cliffs all around, and you could just make out Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest house on the top of one of the mountains. We also found it entertaining to watch the paragliders who were three thousand feet (or higher) above us as they floated around the mountains.

We wandered back to catch the boat, and hit the only rough part of the day — there was a long wait for the return boats. I did not keep track, but it felt like it was over half an hour, and while the line was inside a barn to be out of the sun, it also meant there was no breeze. Eventually we were heading back to the main parking area. Once there, we stopped at a restaurant that we had seen advertising two foods my brother insisted we try, which turned out to be very good and very filling (a dense mac and cheese, and a pancake-like pastry that was huge enough for us to share).

After we got back to our room on the outskirts of Salzburg, we stopped off in the room to rest for about thirty minutes and regroup. Mer wanted to go back downtown again, and it was her day, so even though I was pretty tired, we went back to the old town. I am very happy we did.

Mer’s plan was for us to walk along the mountain/cliff that overlooks the river and lower town. This whole cliff area used to be all defensive, with walls and towers dating back to the late 1300s, and it ends in the magnificent castle on the far side of town. Many of the old walls and towers still exist, and some of the towers have been converted into cool-looking private homes. In addition, many of the new homes have been built in a castle-looking style, so the whole area looks like a fortress, stretching for a mile. And we did all of this as the sun was going down, so we had another evening of spectacular lighting of buildings.

One interesting thing that happened on the walk was the church bells — as we got off the public elevator that can take you to the top, all the major church bells started tolling; it was 8:00 pm. They all tolled for five full minutes, and since the lower town has a cliff at the back, the echoes were everywhere. Plus, Salzburg has over thirty churches, and while they were not all ringing their bells, the biggest ones were certainly chiming in. It was an incredible sound.

We ended the evening by sitting by the river for twenty minutes while waiting for the bus. It was a random Thursday evening about 9:30, but the place was bustling. This from a city not quite the size of Akron. We both agreed that Europeans have a livelier community life, and we both like that very much — it feels festive.

We got launched today and were on the road around 9:00, leaving Hall behind. I was a little sad to leave the Tirol region behind since we left a lot of cool-sounding things undone. Next trip to Austria.

We headed northwest, going into Germany, then back into Austria, and finally back into Germany. Wait, you say! Your trip was to Austria! This was the start of Meredith’s days of the trip, and Meredith is dedicated to the travel writer Rick Steves. For some reason (proximity, I assume), Rick Steves includes a small corner of Germany in his Austria book, so Meredith considers it fair game. This is okay since today was very interesting to me; plus, the area is so beautiful.

We drove to the town of Berchtesgaden, where we stopped at a tourist information building, where we were to pick up a bus to go tour Obersalzberg, the mountain retreat of Hitler, which includes the mountain-topping Kehlsteinhaus (the Eagle’s Nest). That sounded very exciting to someone like myself who is interested in history, especially modern history. We got there around 11:30, and the tour was at 1:00, so we had some time.

This was a case of Meredith being cautious, and for good reason. With the influx of refugees, we were told sometimes Germany checks passports at the border, and sometimes not. When they do check them, the wait can be an hour. Today we did not have that problem — the guards waved us by without us stopping. However, the extra time was appreciated by me in that I was not usually very happy getting out of the slow lane, especially in Germany. The highway was two lanes, and as far as I can tell, either by choice or by law, the heavy truck traffic cannot go faster than 50 or 55 mph. But, in Germany, the speed limit was almost 80 mph, which meant some cars were pushing 90. So, if you are in the slow lane, and you want to pass, you need to wait for an opening large enough that the 30-40 mph difference is not going to be an issue. Mostly, I sat behind trucks.

That said, it took two and a half hours to get to Berchtesgaden instead of two, so I was happy to have the extra time. We used it to grab a light lunch at a cafe, and then we walked along the river and then up the hill into the old town. By the time we spent ten minutes there, we had to head back to where we were meeting our bus.

Our German guide spoke excellent English, and she gave us little radio receivers to hear her even when the group spread out, as often happened in the confined spaces we were visiting. We drove up the mountain in a full-sized tour bus, which I was happy to let someone else do. The guide gave us background on Hitler, some of which I either had not known or had forgotten — both of Hitler’s parents died before he was a young man, he applied to art school and did not get in, he seems to have lived an itinerant/homeless life for a few months, and started reading about politics in the men’s homes he stayed at. He was in WW 1 for the German army (the Austrians, his home country, said he was not physically fit to serve in the Austrian army), and his eyes were injured with mustard gas toward the end of the war. He quickly worked his way up through the Nazi party, and helped plan a revolt against the government, which failed, and he served nine months in prison for treason, where he wrote volume one of Mein Kampf. As he rose to be the German Chancellor, the Nazis pressured and bullied people into selling their property on the mountain so Hitler and the high officials of the Nazi party could have a retreat and planning center where Hitler’s home was.

