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!

Today was happily surreal at times — mountains coming slowly out of hiding, corporate Austria doing something right, and roads far too narrow for traffic going both ways.

Meredith and I had a rough night sleeping — I had a pulled muscle in my neck which was causing a headache and thus a stomachache, and it was really hot in our room. My getting up to get some aspirin woke Meredith up because she was not sleeping well because of the heat. I fixed it by opening the window, which worked, but then the birds woke us up early before dawn, so I closed it again.

We finally woke up for real to the alarm at 8:00 and got ready, including going to the expensive, but convenient, hotel buffet. I then splurged on a taxi to take us the two miles to the car rental place, where a very kind and patient young man got us our car — an Opel five-speed. Once we got underway, we drove the short drive to Hall, where we’ll be staying the next two nights.

Hall is an old salt mining town that has a good-sized old town section. It is located on the Inn River like Innsbruck, and it is surrounded by mountains. We got to our hotel about two hours early, but the room was ready, so they let us in. It is a brand-new room (they came in around 3:00 to put up shelves in the bathroom), located on the third (top) floor with a private balcony overlooking the Inn, the old town, and the mountains beyond. We were delighted.

We crossed over the covered pedestrian bridge to the town, and we explored all of the old town. Though it had not rained all day, the mountains started off the day shrouded in clouds, but while we were in the old town, one mountain came out fully from the clouds, so we grabbed a seat outside at a cafe and ate while soaking in the mountain.

Exploring the old town took a couple of hours (it is not too big, and the main church is closed for renovations), and then we went back to the hotel to regroup. I decided we should check out the Swarovski Kristallwelten (Crystal Worlds). Some background — we saw some billboards in Innsbruck of a giant shrubbery head, with water coming out of its mouth. I thought it was a fantasy picture, and jokingly told Mer it looked like a giant barfing, because that is the quality of humor I aspire to. It turns out the head is real, and when I realized that from a poster today in Hall, I got curious. It turned out to be a park made by the Swarovski Company, which makes crystal. I was skeptical that a commercial company could make anything worthwhile to visit as a tourist attraction, but the website mentioned gardens and art, and I like art in gardens. And I wanted to see the barfing giant.

It was a short drive of about fifteen minutes. We parked in outer Mongolia (or outer Tirol, if you will), because I assumed, wrongly, that the main lot would be full. Ooops. At least the mountains were mostly out from behind the clouds now, so the five-minute walk to the gate was pretty.

We got our tickets and entered the Crystal Worlds just next to and under the giant’s mouth (after the mandatory Meredith picture next to the giant). It was a room full of art showcasing crystals, which were cool, but pretty typical kinds of art. Given the number of tourists who came in with us, I thought it was going to be a long afternoon. But, two things happened — we went into the next room, where the “worlds” actually started, and after just a couple of rooms, we were slow enough that the group left us and went ahead.

The crystal worlds were varied, and each room contained one. Some were good, some amazing, some not so great, but all of them were elaborate and showcasing some use of crystal or drawing on the Swarovski technicians to implement. There was a room with robotic people giving a fashion showcase and dancing — very weird but interesting. The room where I knew I was going to be okay was the crystal dome. You walked inside a huge round room with mirrored facets everywhere. The effect was incredible — and any sound you made came back to you, and localized to you; so I could hear an echo of myself when I spoke, but not when Meredith spoke. The light kept changing in the room, so everything reflected in the room (including us) kept changing. We spent about ten minutes just in that room.

My favorite room was called “Eden.” It was a bronze forest set up in a dimly lit corridor, and the corridor was lined with mirrors. Since the “trees” broke up the direct reflection, you did not immediately see yourself in a bunch of mirrors. Instead, the room gave a very real feeling of being in a huge forest, and I could only make out the mirrors by the line in the floor where the mirror met the floor. It was very effective.

