BERCHTESGADEN AND VICINITY

GROSSGLOCKNER ALPINE ROAD

CURVES

This is really a beautiful part of the world, too bad it's raining. Seems like the theme of our trip is to see how many places we can go where it' raining. It's somewhat depressing as we change plans because of it. When we arrived in Berchtesgaden, the weather report said the next day would be the only day without rain this week. There were two places we wanted to see which are best without the rain, so we had to choose one. It was either Hitler's Eagles Nest, best seen when the mountain is not covered in clouds, and the Glossglockner Pass, also best in clear weather. Because bus loads of tourist crowd Eagles Nests, we opted for the Glossglockner.

The Glossglockner High Alpine Road ascends to an altitude of 8215 feet while covering 48 kilometers with 36 hairpin turns. The bends are number so the speeding motorcyclist can keep track of how much longer they have to hang on. It's is a really fun road to drive with spectacular views around every one of those scary hairpin turns. At times it can be crowed with motorcycles not to mention very large tour buses that manage to crawl their way up the mountain. At the end of the road you are greeted with a view of the Glossglockner Glacier. The drive's not free though, they charge you 28 euros ($34) for the privilege, but you can drive it as many times as you want in a day.

MARIA GERN CHURCH

OUR B&B

VIEW FROM THE BALCONY

We we arrived in Berchtesgaden, in the rain I might add, we stopped by the tourist office and got a list of potential B&B's. We ended up at Haus Michael in a nice size room with a great view from the balcony. Although is was cold, it was nice to sit on the balcony with our wine and beer and watch the clouds roll up the valley.

A word about food in Germany. There's lots of it and much of it consists of pork, potatoes, sour kraut, great soups, spatzle a potato base noodle and sausages. They've also got this dumpling that comes with some dishes that has the consistency of paste, so opt of the bread dumpling, it's much better. Good food and huge portions. For breakfast besides the usual juice and coffee, there's rolls, bread, yogurt, cereal, cheese, meat in the form of cold cuts, yes cold cuts for breakfast, and a soft or hard boiled egg. It's hard boiled if you arrive late. Anyway it's a whole lot of food.

Today we moved back to Austria and on the way we stopped for our main meal at a restaurant in Hall in Tirol. So here we are in Austria, eating at an Italian restaurant, having French onion soup, German spatzle with cheese and California wine. Go figure!