Enough background — we got off the bus on the main living level of the mountain, which housed 250 soldiers and various officials, had a kindergarten, and had Hitler’s home as well as the homes of several top generals and officials. Almost all of the buildings were destroyed by the Allies to keep the area from becoming some sort of shrine to Hitler, but a few buildings remain, and our guide pointed out where the various missing buildings used to be. I had not known that the mountain was under American control as a recreation area for U.S. troops until 1995, when it was returned to the German government. They built a museum showing how Hitler rose to power, how people put their hope in him, and the disastrous results of Hitler’s ideas and programs. It looked like it was really well done, but we had to walk though it for the sake of time — we were trying to get to the bunkers.

There were over four miles of tunnels and bunker built, but they were not started until 1943 when the officials started to sense the war was turning. As such, some of the bunkers and tunnels were never finished or connected up, and a couple of tunnels were not discovered until as recently as 2000. That was actually very interesting, though, as we could see the process of how building bunkers and tunnels actually happened – drilling out rock, then cement, then brick, then waterproofing, then more brick and cement. The walls of the most important bunkers were five feet thick.

We toured through several tunnels, and got to see where the French had carved graffiti in May of 1945. The area surrendered peacefully (the Nazis left just before the Americans and French got there), so the few places damaged by shrapnel or bombs were damaged by soldiers blowing off steam. We got to see large shelter areas that could hold 300 people and the partially installed machine gun nests that were supposed to guard the entrances. It was all very fascinating to me.

We all then boarded another bus that took us up and up and up Hitler’s private road to the Eagle’s Nest retreat. The road and the Eagle’s Nest were a 50th birthday present to Hitler from the Nazi party, at the minor cost of about $300 million (in today’s money): the most expensive works project since Mad King Ludwig’s castle in Neuschwanstein sixty years before. I had not known that the Eagle’s Nest was a day-retreat house — there were no bedrooms. Hitler is recorded as only going there fourteen times. Happy birthday indeed.

The Eagle’s Nest was going to be blown up by the Allies in 1950, but the German government asked that it be spared, as it had no military value. The Allies agreed, as long as it never contained a museum to Hitler. The Germans put in a restaurant, which still serves food today.

The Eagle’s Nest is most easily accessed from the parking lot by a long tunnel and an elevator (both of which are mostly original) that travels up over 300 feet. You can then climb on a path even higher, past a cross monument to the workers who died building the road (about ten or so, most from a mudslide), and up to several hiking trails. Meredith and I climbed up to a good high point, where she relaxed and wondered at the view from about 6100 feet, while I tried to not freak out.

We had a total of about an hour of free time up on the Eagle’s Nest, and then we went back to the nerves-of-steel driver and his bus, which took us back to the tour bus, which took us back to town and to our car. The entire trip took a little over four hours. It was a great tour, although I would have loved an afternoon in the museum. Happily, we had a beautiful day today to tour and admire the mountains — often the Eagle’s Nest is fogged in, so we were fortunate.

Back at the car, we drove on to Salzburg, about twenty minutes away, where we checked into our farm B and B. Some farms rent out a few rooms to supplement their income, and that is where we were staying, on the edge of Salzburg, but still on the urban bus line.

One of the more interesting things to do in a foreign country where you do not speak the language is to try to figure out mass transit. After settling in our rooms, we were told by our hostess to catch bus 21 into the city. We forgot to ask where to pick it up on returning, and that got interesting. Obviously, we managed, but it involved spotting the #21 bus and jogging to catch it as it pulled in a half-block away from where we thought it was going to pick us up. And then we had to listen very carefully for the announcement of our stop, since we were more or less listening for sounds that sounded like the name of our stop, since we did not understand the words themselves. It all worked out.

Anyway, we took the bus into the city center and the old town section of Salzburg, which boasts the most impressive castle I have seen anywhere. It is huge. The old town also has several churches of such huge size, I thought we had found the cathedral at one point when we had not. That will mess up your navigation by landmarks.

