Berchtesgaden and Munich Germany – 06/20 – 06/21

(Michelle) I will let TJ describe sights of Berchtesgaden. When we first arrived there, we grabbed a little food. I tried the local specialty, the name is escaping me – although I’m sure it ends in “zle” and it isn’t snitzle, but it is basically a really rich mac and cheese.

Munich – TJ wanted me to experience what he had the last time he was here, so we went on Mike’s Bike tour. There is nothing wrong with a bike tour that has an hour break in the middle at a beer garden. After that, we went to the famous Hofbrauhaus. We enjoyed a nice pint and a meatball dish that was quite good. We also met a couple from Montreal that goes on a month long camping trip every year. The guy is a professional story teller. I’m not really sure what that means, but if you can read French, his website is http://www.videanthrop.qc.ca/. The beer at the Hofbrauhaus is the freshest tasting beer I have ever had.

Since we were in a town with such great beer, we decided to do a Munich pub crawl in the evening. We met some very bizarre people on this pub crawl.

(TJ) Berchtesgaden – This was a day stop since it is right between Salzburg and Munich. Berchtesgaden was where top Nazi Party officials kept their summer residences and was their idealized home. All of the top party officials had houses here along with some Nazi Government buildings. Typically if you are watching a documentary about Hitler you will see film taken at Hitler’s villa at Berchtesgaden over looking mountains in the distance, it was also used as a place to meet foreign dignitaries. I was not quite sure what to expect other than I knew you could go up to the Eagles Nest, which was Hitler’s teahouse on top of a mountain that you have to ride an elevator to get to. What I found was that all of Nazi area buildings had been destroyed by the West German Government and the German Government in order to not become a shrine to Nazism. What they do have is an excellent Museum on the Nazi rise to power and the aftermath and Berchtesgaden in particular; we spent a good 4 hours in the museum. Below the Museum are old Bunkers left over from the war. The Nazis had intended in the closing days of the war for this to be fortress where they would fight a guerilla war. Thankfully this did not happen in part due to a drive to capture it before it could have been put to this use. The museum also covered after the war when the US Army took over the site and used it as an R+R base during the cold war up to right after the first Gulf War. You can definitely tell that there were US service members there in the bunkers with all of the graffiti on the concrete.

Munich – Still a great town with great beer. I wish we could of stayed here longer I know that there is a lot more to see. Hopefully one of these days I’ll be able to come back for Oktoberfest.

(Michelle) One more thing - the museum at Berchtesgaden had a section talking about "home life" for Hitler when he was in the area. Apparently every night he would give these long extremely dull monologue speeches to whoever was around, and they had to listen, but he would put everyone to sleep including himself. It is so weird to think about people who ruled so many people and ruined so many lives just sitting around boring everyone to tears.