Salzburg pt. 2: berchtesgaden!

Ok!  Time for some pictures from Berchtesgaden!  This will be the short version; when I have some more time, Joe, and if you're interested, I can type up some more stuff.  So basically, Berchtesgaden is a small town just on the German side of the border with Austria.  In fact one of the mountains that directly overhangs Salzburg is the Unterberg, and basically if you climb over that mountain you end up smack dab in Berchtesgaden.  So the two towns are VERY close together.  This map sort of shows their relation:

So the main mountain shown here is Untersberg ...and if you look at the little names around the edge of the map you can see that Salzburg is off to the upper-right of this picture, and the town of Berchtesgaden is of course near the bottom.  In the little writing at the bottom right you can see the name Obersalzberg, which is the name of the mountain that the Eagle's Nest is built on, and into which the bunkers were built.  Hitler's residence and buildings for many of his staff were also located on the Obersalzberg. 

Anyway.  I am a map nerd, so I feel better now that I have properly oriented you.  :)  (You are probably dying of boredom...so I will move on.)  This picture is fairly explanatory...I took it from the bus we took from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden.  It was a very scenic drive although once again it was pretty cloudy so we couldn't get the full effect.  Oh well.  

The weather was a minor hindrance in an otherwise FANTASTIC day.  I LOVED this tour--it was very very history-heavy and the guide was very well-informed and gave alot of very fascinating and detailed information.  I will give you the very short version here (though you might already know alot of this, Joe):  

Fairly early on in his career (say, the very early 30s, though I'm not positive on the year), Hitler lived in a house on the Obersalzburg (to refresh:  this is the mountain that overlooks the town of Berchtesgaden).  After the NS party came to power in 1933, that house was hugely expanded (though for sentimental reasons he incorporated the old house into the new one) and became known as the Berghof.  Over the next decade large portions of the mountain were taken over by the NS party and it became a sort of unofficial party headquarters--most of the top-ranking military figures and civil staff eventually had residences and/or offices based there.   This of course involved an enormous amount of construction.  One cool thing we saw (most of the buildings have been destroyed so there is little evidence still visible of the buildings that used to exist) were the dormitories built for the SS men (and their families) who guarded the place.  

Anyway all of that is in addition to the bunker-system, which was built during this same period (roughly from 1933-->the end of the war) and was pretty massive.  It was designed for use as a shelter from bombing, etc., but also for used for storage.  As things got more dangerous (so, during the war) alot of business was conducted in the bunkers as well, I believe.  

The last part of the complex---in addition to the town of Berchtesgaden, the 'mini-town' Hitler built on the mountain above it, and the bunkers---is the Eagle's Nest.  In a way it is the most sensational of them all but also the least important, in terms of how much it was used.  It was built as a present for Hitler's 50th birthday (which was in 1939) by Himmler, I think.  The craziest part is that not only was this building erected on the VERY PEAK of the mountain (I got vertigo just thinking about the construction workers up there, it is actually on the edge of the mountain, no joke), but an entire road up the mountain was also built JUST to access this one building.  I think the guide said it cost something like the equivalent of 130 million dollars in modern money.  And the kicker is that Hitler only visited it 14 or so times.  He didn't like it that much apparently because he didn't like heights and was also claustrophobic, and the last part of the way up involves taking an elevator up a shaft cut into the rock.  So he didn't even spend that much time there.  It is fairly famous though as it was seen as a sort of trophy by the Allies...everyone wanted to get there first.  To this day there is still some debate as to whether the Americans or another army (the French?  I forget) got there first.

SO.  I am sorry for how long that was.  That is the short version, I promise.  :)  Anyway if you are still reading at this point...here are some pictures of inside the bunkers!  Not great because of how dark it was, but they still give some idea. 

This one is just a basic shot looking down one of the tunnels.  You can see that in this one the walls are very rough and haven't been finished, but many of the bunker areas  were apparently beautifully finished as nicely as any house would have been:  carpet, plumbing, wood paneling, the whole shebang.  

I thought this was really neat:  it's a barrel that hasn't been opened and has been sitting in the bunkers ever since the NS were still here.  You can see on the top the word "Wehrmacht", the name of the German general armed forces (as opposed to specialized units like the SS or the Luftwaffe).