We grabbed some stir-fry for supper, and then ice cream for dessert (“large” does not seem to translate well, as I got one scoop). We then trekked across the river to the medieval part of the city, because the old town was not old enough. Along the way, we had an amazing sunset that kept lighting up buildings in brilliant ways. We wandered the narrow main street of the medieval city, coming through its old main gate. We did get to see a building whose corner was damaged by an American in a tank when the tank did not quite fit. The building has since been renovated, but the scar was left as a reminder about how narrow the street was. I heeded it and did not take my tank down there.

We wandered across the river and back along the river, very much enjoying the cool evening and watching Austrians at play along the river and in bars and cafes. It is a fine place, made better by the fact we figured out how to get home.

We got off to a later start this morning; we slept in until 8:00, and after breakfast, I had to do internet research on what to do with the day. The problem with Tirol is that is has a ton of worthwhile things to do, so I had to narrow it down a bit. We finally got underway around 10:45.

We first headed west to Mieders, a small town in a valley surrounded by mountains, one of which has a glacier on it — very much still snow-capped in June. We were there to ride the Alpine slide/toboggan. It has the self-claim of being the steepest track in the Alps, and while not the longest, it is nothing to sneer at at 2.8 km long (about 1.7 miles). We arrived and were told that we had to wait for thirty minutes for the track to dry from the overnight rain. We still bought two-ride ticktes (Mer had remembered they are cheaper that way). We discovered while riding a much-shorter slide last year in Slovenia that you want two rides — one to see how the track goes and to take it easy for seeing the sights, and one for speed.

We passed the time chatting with a grandmother from Virginia and her husband from England and their granddaughter from Kansas City. They were very nice, and after about a half hour, the track opened. We rode up the fairly fast gondola with a German couple who were driving about Europe in an RV.

When we got to the top, we got in the short line for the toboggan, and had a few minutes to enjoy the scenery. The mountains here were spectacular, and could be seen easily, since the morning clouds were starting to break up. After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, it was show time!

Mer went first, and about 30 seconds later I got to go. What a rush. It is a beautiful, amazing, fast, wild ride. You control your own speed on a toboggan, as long as you do not hit the person in front. We both could take it easy along good sections of the track, and then let it run free on some of the steep drops. The track went into a dense forest area, and the temperature dropped and you could smell the trees, all while whizzing along. Even the fastest rider takes over four minutes to get to the bottom, and most riders take longer than that.

We both had successful first rides, and jumped right back on the gondola, which we shared with one quiet German man. When we got to the top, we took time to sit on a deck chair and enjoy the beauty around us. We wandered around a couple of small man-made ponds on a trail, mostly to see the mountains from different angles — you could even just catch a glimpse of the side of the glacier a couple of mountains away. We took our time walking, and then headed back for the speed run.

Which turned out to be just okay. I don’t know if it was the sleds we got on, or if they are all like that, but mine did not feel like it was running free (clear of the brake). Even when I had the speed control all the way forward, it felt like something was dragging. I did the entire run at full speed and never felt like I had to brake until the last three very sharp turns. It was still a fun run, but not quite the heart-pounding speed I had hoped for. Mer said hers was the same way. I kicked around buying one more ticket to see if it was a fluke, but the tickets were not cheap and I was afraid we would get the same experience again. It was still a ton of fun, and as Meredith pointed out, we’d gotten to ride Alpine slides in the actual Alps.

We jumped back in the car and drove west to the town of Rattenberg. I had seen on a Tirol tourism site that Rattenberg was known for glass blowing, and had live demonstrations. I love decorative glass, so away we went.

We got to “the smallest town in Austria” (according to the map I picked up) and I was delighted to see it had some castle ruins, and it had another site I had seen online but had not realized was in the same town — the Augustiner Museum. It is a Christian artifact and art museum in an old Augustine monastery. Plus, we found out from the brochure, the four-euro ticket got you entrance to the church attic and the bell tower — the only such climbs you can make in a working church in Austria. We went there first.
Since Mer and I both love religious art and history, the place was amazing. Despite the tour buses that crammed into the main street of the town to buy up glass, we had this museum in a back corner of town all to ourselves. There were tons of paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries (the monastery was built in the late 1300s). Mer pointed out that this random little museum in a dinky town had a collection that would make the core of a great regional museum back home. It is good to be a European Catholic church — you have old things.

One altar had a jointed Jesus on it so he could move for Passion Week plays — we had never seen anything like that. The figure could even move its tongue. There were some very striking paintings covering four hundred years, and it was nice to be able to compare the styles and how they changed.

