Eagle's Nest

Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The bus shuttle picked us up at 820 sharp and we were on our way. We went to the tour bus, boarded and were off. Our guide that day was Andreas and he wore lederhosen so it was already a good start. We headed off to the Austrian/German border and were off to the Alps. It’s quite a steep incline up the mountain and the tour bus had to stop at one point and we switched to public transport which had extra engines and breaks meant to climb up the mountain. We were standing so it was even more interesting of a ride up the mountain. We arrived to the summit and then took the bronze elevator to the top which was a present to Hitler from Mussolini for his 50th birthday. Very cool! When we arrived to the top of Eagle’s Nest it was amazing and very cold. The clouds weren’t too bad so we had a pretty good view with decent visibility. There were places to climb and take pictures so for the next hour we did so. The only thing I was quite disappointed with was the lack of information available about Eagle’s Nest aside from what our tour guide said. I expected some write ups or something on top of the mountain. It wasn’t a big hot spot for Hitler since he was afraid of heights but it is still significant in history. Anyhow, amazing views and very tranquil. We then came back down and headed to a small village of which we really didn’t see because we were too busy eating more schnitzel, goulash and drinking Stiegl beer. So back we went to Salzburg! Along the journey however, we started talking to some Australian dude who had heard about a beer festival and asked if we were going to check it out. Of course!! We were asking our guide though and he didn’t know of any beer festival and doubted there was one. Apparently there was one going on at the Stiegl brewery and was huge. Who knows? Maybe we will check it out later. But for now we had to go back to Mirabell Gardens, we missed the statues of the gnomes and had to go get some pics. We also went up the elevator of Hotel Stein and onto the rooftop patio to snap a few photos of the best view of Salzburg. We headed back to our hostel to drink up our beers and perhaps head to the brewery to check things out. We met back up with our roommate Lydia and she chatted with us for a bit and soon we were drinking beers together and playing cards. Before we knew it, it was 6 or so and we were quite hungry. We decided to hit up the Thai shack restaurant again and visit our friend there. Haha. Again very difficult to find out what the menu said and what to try but he took care of it and we had again, an amazing meal. This time we made sure there was a lot of beef and meat. We were all feeling slightly anemic and needing some more meat. After our meal and beer we headed back to the hostel once again, it was again raining too. So we headed back and had some girl chat over a few beers and really just headed to bed. Since it was raining out, the beer garden wouldn’t be very good and nobody in town or from Austria knew about this festival so we thought it was probably just the brewery and beer garden. Anyhow, off to Hungary tomorrow morning.