There were about a dozen “worlds” in all, and it was worthwhile. Meredith admitted she was skeptical about the place too since it was a corporate commercial, but she ended up finding it fascinating as well. And all of that was before we got to the gardens, but first we had to get through the gift store, where we managed not to buy (or break) a $17,000 crystal-studded tiger or leopard.

Out on the grounds, we followed a path up to an observation tower that overlooked the shrubbery maze that was shaped like a hand. The mountains were all out now, so it was a great spot. We wandered down to the maze and started taking random paths. We actually ended up finding the center of the maze, quite by accident, and then got back out, with a few wrong turns.

We clambered over and around the outside playground area, which looked like wooded ocean waves, and then we headed into the five-story indoor playground, where “children of all ages” were encouraged to play. Mer was happy because the hostess spoke little English, but very good Italian, so she was able to explain to Meredith how the lockers worked (to store our backpack in) and how we had to take our shoes off. The, we started playing.

The rolling wooden hill was okay, if a little tough in socks — slipping was easy. The FOUR-STORY rope web that we could climb had to be abandoned after I found out that 170 pounds on ropes on bare feet hurt. That was sad. I’m still impressed at a company that can build something that high without giving too much thought to liability.

We liked the trampoline level, and even though the trampolines were small (only about three feet across), they worked surprisingly well. It turns out my sore knee did not like the landing part, so I had to stop. The last level was a giant web — there was no real floor; it was a mesh that looked down on the trampoline level. It was much fun to see parents and grandparents playing with little kids, and we had a good time laughing ourselves.

The last major sight to see was the Crystal Clouds. These were mesh “clouds” filled with crystals that sparkled in the sun and gently banged against each other, making a gentle tinkling sound. There were thirty or more individual clouds, and they were very effective. Many of them were located over a reflecting pool, which must be quite a sight at night (the clouds are lit at night too). You could walk out on a descending ramp into the pond, so that you were waist deep in the water, but completely dry and surrounded by clouds.

So, yes, the place was a giant commercial for the wonders of Swarovski crystal, but they did it very well. We both left impressed. We hiked back to the car, and I took us over to a very small village near Hall, called Thaur.

I found out about Thaur from a tourism pamphlet that Mer happened to grab, and it looked pretty, was close to Hall, and boasted the oldest preserved church in Tirol. We arrived there after a few tight turns on narrow roads, and headed over to the biggest church. We entered through a graveyard, and looked at a few headstones to look at names and dates and the few that had photos on them, and then we headed into the church, which was still open, even at 6:15. The inside was covered in murals, the alter was gilded, and the place was beautiful, all for, as Mer pointed out, a dinky little town in the middle of nowhere. We were not (and still are not) sure that this was the old church, as there were no signs, but since the floor had old gravestones in it, and they were worn almost smooth, we decided to say we had found it.

We left the church and wandered some up toward the mountains toward a small chapel up the hill, and some ruins of an old castle, but I decided to give up, as I was not sure the road we were on went there (it did, as I found out later when I looked it up on a map). Also, it was getting close to 6:30, and we still needed supper.

So, I drove more winding, narrow streets, including a fun encounter with a determined SUV, back to Hall. We walked into Hall from our hotel and grabbed supper at the Goldener Engl, a restaurant my brother recommended from when he was here two weeks ago.

So, we had a good weather and a good-in-general day today. The weather is supposed to be very fine tomorrow, so I am hoping to get up into the mountains to see them up close.

I was momentarily quite angry when Mer’s alarm went off at 7:00 this morning — I could not remember why her alarm would be going off when I was so deep in sleep. I quickly remembered where I was and so that was fine, but it was an indication that my body was still not quite rested.

It was raining and was supposed to rain most of the time at least through early afternoon, but we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant, where they had an impressive spread for a buffet, including having small Milka chocolate bars. You have to love a country where chocolate bars are considered part of breakfast.