This was FASCINATING:  it is a room in the bunkers in which a huge safe was kept, which you can see tipped over on the floor.  After the bunkers were taken by the Allies, someone tried to blast it open; it didn't work but tipped it over, where it has lain ever since and has never been opened.  And no one knows what is inside, apparently.  This could have just been something the guide said I suppose, but he seemed pretty solid so I don't think he was joking. 
Another look into one of the side-hallways.  You will notice that all of the rooms and hallways look SUPER bare, in spite of what I said earlier about them being nicely furnished etc. Apparently this is because after the war the Allies turned a blind eye for a few weeks while the local people came in and completely stripped the place bare.  They took anything that could possibly be lifted or unscrewed, right down to the tiles on the floor, the light sockets, the plumbing fixtures, everything and anything.  (This had a lot to do with the fact that they had just come out of a war economy, their country was pretty much demolished, so they had no access to ANY kind of materials or supplies, even if they happened to have money.)
Authentic graffiti from one of the companies that came through here early on after the region was taken by the Allies.  You can see that it is dated the 5th day of the 5th month , 1945.  It also has the regiment etc. of the soldier who wrote it.  I don't know what all the abbreviations stand for, maybe you will have a better guess Joe.  
Walking through one of the tunnels.

I am so sad that this one turned out so dark!  I already lightened it up alot, this is the best I can do.  Oh well.  You will just have to believe me when I tell you that that dark blob to the left of my head [ :) ] is an escape tunnel that was built in case of the bunkers being completely overrun--it just leads out into the woods on the mountainside.  And it is situated at the very end of a hall, behind three different machine gun emplacements... so it was to be used only as a REALLY last resort.

The view as we came out of the bunkers...cloudy but still a pretty view.  

The view looking down out the window of our bus as we drove up the mountain towards the Eagle's Nest!   That is a SHEER DROP, people.  I was seriously freaking out during this part of the ride.  Like, at one point I had to close my eyes.  And was tempted to move to the other side of the bus, to shift my weight to the mountainside-side of the bus, even though I knew this was CLEARLY IRRATIONAL and my weight was not going to make the difference between us hurtling off the side of the mountain, or not.  BUT.  There was NO WALL, or anything.  Just the road, and then this DEADLY DROP.  Oh my lord.  This prairie girl did not handle it too well.  Although it was awesomely hilarious cause about halfway up the guide was like "I would just like you all to know that we have been doing these tours since 1955 and our bus company has a perfect safety record"  and I must have laughed a little hysterically cause he was like "oh someone is nervous at the back?"  It was awesome.  But yeah, I was glad to get to the top.

So at the top of the road we got to ride in the elevator, which I didn't take a picture of, but I found this one online to give you an idea of what it looks like:

And this is what the tunnel looks like leading into the mountain, in order to access the elevator (this one also I didn't take).  The light fixtures are original !  

This is me in the 'sundeck' portion of the Eagle's Nest...sort of a gallery along one side that would have given an AMAZING view, had we been able to see anything at all except thick white clouds.  :)  The windows have glass in them now but originally they were open to the air.  

This is a picture of Hitler sitting on the same sundeck, back in the day.  

And here is a picture I found to show what the view WOULD have been, had it been sunny out:  

OK!  Gotta finish with these quickly as I am talking far too much.  So this next one is a fireplace inside the building...the cool thing to notice here is how much the marble of it has been chipped away.  This was done by American GIs after the war who wanted to take a piece home as a souvenir!  

This is part of the buildings that has been turned into a restaurant.  We had something to drink here before we went back down.  

And this is the three of us on the balcony outside...I wanted to go outside to say I'd done it, even though there was no view to see!  So behind us it is...surprise surprise...white clouds.  Hah.  Left to right it is Alice (she's the one moving to Victoria next year, who I did the first part of the trip with), Sam (just did a degree in Oxford), me.  Not bad for a self-portrait I think. 

OK that is all I've got for now!  Hi to my, like, five readers.  :)  Love, Becky.

[[for mom]]

Hi Mom, if you read this today I just wanted to say a)  how nice to was to talk to you!  b)  I will attempt at some point to be somewhat more coherent about the catacombs.  Which I apparently know nothing certain about.  My goodness.  This is a topic I am apparently writing my thesis on. HEAVEN HELP ME.  