The treasury room held gold and silver vessels for church services, including crosses, host containers (for the wafers for communion), silver book covers, and more. Again, a little town, which, granted, used to be very wealthy, has a room full of silver and gold objects, most of which were two hundred years old or older. Amazing.

We looked in the elaborately decorated church, and then went through the second floor of exhibits, and then we climbed up to the attic. The attic was an attic — it was full of more old figures and art. That was good in its way, but what was amazing to us was we could climb up over the ceiling of the church, between the ceiling and the real roof. We got to see all the structure that held the ceiling up; since the ceiling was mostly plaster, it could not support its own weight, so there were beams holding the ceiling up, quite separate from the beams holding the roof up. You could walk all around the entire area and even see the superstructure of the main dome. Very, very cool.

Then we climbed all the way up through the bell tower, to a level one level above the bell (no one knows exactly why there was an additional level). Interestingly, the bell tower was made of timber and not stone because it was added on to the existing abbey, and so the usual massive foundation could not be set up. We got to the see the old clock mechanism (the clock itself was removed in a renovation in the 1800s) and the old bells. The views from the top of the tower were excellent, and I did not freak out too badly (I’m scared of heights). We climbed down and looked on one more room of items we had missed, and then left the museum. That was eight euros very well spent.

The town of Rattenberg is very cute, built between a cliff and the Inn River. As such, the layout of the town is much the same as it has been for hundreds of years. Some glass companies opened stores here around 1900, and it has since become a center of glass objects and art. The only downside was the town was overrun by tourists — the town is a stop for some tour buses, and so it was more crowded that I would have wished.

We ducked into the main glass store I had wanted to see, where they have live glass blowing. The place was amazing — I have never seen so much fine glass artwork, and never in so many styles and colors. We watched a glass blower work for a few minutes before I decided to check out a small opening in the wall. It led to an artificial cave full of thematically arranged glass objects. That “cave” led to another “cave” of glass art, and that “cave” led to a REAL cave. The real cave was damp and cool, and the glass company (Schauglasblaserei) had set up an open-air cabin in it, with two dummies (a man and a woman) sitting at a table with place settings and roses all made of glass. It was not what we were expecting at all. We made our way back out of the cave and the store and into the street. I wanted to check out the castle.

You can walk up to the castle, and it is of course up. We huffed our way up to the top, where we had great views of the Inn valley, the town, and the surrounding mountains. The keep of the castle, which seems to be intact, was locked up, which was disappointing. We rested a bit at the top, and took an easier way back to town. To finish up our visit to Rattenberg, we walked along the paved trail along the Inn (it seems as if Austrians have paved trails along every river, which is amazing).

Back at the car, I got us back on the highway going west back toward Hall, but I got off at Wattens (home of the barfing giant, as you may remember). We kept going, and then up, and up, and up, until we reached Wattenberg at 3,280 feet. I wanted to have supper here, and was surprised to not find a small village as I had envisioned, but a scattering of buildings. We stopped next to what turned out to be a restaurant, but they were closed. A man there told us in broken English to “go 500 meters, left, then down!” We did that, and we found Gasthof Sage, a restaurant next to an unexpected soccer pitch and basketball court.

We went in, and were told, in very limited English, that it was a special evening, and they would have to check to see if they could seat us. They did, and we sat. The special evening was that the restaurant was only serving a traditional area food called krapfen. We had no idea what that was, but we were hungry and charmed at finding something so far off the beaten tourist path, so we said we would try it. It turned out to be a fried turnover stuffed with potato and cheese. You bought them piecemeal, and so Mer and I each had five with the understanding that we would have a second supper back at the hotel so that our only supper would not consist of only fried pastry.

That was a great travel experience, and the servers were very patient with their limited English and our nonexistent German. We drove back home, and I even managed to look away from the winding downhill road once or twice to see the amazing views around us. Then I looked back at the road, which was too narrow and too steep for my liking.

Happily, by then we had found out the name of the dish. So, when we were at a narrow place in the road with an oncoming car and pedestrians on the side of the road, I got to mutter, “Get the krapfen out of my way!” Several other witty remarks like that were made during the evening, because our humor is both juvenile AND culturally insensitive.

We got back to the hotel, tired after a long day, and we did eat a second supper in the hotel restaurant. That left us in good shape to go back to the room and take it easy. Mer and I split time “being in charge” on vacation, and after four days of my saying what we should do, I hand the authority over to Meredith for the next six days. This head will not miss the crown for awhile — it is hard trying not to screw up. Happily, the last four days went well, even with some rain. Here is to Mer having even better success!