We finished getting ready and headed out into the light Innsbruck rain, looking for Freien Evangelikalen Gemeinde Innsbruck – an evangelical church that has live English translation (as well as Farsi, which is interesting). We did make one wrong turn under my skillful navigation, but while we were pondering our map, we were able to help out a German cyclist who was looking for the River Inn, and could not tell direction because of the lack of sun. Applaud the power of paper maps! At any rate, we did finally find the church, about five minutes after the start of service. I was fairly amused that the church met on the third floor of a building that housed a pool hall.

The service was excellent. They had maybe 75 people there, and we were later told that the church had attendees from 20-25 countries. The service was conducted in German for the most part, and the over-headsets English translation was used as the lingua franca for the rest of the congregation (except for the Farsi speakers, who had their own translation). Many of the songs sung had some English verses, and one was entirely in English. Of the ones that were in German, most were German translations of songs we sing back in New Baltimore, so we knew the tunes well, so we could concentrate on trying to sing the German words being projected in the front of the church. Meredith did better with that than I did, but that is okay.

We had to concentrate on the sermon, as it turns out to be difficult to hear someone speaking quiet English in your ear as someone else speaks full-volume German. Of course, having to concentrate is not a bad thing when you are trying to pay attention. The sermon text was based on the exchange in Mark 10 in which Peter points out that the disciples had left everything for Jesus. Jesus replies that any who leave mother and brothers and homes will gain a hundred mothers and brothers and homes in the life to come. So, the sermon was that even if it can be hard to give up things for Jesus (like jobs or friends), it is worth it in the end. The pastor told of his own experience of leaving a bank job right after getting married, in order to go to seminary. Some of his friends thought he was crazy, and they drifted away. He himself did not know how he was going to make ends meet, but he said that in retrospect it has been easy to see how it was worth it. It was a good mixture of scripture and personal testimony, and worth hearing.

We chatted with the pastor and then the assistant pastor and then the piano player, all of whom were very friendly and spoke good or even excellent English. We think one of the great ways to experience local culture in a foreign country is to go to church, and this was a great experience. It was also a good reminder that God does not just speak English and love America. He is a little bigger than that….

We walked the twenty minutes back to the hotel in the still-light rain. I did some quick research on some things to do that would be indoors, and I settled on the Museum of Tyrolean Regional Heritage and the connected Court Church where Emperor Maximilian’s impressive (but empty) tomb monument is located.

The museums are in the old town area, and we were getting quite good at navigating that part of Innsbruck. The museum is excellent — it is three floors of well-laid-out exhibits. The first floor featured Tyrolean hand-carved nativity scenes. There were about twenty of them in all, so it made comparison very easy. Some were just three figures (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph), while some were very elaborate, with Tyrolean landscapes and dozens of figures. Many of the nativity scenes dated back to the 1800s or earlier, but they also included several from 1950 and on. They also put the viewer in one room “inside” a nativity set by using a projected film of a standard set being assembled, and the film covered three walls. It was quite effective.

The second floor had two major exhibits. One was a series of complete “Stube” rooms, about a dozen in all. Stube rooms were wood-paneled rooms with a ceramic stove in the corner. These rooms were used for family life and social occasions, and the stove was fed from the other side of the wall from the kitchen to keep the stube clear of smoke. Seeing a dozen of the rooms in quick succession gave us a good chance to compare the simpler ones with the more elaborate ones, and we felt like we got a good look at a small part of the Tyrolean culture.

The other major exhibit on the second floor was a church calendar carved in stone tiles on the floor that went around three sides of the museum courtyard. For each church holiday, there was a folk exhibit; it could be art of a saint, or farm tools for harvest, or costumes for a parade, but each was tied to the time of year suggested by the church calendar. It was a fascinating way to lay out the exhibit.

The third floor had exhibits dedicated to the folk arts (wood carving, iron making, furniture making, etc.), as well as some folk costumes from Tyrol from the past. The major exhibit on the third floor was dedicated to the issue of life and death and folk responses to these. So, it started with birth and the charms and folk customs associated with a safe birth. It progressed throughout life and included death and the customs around that. As you came to the end of the exhibit (death) a door automatically opened and if you went through it it led to a high vantage point behind the crucifix in Court Church. That was very cool.