Love, your daughter.

Salzburg Pt. 1: The Sound of Music!

So on the first full day we were in Salzburg, we went on a Sound of Music tour.  This was probably the most ridiculous experience I have ever had in my life (well, it must be at least in the top three or four) but was also, of course, awesome.  How could a Sound of Music tour not be?  SO.  We arrived at the pick-up point for the tour and got on the bus, which was huge.  The tour guide was dressed in some sort of traditional-ish costume (clearly intended to scream "AUSTRIA!  SCHNITZEL!  THE HILLS ARE ALIVE!" with every thread of its fabric) and was borderline crazy.  I'm not kidding.  I suppose it was probably just part of the routine (since after all she probably does this several times a day and has to be a little weird to not lose her mind) but, MY GOODNESS.  Imagine a combination of very lame jokes [actual example:  "Captain von Trapp married Maria after he lost his first wife.  He must have been very, very absent-minded to have lost her like that, don't you think?"] and awkward quotations from the film [actual example:  "Hi everyone my name is ---.  Let's start at the very beginning, shall we?  It's a very good place to start."] and, of course, the mandatory group singalongs.  I felt excruciatingly awkward for the first five minutes and considered hiding under my seat to avoid such shenanigans.  Then I was like "You are here, dude, just roll with it" so I sang along with gusto (relatively speaking at least) and enjoyed it all quite alot.  Except for getting soaked, which I will get to later.

The first place we went to was the site where they shot all the scenes that took place in the front of the von Trapp house.  Or in the back?  I always get mildly confused as to which is the front and which is the back.  Anyway.  In any case this is the lake you see by their house in lots of different scenes, for instance  the one when the children and Maria are all in the boats on the lake, and they capsize as they are waving hello to the Captain; or the one where the children say that they've been to pick strawberries, when really they had gone to the Abbey to see Maria. They shot all the scenes from the other side, though--that is, from right in front of the palace, looking across to where I took this picture.

This shot is a little better because you can sort of see the path along the front of the water, which is where, for instance, the Captain and the Baroness stroll along while they are talking about the parties in Vienna.  And the clearing at the very left of this picture was where the gazebo originally stood (it has been moved since then to another site).

This is the next site we went to...it is where they shot the scene in which Maria gets off the bus with her guitar and carpetbag and sings "I Have Confidence" as she goes down the lane to the von Trapp home.  You can just barely see the line of the yellow fence here, below the trees...

...but here is a better shot, looking down the lane (though  sadly you can't see the yellow fence here; I think it must have started a little way up the road).  And she would have been going down the road behind me; in other words this picture is taken in the opposite direction to how you see the road in the film.  Seriously the more I try to make that sentence make sense, the more confusing it sounds.  Hopefully you will know what I mean!  Haha.

The gazebo, in the place where it has been moved to.  They only used this one for the exterior shots; they built another (and bigger) one back in LA to use for interior scenes.  That is something I hadn't known before the tour--that they only shot exteriors in Austria, with one exception:  the wedding scene in the church.  All the other inside scenes were shot back in the States, on indoor sets.

ALAS, this is as close as we got to the abbey!!  We only got to see it as we drove past, and from quite far away.  It is the one with the red roof.  I was hoping to go for a walk at some point during the visit and see if I could get any closer to it, but it pretty much rained the entire time we were there, so that kind of put the kibosh on that idea.  Oh well.

From Salzburg the tour bus drove for probably about 20 minutes to the nearby town of Mondsee, which is where the church is that they used for the wedding scene.  It would have been a very gorgeous drive I think, but sadly it was very cloudy and the visibility wasn't very good.   This will give you some idea:  

It did clear a tiny bit for a few minutes and I got a couple of nice pictures, this will give an idea of what the countryside was like.  Very beautiful.  I think there were even higher mountains that were hidden by the clouds.

Alice and me in the bus...Alice is apparently overcome by the tour.

One of my favorite things on the tour:  the church in Mondsee where they shot the wedding!  I don't remember it being pink in the movie...maybe they have painted it since.  Or maybe they just adjusted the colour when they shot it.  Anyway it was cool to be there!  You probably can't tell from this picture but I was SOAKED at this point; on the way to Mondsee it had started raining in earnest and by the time we walked from the bus to the church I was pretty much damp right through.  Like, dripping.  And my shoes and soaks were soaked.  BUT.  It was worth it. :)  Still, I was not all that impressed.

