Day Twenty Five

DAY TWENTY FIVE

We woke at around 7 and after a shower, checked out of the A & O hostel and made our way to Michaels house in the south of Vienna. Michael, Verena and Caroline went out of their way to make us the best breakfast yet. We had Breads, Eggs, Bacon, Ham, Cheese, Spreads, Yoghurt, Espresso etc. We had a super visit with the family and after breakfast and a chat, we left for Salzburg via Styria. The weather as per our usual road trip was snowing but the roads were clear of snow and the temperature was around +2 degrees. We drove for around 2 hours until we reached the town of Styria – reportedly the oldest town in Austria. We expected to see some Castles, Ruins …. Anything older than McDonalds. We received our first of several disappointing blows of the day. We couldn’t find a single old building to photograph, let alone visit. We continued on our way to Bergtesgarden and Hitler’s Lair – the Eagle’s Nest.

We arrived at the town of Bergtesgarden and Glenn went into the information centre to get all the details on our visit to this historic site. Glenn stumbled back to car with the devastating news that the road to the site was closed until May and doesn’t open in winter. This has to be without doubt the most distressing day of the entire trip. Glenn has with immediate effect started a “bucket list” with the first item now being that he has to return to the area in summer to see the Eagles Nest. We were both severely disgruntled and decided to grocery shopping to ease the wounds – how scary is that…. We did find a couple of postcards to take home that can show that we were within a few miles of the eagles nest but turned away by the bureaucrats’ that guard this historic site and to make matters worse, we couldn’t even see the mountains due to extremely low cloud conditions and the persistent rain. We bought the required commodities as well as some Chocolate to wipe away the tears of the tragedy. Now for those of you that feel that I am being somewhat melodramatic need to fully understand the circumstances.

Glenn and I had three must see sites planned for the trip – Castle Neuschwanstien, Auschwitz and the Eagles Nest. Now perhaps 2 out of 3 may sound good to the average Blog of the Year follower, but to an avid History Channel watcher – like Glenn and I are, it has been a day of severe disappointments. Michael is arriving at 9.00am tomorrow for a two night stay with us to explore Bergtesgarden (CROSS THIS OFF….) and to see Salzburg. Well that leaves Salzburg so I decided that instead of camping in Bergtesgarden we would go to the alternate site. It is located in a beautiful part of Austria which we cannot see amidst mountains but on arrival, we found the second most basic campsite yet after the parking lot where we slept for the first 2 nights. Glenn and I are allowed one shower each with a hot water token that will give us 5 minutes of hot water each. I have subsequently contacted Verena who is trying to find another site near Salzburg that doesn’t have prisoner of war camping standards in place so that we can enjoy the remaining 3 nights planned for the Salzburg region. We hope Verena will be successful in redeeming the tail end of our trip.

PS: Glenn would also point out that the Eagles’ Nest was going to be the final highlight of the trip. He is now so disgruntled he doesn’t me to cook dinner and has gone to bed early. I do plan however to insist we watch a comedy later tonight – courtesy of Q.b