Germany/Austria

For half term at the end of May, we set out for southern Germany (Bavaria). We were so excited to meet up with my Uncle Paul and Aunt Gertrud for a week. We had a such a lovely time. Good company, delicious food, gorgeous scenery and relaxation....what could be better? It was a bit of a long drive but the girls did very well in the car with their ipods and ipads etc. On the way there, we drove through Belgium. The girls loved the fact that in one day, we had breakfast in England, lunch in Belgium and dinner in Germany. Pretty cool! Above is a festival we attended in Inzell on the day after arriving. There were German bands in their lederhosen playing all over this little town. Loved the music, atmosphere and food! 

I couldn't resist taking a picture of these men in their lederhosen...so cute! We sat and listened to the band in the above picture for quite a while. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) while listening to the band, we were standing by a pastry cart and kept buying more and more pastries the longer we stayed. Of course, this was all after having some delicious bratwurst.

We sat for hours just listening and soaking up all the culture. Here is another little ensemble with two accordions and a harp...

Sammy and Alex in a lovely field in Inzell.

We stayed in a farm house in a tiny village called Weissbach in the German alps. It was only a half hour from Salzburg, Austria. This is the house next door. I love the flower window boxes on all the houses as well as the murals painted on many of them.

Here is a picture of the farm house we stayed in. Gorgeous green covered mountains surrounded it.

Here we are on the second day in Salzburg. This is just before going up to the big castle on the hill above us.

Charles bought the girls the biggest pretzel they have ever seen. They were so thrilled. It fed the entire family as well as Paul and Gertrud...

Here we are on our way up to the castle, stopping for a view and a "breather."

Salzburg

The girls were very interested to see Salzburg since it is where "The Sound of Music" was filmed. We watched the show for the hundredth time just before we left on our trip.  Here is Alex in a little theatre of marionette puppets, just like the ones in the movie!  

Here is a graveyard that looked very similar to the one in the second half of the movie when they hide behind the tombstones.  

Salzburg is also the birthplace of Mozart. Abby liked this since she loves to play many of his songs on the piano.



Sammy posing on Getreidegasse, a famous street with high, narrow houses tightly nestled together, enticing shops and wrought iron guild signs.

We think this fountain was also in the movie when Maria has just left the Abbey and is going to the Von Trapp house for the first time. She is singing and walks by it.

Abby wanted one of these dresses. Frankly, so did I.

Here is the view from the back of the farm house we stayed in.

Here is another view from the other side...

On the third day, we went to Chiemsee, a fresh water lake and took a boat out to Herreninsel Island (one of three islands there). There is a palace located on this island built by King Ludwig II in 1878 called Herrenchiemsee, which was never completed but was meant to be a replica of the Palace of Versailles. There was still enough of it that was completed though that there was plenty to see and it was quite impressive.

The girls enjoying the boat ride to the island.



In front of the palace

This palace was the most expensive one that Ludwig built and used 190,998 oz of gold worth around US$250,100,000 today. After spending all that money, Ludwig only had the opportunity to stay within the Palace for a few days in September 1885. After his death by drowning at the age of 40 in the following year, all construction work discontinued and the building was opened for the public.

We were amazed to see a snow covered mountain while driving and even see the snow blowing off the top on a clear, warm, sunny day. In fact, everywhere we drove, my mouth hung open in awe of these majestic, steep, rugged mountain. They were so impressive!

Berchtesgaden is another town we visited (not the one pictured above). We went there on two different days. The first day we visited, it was raining so we decided to go tour the salt mines. I did not take many pictures (though we have some of us in our little mining outfits, including Sadie in a tiny miner's outfit). It was very interesting since none of us had toured a mine before. We rode a coal train down into the mine and then took lifts and even long slides to get further into the mine. We learned all about mining salt and the girls loved it. The slides and train were the big highlight. The second day we went to Berchtesgaden, it was sunny, so we climbed a mountain.... 

On Thursday, we visited the Kehlsteinhaus (known as the Eagle's Nest in English-speaking countries) a Third Reich era edifice erected atop the summit of a huge mountain, rising above the town of Berchtesgaden. It was presented to Adolf Hitler on his 50th birthday as a retreat and place to entertain friends and visiting dignitaries. The girls found it funny that he rarely went up there though because he was afraid of heights. After driving part of the way, then taking a specially designed bus and then lastly a large elevator to get us to the summit, I must say, I don't blame him, especially if he was traveling in the cars built in his time. Alex was absolutely thrilled to see snow. We have not had any snow for several years in England, so it was very exciting. She could not stay away from it. She was eating it, rolling in it, building snowmen, making snow angels and singing FROZEN songs. She got completely soaked and was cold but she did not care at all. I couldn't stop her, she was just loving it too much.  

The girls and Charles hiked up past the house and this is the view looking back down at it. It is now a restaurant. There were also a bunch of bunkers and government buildings further down the mountain that were all destroyed in the war. This house was the only thing left.   

The most breath-taking views

After exploring the "Eagle's nest," we went down to the lake that you see in the above pictures called Königssee. The girls waded in the water while the adults soaked up some sun. Alex made friends with a little German boy. It was adorable to see them holding hands and helping each other through the stream they were playing in even though they couldn't speak the same language. That girl is not shy!  



If you look really close, you can see the restaurant where we were on the top of the hill. It is close to the top, middle of the picture.

The farm house we stayed in had rabbits. The girls loved coming out every morning to see them. One particular day, the rabbits were out on the front lawn running around. Alex was thrilled and started asking if we could get a pet...

On our way out of Germany, we stopped by this lovely castle (another one built by King Ludwig II) called Neuschwanstein castle. It was the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle.

We did a 40 minute hike to get up to it. The girls did well. They stopped at this stream to put water on their faces. It was hot!

A view from our hike

The castle as seen from a bridge to the rear

The bridge was really crowded since a bus of tourist arrived just as we did but you would never know it from this picture.

There was another castle you could see when you looked out from Neuschwanstein castle. See it on the hill there?

Another view of Neuschwanstein

That concludes our lovely holiday. We drove home without much traffic at all. However, we got to the Euro Tunnel and it was really crowded. More cars there than we had ever seen wanting to cross to England. We thought it would take us hours but thankfully we were only a half an hour after our scheduled train. Amazing! I am even more impressed with the Euro Tunnel. Thanks Paul and Gertrud for a lovely week!