This is also in Mondsee:  apparently these are the trees that the children were in when they were all dressed in their clothes that Maria made from the curtains, and the Captain says something like "who are those hooligans" as he is driving by in the car with the Baroness and Uncle Max.  (I forget the exact line.)  

Back in Salzburg!  These are the Mirabell Gardens, where alot of the "Doe, A Deer" song was shot.  We actually went back to the Gardens a couple of days after the tour, when it was not-really-raining-but-merely-threatening-to-rain, in order to get some decent pictures.  The Mirabell Gardens were one of my favorite places to see, mostly because they are so recognizable from the film.  For instance, this:  

I took this standing right at the top of the steps where Maria and the children hop up and down right at the end of the song!!  Yes I was very excited, haha.  

And THIS one is me running through the--what are these things called--an arbor?  Anyway, it is the one that they run through.  You can't really tell from the picture but I really am skipping.  (I do not skip often, let me tell you, but this moment seemed to demand it...)

The fountain (you can see it in the picture taken from the top of the steps, but this is a closer shot) that the children all dance around the edge of!
This next place wasn't on the tour, but since it is somewhat related to the movie I will include it here.  It was actually probably my favorite of all the things we saw in Salzburg.  I had found it in a guidebook so we went to check it out.  It is a cemetery and 'catacombs' connected to St. Peter's Church.  The cemetery part is made up of a pretty normal cemetery (you can't see it in these pictures, but it's off to the left of the first shot) together with the line of arched cubicles that you see running along the bottom of the cliff, here.  

This is a better shot of them.  Each little cubicle is a sort of above-ground crypt for a particular family.  So there are headstones and memorials in each one.  I would have liked these anyway, but they are extra cool because they are the direct inspiration for the cemetery that the Trapp family hides in when they are fleeing the country (when they go to the abbey, and hide in the shadows, and Rolf finds them?  remember?).  They built a replica back in the States but it was modeled on this cemetery.  I loved this place.  

The other cool thing here is something that you can sort of see in the first picture--there are some walls and windows built into the cliff-face above the cemetery.  Those are called the 'catacombs' and you can walk up inside the cliff-face and see the caves inside.  They are not true 'catacombs' in the regular sense of the word (they were never used as regular places of burial, for instance).  They were occupied by hermits in the early middle ages (at least one of the chapels was in existence by 1200, and there is some evidence that there was a Christian community here much much earlier, from at least around 700 or so), and there are chapels built into the caves and also some altars.  It was very dark inside so the pictures didn't turn out awesomely, but I am including them anyway cause it was such a neat place.    This picture is of the Gertrude Chapel, it dates from 1178.  The arches in the walls are where clergy would sit during services held here.  So beautiful!  even though the picture isn't the greatest.  

This is looking the other way.  It is so cool and moving to be in a place where Christians have met continuously for so long--a thousand years, give or take!  (This is a feeling I often get while in Rome and it is one of my favorite things about the city....the sense you get of all the people who have been there and lived and prayed and felt there.  It is crazy.)  And apparently masses are still held occasionally in this chapel!  so it is still in use.  

Sorry this is so jumbled!  I hope it made some sense.   Love you lots!  Becky

p.s.  Joe, the next post will have lots more WWII stuff!!  I promise. :)

Berlin!

So!  The bottom line is, I love Berlin!  We were there two nights.  It was a really long bus ride both getting there and leaving, but totally worth it.  It was definitely my favorite of all the cities so far on this trip!  I had expected to like it, but not as much as I did!  So the first night we went to the Brandenburg Gate, which is probably Berlin's most famous landmark; it was built in the late 1700s and has been the site of pretty huge historical events pretty much ever since.

Napoleon marched through it; it was going to figure prominently in Hitler's planned restructuring of the whole layout of Berlin; when the Berlin Wall came down it was the center of huge demonstrations and crowds.  Anyway, it is alot more impressive in person than in pictures.  I could have just hung out by it all day.  

After seeing the Gate we went to the nearby Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, which was pretty much phenomenal.  It is just what it sounds like, in two parts:  the actual memorial, which is outdoors, and an underground museum attached to it.  The memorial itself is quite unusual-looking.  It is a large space of ground--I would say about the space of a city block--covered with a couple of thousand concrete, rectangle pillars.  