We left the museum itself and went over to the church. The exhibit there started with a fun introduction to Emperor Maximilian. You sat in a room full of portraits of Maximilian, and a recorded narrator told us of some facts of his life. Then a door opened up on its own and we moved to the next room, where the voice talked about the Renaissance and Austria’s place in world politics during the time of Maximilian. Another door then opened up on its own and we went into a room that talked about Maximilian’s death. The entire thing was a smaller-scale Disney-style exhibit, and we loved it.

We wandered into the church itself, where the tomb is located. It is indeed very impressive. It is massive, and surrounded by twenty or more statues of people Maximilian admired or was friends with. The entire tomb took over 100 years to build, long after Maximilian died. He has never been moved from his original burying place of Wiener Neustadt in lower Austria, so the elaborate tomb is empty. One of the statues around the tomb is of King Arthur, so I got a picture of him with Meredith; the story is that Mer’s parents were going to name her Arthur had she been a boy, without realizing his name would have been Arthur King. I am fond of that story.

Maximillan was an interesting man. When he died, on his own orders, his head was shaved, all his teeth were knocked out, his body was flogged, and then covered in lime. He wanted to show how he did not want to hang on to his body and he wanted to repent from the sins he committed in the body. At the same time, he ordered the construction of one of the most elaborate tombs I have ever seen.

After we finished with the museums around 3:00, the rain had finally stopped, so I wanted to get into the mountains, a least a little. We headed over to the Innsbruck funicular (steep mountain train), which we took up to Hungerburg at 2,800 feet. We could have paid to take a cable car up even higher, but the mountain was in clouds, so we were content to look out over Innsbruck.

Almost. I decided we should take a hike up there, and so we did, even though it was uphill for fifteen minutes. I had hoped it would lead to some great views, but the mountain forest closed in almost immediately, and so after fifteen minutes, we turned around and headed back to the funicular station. After some leisurely gazing over the town, we took it back to the terminal near the old town. Before heading into the old city for supper, we trekked across the street and around the Imperial Gardens. They were very pretty, and we got to see some older men playing life-sized chess. It was only a short walk around the gardens, but it certainly woke my appetite. We found an Italian restaurant in the old town, where we had supper.

It started to rain again lightly as we walked back to the hotel, and since we were both still a bit tired from the trip over to Austria, we called it a night even though it was only 7:00. I drew Meredith a bath and started blogging. I’m hoping to be less shocked when the alarm goes off tomorrow.

Nowadays Meredith and I always fly out of Toronto when we fly to Europe. It is only about five hours away, and it not only costs much less than Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or Detroit, but it offers non-stop flights to most western European destinations. Like Munich. Even though we were aiming for Austria, flying into Munich from Toronto was much cheaper than flying to Vienna, Austria.

The one major downside to flying out of Toronto is that five-hour distance. When you add on the recommended three-hour arrival buffer for international flights, AND you add in the innate Riordan desire to arrive at least an hour earlier than recommended, AND you add in Riordan paranoia about traffic and border crossings and alien invasions and moose crossings, you (meaning me) arrive at the reasonable desire to leave a full twelve hours before your flight leaves at 8:10 pm.

We did not quite make that, leaving home around 9:00 am, but I compensated for that by deciding that lunch and supper should be combined into one meal at the airport itself. Genius! So, of course, after little traffic and an easy border crossing into Canada, we arrived at the airport in Toronto around 2:30 pm. For an 8:10 flight. Um. Yeah.

