Up for breakfast at a reasonable hour, but nevertheless, it was just after 9 a.m. that we got down to the dining room. Which brings up a comment on the Hotel Koenigssee; while their breakfast buffet is advertised as available until 10:00 a.m., by 9:00 a.m. it is very "picked over" - very few sliced cold cuts, cold and cracked boiled eggs, limited breads and buns - and there seems to be no effort wasted on replenishing supplies.
Following breakfast, it was off to the Obersalzberg (Upper - or higher - Salt Mountain), with a detour finding a post-office to mail cards back home. The Obersalzberg is a mountain just south of Berchtesgaden (and also the name of a small town on that mountain) that was a centre of 3rd Reich Nazi activity. On the summit is the Kehlsteinhaus, Hitler's vacation retreat, also known as the Eagle's Nest. Lower down, near the village of Obersalzberg was a large area populated, over the years, with vacation homes of high Nazi officials, and guard barracks, as well as riding stables and other vacation facilities. And, burrowed within the Obersalzberg were tunnels leading to shelters and command facilities, supply stores, barracks, medical facilities, and so on, second only to the command centres in Berlin, to be used as a retreat for the 3rd Reich political system in the event that Berlin was captured. Of course, it was never used.
The Kehlsteinhaus can be visited, but only by bus from the village of Obersalzberg. (Until a few years ago, one could drive most of the way to a parking lot a few hundred metres below, with an elevator the rest of the way, but recently that road has been closed to all traffic except the official buses. No reason given, but one suspects it might be to discourage neo-Nazi elements from turning the place into a shrine.) We had hoped to take the bus up; reputedly the view is spectacular, and the restaurant that now occupies the premises is supposed to be quite good. However, we were too early in the year; the upper reaches of the Obersalzberg were still snow-covered, and so the bus trips would not commence until a week after we were there.
Instead, we visited the documentation centre that has been built within the last few years on the Obersalzberg. This documents the Nazi presence in the Berchtesgadener Land area in a very detailed and frank (and often almost brutal) way. Displays show Nazi activities in detail, and make no bones about the evils of that time. Access to the subterranean tunnel complex is quite open. At the included bookshop one can buy (for a very fair price) the entire catalogue of the exhibits, with additional essays. Also available is an entire research kit, with DVD ROMs, intended for students doing projects on the 3rd Reich. All of this is managed by the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte -The Institute for Contemporary History - which manages similar exhibits elsewhere, particularly at former concentration camps.
For me, this is a new and welcome phenomenon; in my frequent visits to Germany in the 20th century I noted an unwillingness to deal with the German past. Certainly, people of my parents' generation tended to deal with the Nazi years in terms of "we didn't know what was going on." At the same time there was a small but noisy element of right-wing university students, skin-heads, and malcontents blaming all the ills of society on "non-German elements;" code for Turks and Eastern Europeans. There were violent attacks on non-Germans (actually, those not of German "blood"); and fringe calls for re-uniting those within the German "Raum" - which would include German-speaking Switzerland, Austria, and German speaking colonies all the way to the Black Sea along the Danube; also some of the Baltic states and parts of Poland and the former Czechoslovakia! Scary stuff!
Somehow, this has changed. Maybe there was a decision that burying the past was not the healthiest way to deal with it. Perhaps it was a decision that the best way to deal with the extremists of the present was to shine a bright light on extremism of the past. Observationally, something has changed in 21st century Germany. The documentation centre on the Obersalzberg is just one item. In a visit to the Dachau concentration camp in the 1980's, I noted how difficult it was to find the place; very few directional signs, and the entrance was quite inconspicuous. Last year, visiting with my son Scott, it was well-signed, and they were busy building a new visitors' centre, and the documentation centre at the camp was much improved. Elsewhere and earlier in the north, although we didn't visit, as we drove through the Luenenburg Heath, the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was well sign-posted, as was the cemetery in which the bodies found after the liberation of that camp are buried. As a personal opinion, all of this is very healthy!
Leaving the Obersalzberg, we drove down to its base, where there is a tour of the salt mine that has been working the Obersalzberg mountain for several centuries. Much of the Obersalzberg is a salt dome, and mining it has been a local industry for several hundred years. Here the mining activity does not involve drilling or digging down into the earth, rather, it is digging into the mountain, without going down a long way. The salt mine tour begins with putting on sturdy canvas overalls, and then climbing onto a small train with a guide/driver that takes you more than a kilometre into the mountain. Inside, there are exhibits on salt mining, and the chemistry and significance of salt. At the various exhibit stations, the guide directs you to one of about six loudspeakers, which describes what you are seeing in your own language. Also there are a couple of level transitions, only 10 to 20 metres each, which involve wooden slides (hence the overalls). The basic mining method is to find major salt deposits, drill into them, and then inject water which leaches out the salt - over decades, if not hundreds of years. The resulting brine is pumped to Bad Reichenhall, 20-odd kilometres north, where it is evaporated, further processed, and then packaged for sale. (As part of the tour, you get a small, personal-sized saltshaker of the final product!) A highlight of the tour is a journey on a towed boat across an underground brine lake, with new-age music playing, while a laser light-show is projected onto the surrounding rocks.
That is the ideal description, based on what happened last year with my son Scott! Unfortunately, our tour happened to include a bus-load of early teen students (girls and boys!), who were on an end-of school-year trip. (The German school year differs from that in North America, and early to mid May is the end of the year.) So, what do you get, regardless of country or culture, when you put early teen males together with early teen females? Lots of mock fights, and lots of fart noises! I spoke with the ticket sales person afterwards, and suggested that customers should be warned that they would be on a tour with a school trip (they would know because they are pre-booked) and offered a choice of going into the mountain later. (This was not the only time we ran into this phenomenon - end of school trips - only the most disturbing - travellers might well be aware of timing and at least be cautious about this.)
After exiting the salt mine, we drove back to Maria Gern (not that far) hoping to find it without touring pilgrims. We did; except like many destination churches, while open, they also had a substantial screen at the back which allowed you to see, but not get in. I suppose that is just the reality of churches anywhere; you cannot trust visitors to respect the place, especially if the place includes objects and pictures of considerable value.
And so, back to Berchtesgaden, for a walk-about. It is a very scenic alpine village; a combination of the very quaint and totally modern. (Up-scale dress shops, in buildings from at least 2 centuries ago, selling traditional dirndl dresses and modern business wear; eg.) We found an outdoor patio for supper, and had another great meal - but then, it is very difficult to find a bad meal in Germany, unless you go to McDonalds or Burger King!
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