They vary in height and the ground they are built on is purposely constructed very hilly, so that as you walk further into the pillars the pillars grow up all around you until they loom high overhead.  I have heard different interpretations of the symbolism of the design--one that the pillars sort of represent gravestones for all the murdered Jews, another that the feel of the place--the way it pulls you in from the 'shallow' area into the middle, where the pillars are high over your head--sort of echoes the way that the German people travelled on a slow downward slope until they somehow found themselves in the middle of a terrible horror.  However you interpret it, it was quite moving.  

The museum was even more moving though.  It's not like I didn't know about the Holocaust before but this museum made it much more vividly real to me.  It was really well set-up and designed.  There was a whole room organized around the stories of 15 different Jewish families who were torn apart and in some cases completely destroyed.  I took a picture of one of the photographs that hit me the hardest.  It is of a young couple, taken very shortly before the war. 

I think that the husband survived because he was in the Russian Army (this particular family lived in Russian territory) but the girl and their baby both died in one of the camps.  There were also excerpts from personal letters and journals--all very striking.  I wish you could see it Mom, I think you really would have liked it.  So many stories of real people.

After the museum we went to the Reichstag, which is where the German parliament meets. You can take an elevator to the roof of the building, which was cool.  You will soon notice that I love to climb buildings (which is weird, cause I am fairly scared of heights) and climb them whenever I can.  For instance, cathedrals.  There will be pictures of  some of those when I get to Rome, I have no doubt.  Haha.  This is me on the ramp, with Berlin and the German flag in the background!  Kind of corny I know.  (But on a side note, it was weird, I really felt quite at home there.  Probably the whole having-the-last-name-Schmaltz didn't hurt, haha.)  

On Saturday we left the hostel early in the morning and spent the whole day walking around the city!  My feet have never been so sore, seriously.  But it was worth it.  The first thing we did was go to the Museum of German History.  I have NEVER SEEN a museum so full of amazing things to look at!  It was organized by time periods. from the time of the Celts through to the present day.  I had got to about the year 1918 when Alice found me as I was wandering and was like "We have been here for FOUR HOURS".  I was like, "WHAT.  IMPOSSIBLE."  It seriously seemed like MAYBE two hours.  There was just so much to look at.  So then it was most distressing because I had to WHIZ through the interwar years and WWII, which really were the areas I was most interested in reading about.  Oh well.  Altogether we were there for five hours and I EASILY could have spent two or three more.  What an amazing museum.  I took ALOT of pictures there, alot of them I think you will also be interested in, Joe.  For instance here are a few things:

This is a gas mask from the WWI trenches, and if you look closely on top of the crate you will see a noisemaker---these were apparently used to make noise in the trenches in order to warn the other soldiers about gas, since in theory you would have your own mask on and not be able to yell a warning to them.  Have you heard of this ever, Joe?

These, I think, were early models of metal helmets on the German front in WWI.  The one on the left is particularly interesting I think, it was labeled a 'forehead protector'; you can kind of see the part that goes down between the eyes.

This was a miniature 'field hospital' that was sold as a toy during WWI!  I thought it was awesome. 

A German helmet from WWI that suffered bullet damage.  

And this is the combustion chamber of a V-2 rocket!  I thought you might like this one in particular, Josiah.

After the museum we visited a church that had been bombed by the Allies during the war and left as it was as a sort of memorial; then we walked all the way back across town to where there were some pieces of the Berlin Wall (it is strange to think that that happened 20 years ago now, and even weirder to realize that I remember it!!  that makes me old!! ha).   This is me in front of a chunk of the Wall!  

Another spot we saw that I was especially interested in is an area of the city (again, probably roughly the size of a city block) where alot of the main Nazi offices were--for instance the SS headquarters and Himmler's office.  The thing that is most interesting is that the city has never rebuilt on that ground--the buildings from back then were either destroyed at the time or shortly afterwards, and it has remained undeveloped rubble ever since.  There is a display there now with photographs and it says specifically that that ground will never be rebuilt on, because of the terrible things that happened there.  It is just trees and grass and rocks, now.  Strange but quite moving in a way. 