Still, it was not all bad in that I was relaxed about the time, even when we hit a huge line to drop bags off. I had checked in online, so I thought things would be easy, and they should have been — the line moved along quickly, and I got to a baggage tag kiosk that then promptly told me that it could not help me and directed me to another line to talk to a ticket agent. This line did not move along quite so well, but that was okay, given the five-plus hours we had. We got our bags taken care of, including being complimented by the ticket agent on our packing light, and we headed to security. Where there was a jaw-droppingly huge line. In fact, it turned out to be the biggest airport security line I have ever been in, taking us slightly over a full hour to get through. Who was being paranoid now? It took us over three hours to get from our car to our gate, so if we had showed up as recommended, it would have been very tight.

And, the generous three hours we had at the gate allowed for an expensive airport meal. Meredith was happy to get the Canadian equivalent of chili fries, which is poutine fries, which were covered in gravy, bacon, onions, and cheese curds. I had a more normal burger.

The flight was fine — smooth and uneventful. There was a vast movie selection (I went for Zootopia and Hail, Caesar!), and I even managed to sleep for about an hour and a half, which is not usual for me on a plane.

So we arrived in Munich. Baggage claim and passport control were a breeze — the easiest I have ever experienced, including walking up to the baggage carousel and grabbing our bags that were right in front of us — no waiting at all.

We found the train station with no issues and ran into our first challenge — buying a train ticket. There were touch-screen kiosks, and even English instructions, but we still did not understand everything we were looking at. I punched some buttons and got something that looked right for getting to Innsbruck, but the system would not take our credit card. An Austrian man came over and said something in German. We shrugged and asked if he spoke English, and he said he spoke a little. He then asked where we were going and took charge, punching buttons in a rapid manner and taking our cash (“No card!”) and giving us a ticket. He then held out his hand. I gave him two Euros ($2.50) and we jumped on the train just as it was about to pull out. That was kind, if a little self-interested, of the man, but we still had no idea what we were doing or what kind of ticket we had.

Meredith wisely scoped out a college-aged woman and asked if she spoke English. She did, and she was very helpful and kind. It turns out the man had bought us a ticket to the last town in Germany on the way to Innsbruck, and we could buy the remaining leg of the trip there. She was getting off at the same stop we needed to get off at to catch the southern train, and she printed us a schedule from a machine and got us pointed in the right direction. I am always grateful for the kindness of strangers.

And so, after another transfer and another kind man confirming we were on the right train platform, and after managing to more or less fight sleep for two-plus hours on a very scenic train ride, we arrived in Innsbruck. It was raining lightly as we arrived, but it stopped as we left the station. Along the way we were coincidentally greeted by a Vespa scooter parade — odd things like this are some of the joys of traveling.  We made our way to our fun and funky boutique hotel (the Nala Hotel in Innsbruck — http://www.nala-hotel.at/en/), where we checked in and collapsed in bed. It was 3:00 pm local time, or 9:00 am back home — we had been in motion for 24 hours).

Years ago, Mer came up with a great way to beat jet lag and still enjoy the first day of touring — nap when you get to the hotel for two or three hours, then go to bed that evening at a normal time. It really works — the nap gives you enough rest to get through the remaining four or five hours of the day without feeling exhausted, and you can use those hours to do light touring (eating out and walking around the city).

So, we had a good Austrian meal next to the old town section of Innsbruck, and then we walked down both sides of the River Inn for a few blocks. When we got back to the the old town, we wanted to grab some ice cream, so we went back to the main shopping street, where we heard a piano player singing songs in English (he was quite good) and then a huge cheer. We investigated, and it was a public stage where hundreds of people were watching the EuroCup soccer match of Austria versus Portugal. That was fun to have a public viewing space like that, as well as all of the bars.

We grabbed some ice cream, and then wandered the city for awhile more, finding our way back to the hotel and then back to the old town area near the river to see if we could see any solstice fires in the mountains. Setting bonfires in the mountains on or about the solstice is a tradition in the area, but we did not see any for sure; we thought maybe one light in the mountains could be a fire, but it was not obvious. We are still hoping to catch some over the next few days.

So, we made our tired way back to the hotel, where I drew a bath for Meredith in our room’s very deep tub, and I blogged about the day. It was a smooth start to our Austrian Adventure.