So that was Berlin!  Lots of history = awesome.  :)  The hostel we were at in Berlin was really nice, too.  Very clean and quiet and the bathrooms were awesome (you get to appreciate things like that after awhile, haha).  And the pillows were huge!  They were practically body pillows. This is a picture of my bed at the hostel.  Very nice light airy room as you can see!

 Lots of love!  Becky.

Brussels and Bastogne!

Ack!  Oh no!  I am getting further and further behind.  This is not good.  OK, well, first a few pictures from Brussels.  We were there for two nights.  It is the capital of the European Union (I hadn't known that before I went there) so apparently it has sort of turned into a government town.  Also the whole city is multilingual in Flemish and in French (alas, I knew neither, so that didn't help me much!  but Alice speaks French, so that was awesome and I took full advantage of it by making her order for me in restaurants and do all the talking to people, haha.  I think she was quite sick of it by the time we left).

Me in Brussels, in the Grand Square (wearing the blue shirt, in case you can't find me, haha).  The buildings behind me, along the side of the square, are old guildhalls where the town guilds used to meet back in the middle ages or maybe a little afterwards.  

Brussels is apparently famous for its chocolate...I am not a big chocolate person but I did have ice cream one night, which I felt counted.  Here I am eating it.  You might also notice the sunburn I got that day!  Next time I will put on sunscreen whether it is sunny when I leave the hostel or not...ahem....

So yeah, Brussels was cool but we were really just there in order to catch the train and bus out to the town of Bastogne for the day.  Bastogne was really central during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of '44/'45, which is when the Germans made their last big attempt to push the Allies back towards the Atlantic and stop their movement eastwards.  Bastogne was completely surrounded for a few days--the Germans were trying to push through to Antwerp (because it's a main port, I think, and would give them a base on the Atlantic) and they just flowed right around the town as they moved east.  The main things to see there nowadays (related to the battle) are a museum and a war memorial on a hill outside of town.  

We caught the train and then the bus (it was about two hours, each way) no problem from Brussels.  The bus part of it was especially interesting because the route went all through the countryside and through the other little towns in the area and it was really scenic.  One thing that is really different here is that there seems to be more of a blur between the rural areas and the towns...like, you will be driving through what seems to be a little town, and then all of a sudden there are horses or cows in people's yards.  It's like tiny farms all close together, or very rural-feeling towns.  Kind of cool but really different from back home where you are always definitely in either the town or the countryside, and where farms are usually big enough that your neighbours are a few miles away...not next door...

Anyway!  This is a picture of the main street in Bastogne.  

When we got there we went to the war memorial first thing, because we weren't sure how long it would take us to find it/ look around there, and it was the thing we most wanted to see.  (I found out that day that the reason it was built where it was is that that hill in particular marks the closest spot that the Germans got to the actual town .)  Anyway this is a picture of me in front of the memorial:  

I'm not sure if you can tell from this picture, but it is built in the shape of a star and each of the states of the US is engraved around the top; this is because the troops that defended Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge were specifically American, and the memorial was built in 1950 as a joint project between the Americans and the Belgian people.  

There were stairs that you could climb to the top, and at the top there were several relief maps that showed the various places that were involved in the battle and which troops were deployed where.  So you could look out on the countryside and picture how it had all played out.  Here's a picture of one, it's not very good but will give you some idea.  (It made me think of a topographical relief map I made once of Saskatchewan, out of paper mache...do you remember that mom?...only of course these were nicer.)

This is looking out from the top of the memorial towards Bastogne:

After we had looked around the memorial we went to the museum that is right by it, which was AWESOME.  Joe, I was thinking of you pretty much the entire time!  It was a really good museum.  They had displays about both forces involved (the German and the American) as well as a really amazing collection of original items from the time.  Things that the soldiers would have used on a day to day basis (like toothpaste, bandages,  books that were printed especially for army use in extra-small, paperback format, clothing items, personal possessions, etc.) as well as original copies of documents related to the campaign--like the Christmas letter sent by General Patton to his troops andthe letter that Eisenhower sent to the D-Day troops after the first push onto the continent had succeeded.  There were also some Christmas cards and postcards that individual soldiers had sent home to their families that year.  Photographs weren't allowed inside the museum though so I don't have any pictures from there.  

So anyway, that was the Bastogne day.  I will write in my next post about Berlin!